I hope this doesn’t come across the wrong way, but I genuinely find myself wondering how people my own age (I’m 28F) feel ready to have children given the current economic challenges and the increasingly unpredictable political climate around the world. It’s something I truly don’t understand, not really out of judgment, but out of honest confusion. Personally, I find it difficult just managing my own well-being and responsibilities. Therefore the idea of taking on the immense emotional and financial demands of raising a child, plus at least 18 years of responsibility, but probably more feels more like a potential tragedy rather than a miracle. Also when you have kids you have no idea what you’re going to get. I’ve heard stories about nice and loving parents who did everything having kids that grew up to be genuinely horrible people and that’s scary, right? It’s hard to believe that my mom was around my age when she had me, it really puts things into perspective. If anyone can help me understand this I’d gladly appreciate it.
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Gotta do something with all that spilled seed.
This was one of the reasons I was 38 and my wife 37 when we had our first (and only). My parents were 23 when they had me (oldest) and the idea of me having a child when I was 23 are not only boggling but outright irresponsible. Fact is, some people want only that, some people don’t plan properly, some people don’t want to but are forced to.
Accidents
Religion often plays a role
Idk, but I can’t afford it even if I wanted to. I’m already struggling to keep myself alive 🤣
Most people are idiots
Taking care of them when they’re old i guess. For most people around the world, children are an economic investment, partly for that reason.
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biological drive, religion, legacy, societal/tribe expectations
Economy is great compared to the past… these are minor hiccups… life goes on… if you live in fear you don’t really live.
In my family it’s been religion. My cousins are hardcore Christians and my cousin had her first kid at like 19. I feel for the kid because she has next to no real world work experience and her husband got laid off from his job when she was pregnant. Selfish and uneducated and now this poor kid will most likely suffer from an impoverished life
I don’t know or understand it either. What I do know is too many people who have no business having kids are having kids.
If you really want a child you manage to do what it takes. You just need to feed him and spend time with him. If you want to put him in a private school and buy him a car at 18 and send him abroad every summer until he is 26 that is an other deal
Time is fleeting and taking too many people from us and were financially stable enough that if a crack head can do it, why cant I? I want as many grandparents and family to be able to meet my child before I lose any more.
I just turned 30, my wife 27, and we are pregnant and excited. I worked my way up in a company from minimum wage to 93k a year now. Where I live that’s decent money, I bought a house right after covid hit, so I lucked out there. Financially it is a little tough without her income but if you slice down on vehicle payments and just look at paying the necessities you can survive with much less than what I make.
To be honest, and given I’m not yet a father, but I don’t believe more mouths is much more expensive. The big ticket items have never been groceries. I pay maybe 120 a week, let’s say that doubles(and I doubt it, but possible) 120 extra a week isn’t really breaking the bank compared to a house payment.
Consider adoption? Plenty of kids who had no choice and are afraid would love to be adopted.
Are you in a relationship? Because if you’re not, you may not understand until you are.
People grow older and become more mature both behaviorally and financially. Over time as career grows, financially it will be enough to live comfortably, so it will be time to take care of an offspring who you can watch grow and also mature.
If the kid becomes a bad person then he or she goes to jail. But as parent you do what you can. Most people don’t become horrible person anyway with proper care. Why let few bad experience stop you?
And also I guess biology want us to pass down our genes.
Because people find having children fulfilling and it can encourage working harder for a better world in the future. I’m 37 and pregnant with my first (and second child, twins). We waited a long time because we wanted to be sure we were in a good position to take care of them both emotionally and financially and because the world is a scary place, but I’ve always know I wanted to be a parent and my whole career has been focused on working with kids (nannied, worked in afteschool, got a masters in education, taught elementary school etc). I feel confident in my ability to raise not super shitty kids and the world’s going to need a next generation of not super shitty adults. Knowing my kids and the kids of others are going to be in the world we’re creating for them is motivation to work as hard as possible to improve that world.
