But did you hate the story, or hate the characters? Because deciding not to have kids for shallow reasons like mentioned seems like something people would actually do if they had the option, particularly if brought up in a society where this was the norm. Yes its ethically icky, but not, I felt, unrealistic.
Both. I don't have to relate to characters to like a story but it sure helps--Immortal Sin is a case where I hated the character and loved the story. But in that case I was rooting for something terrible to happen to the guy for the sake of justice, so I had SOMETHING to root for even if it was against the protagonist. In this case the stakes was a relationship between two unlikeable people. I don't care if they break up, so it's hard to care about the story. So I guess at the core of disliking the story itself was that I didn't care about the stakes.
And besides that, I like a story that carries a message, but not when a message carries a story. In this case, it seemed like the story was only a vessel to put the Message in, and it didn't even say anything original. Maybe if it had covered more of the gray area of the ethics, then it might've at least served as an interesting thought exercise. But since it chose such an extreme example it didn't even do well as that.
And I find it really hard to relate to couples who see breeding as the sole purpose of a relationship. This isn't isolated to this story, I realize. I've had conversations with someone in recent months who says that the purpose of marriage is reproduction, and if you aren't procreating then it's not really a marriage. It was intended by that person as an argument against gay marriage (which is a whole nother discussion) but according to his definition, I am not really married either. My wife and I do not have any kids, and we are not trying to have kids. We're not sure we'll ever raise kids, but if we do there's a good chance that we'll try to adopt.