It’s not shir everywhere in the world. Things are quite fantastic here in Sweden, so why wouldn’t we keep going? The only worry is about what Russia might to, but other than that it’s great.
Yeah, I mean, the world has a lot of problems. But the world has ALWAYS had a lot of problems, and most of the time those problems were much worse than what we’re going through now.
Because it’s not that bad.
If you compare our time with the previous generations, it’s not that bad actually. Our parents also lived in a dangerous climate (lots of threat, wars, already some major terrorist attack) and also struggle economically. And same for the generation before and those before that had it worse.
If you open a history book and read the details (not only the major event we learn at school), you’ll find out that the world was NOT in a good situation.
The economic recession? They used to say the same when my mother was my age, and same when my grandmother was my age too, but she also had a war.
Also, despite everything happening now, millions of people live in a peaceful area and in a economically safe environment.
Current times is not nearly the worst or bleak that things have ever been. And yet people have always had kids. This seems like a very “current times centric” question.
Because they want them?
Not everyone is struggling in the economy, and some people are willing to sacrifice their own comforts in order to have kids. 🙆🏻♀️
A lot of people don’t think about the bigger photo. That their child will likely grow up to suffer and be another wage slave to the system.
Some people just want them, there is never been an era of human existence that didn’t have hard times somewhere.
Too many people having kids and raising them wrong is what caused all these problems.. The solution is for everyone opposed to this shit to have kids and raise them right so the majority 20 years from now votes to bring back the more just and equitable social systems that we just lost.. Don’t just give up and let this trend continue through future generations..
They’re not…hence the decline in population and opening our borders to compensate.
Things aren’t as bad as you think. Humanity has lived through world wars, famines, slavery, and plagues, but you’re stressing because some flashing words on a screen have conditioned you to think the sky is falling.
Take a realistic, objective look at your life and see what, if anything, is actually a threat to your day to day existence. Maybe avocados (or milk and eggs or whatever) are a little more expensive, but people have survived on rice and bark. If you’ve got the leisure time and money to even own a phone and data plan and be posting on reddit, you’re already more wealthy than billions of people in history.
To have someone to keep me company so I don’t need to date.
Whenever I think that I got it bad. I think about what it took to get me here.
I think about my ancestors that were enslaved.
I think about the wars, the famines, the plagues, the diseases.
I go all the way back to the first set of people who didn’t have clothing and had not discovered fire. We’re sitting alone in the dark in the middle of the food chain and how every single one of those people still chose to have children.
The other thing I think about is, when I come home from a long day struggling to get by and I see the faces of my children who are happy and healthy and who I love. I think to myself how much worse life would be without them.
If I waited until I was ready, I would have never had kids. It wasn’t so much a readiness in myself so much as the desire to take on the responsibility. I wanted to create something that would leave a positive impact on the world long after I’m gone, and for me, that was my daughters. It takes a lot of hard work, and I’ve gone through a great deal of my own personal growth in having children so I could learn to be the model of the person I want them to become. I’m still far from it, but they inspire me to be a much better person than I would be without them watching, and I don’t think that anything else in the world could have pushed me to try to be better than knowing that I’m instilling values and shaping someone else’s world in the way I influence my kids. To have someone be dependent on me to learn how the world works forces me to reevaluate the world around me and how I interact in it. It forces me to take moments to pause and think before reacting, because my kid is learning how to interact from the way I interact.
There’s never a right time to have a child. You just kind of…do it. It’s like trying to time the stock market.
Take this as a moment to realize how inept you are compared to the general populace. We’re the same age and last year I got married and purchased a home in a big city in Canada, which is not easy to do. In contrast, you have a difficult time managing your own well being and “responsibilities”.
Harsh of me? Perhaps. But you need to get it together. I’m so sick of people our age and a bit older struggling with “adulting”. It’s nauseating.
The economic experience is different in different areas around the US. Where we are has such an insignificant impact by the economy that it doesn’t matter.
To the responsibility part think of how most people speak of relationships. If it’s a priority to you, you’ll take care of it. All the time we hear “if he cared he would”. Well it’s essentially the same thing with kids. You will make them a priority and take care of them or you won’t. It’s a choice.
If whoever is in politics at the time determines whether or not you have a family then you’re not ready to make a family a priority. If you’re unable to treat people for anything more than their political view then you’re the problem that can’t treat them on the many other aspects that make up them as an individual.
Too many dumb people are having kids.
Some people have planned appropriately and have built a loving home that they want to share with a new life that’s from their own DNA.
Some people are less prepared but still feel the need to have children.
Some people are completely unprepared but are just driven by a biological mandate.
And regardless of where people fall on the preparedness spectrum, accidental pregnancies occur regularly.
Also, there have always been problems in the world. If you’re waiting for a perfect world to “justify” having children you’ll be waiting forever.
Today I laid down in the grass. My 2yo laid down on my belly and rested her head on my propped up legs, then said “big laxing.”
That’s why I had her.
Before her we struggled. We still struggle at times, but we’ve always managed. Plus now there’s a little Pipsqueak to share in and make new fun.
I had my first right before I turned 30. We weren’t financially stable and still aren’t. We are in a better situation now than we were. We just didn’t want to wait any longer. All my siblings have several children. I think that every generation feels for the most part that the world is unstable and the economy is bad, excluding the boomers. Being a parent is stressful, but raising my tiny human has brought me a lot of happiness and joy. He gives me a reason to keep pushing and doing better every day. I couldn’t imagine my life without him now. The stress and worry about their well-being doesn’t stop when they turn 18, it’s a lifetime commitment.
Just got a vasectomy at 33yo. No kids.
Often, people with kids sound miserable and it’s like they want me to have kids so they feel justified for their decision to have them.
I’m so sick of people telling me to have kids, when I’m not here telling people NOT to. Like, get out of my personal life…
The purpose of life is to create more life, you are part of a couple billion year long streak of your predecessors procreating. Having children is the only thing we are inherently programmed to desire, even if it’s indirectly.
I had my first just after I turned 21, on purpose. I had met my person. We had a very healthy, happy and loving relationship. He had been one of my best friends for 5 years by the time we got pregnant with our first. I knew I wanted to grow old with him. I knew he would he a fantastic father. I knew he was ” the one” so the desire to have childern with him was very overwhelming. We owned our home, we had our families support emotionally. We’ve never once needed financial support from family. We felt very ready.
Zero regrets about how young we were when we had our first. She’s 12 now and grown into an amazing human being. We had our second when I was 27, and now pregnant with our third at 33 years old. It’s a love, joy and fulfillment like no other having kids with the love of your life. Our kids mean the world to us and its really not something you can understand unless you go through it ( and actually wanted kids and have a good loving partner to parent those kids)
Also despite what others said, no we don’t want or expect our childern to ever take care of us in our old age.
Whoever has the biggest influence on your kids, significantly increases the odds of the end result of how your kids turn out. This may sound obvious, but I think most parents have given up their influence to others, including educators, television, video games, social media, friends, and dating relationships to be the most obvious. In most cases, it is these cultural “norms” that have replaced the parents in raising kids and why many parents feel like they can do very little to impact their kids for the better. This, in turn, causes the questioning of the validity of having kids and family. Pretty sad really.
I realize this happens for many reasons… divorce, 2 working parents, laziness, product of upbringing, but it happens nonetheless. All these things and more lead to parents giving up their dominant influence. Even those that somehow are able to keep a dominant influence, who is to say it’s a positive influence that leads to the betterment of society?
I used to be REALLY angry that I couldn’t have kids… now I’m 50 and look at the world and think it was probably for the best.
Stop letting politics bother you. If you want kids. Have them! Politics will always go back and forth. And in reality for most people it doesn’t actually affect them in any impactful way. As someone who is now nearing 50 with no kids, I do wish my wife and I would have had a couple. But health wise at the time it made it not possible.
OP, you sound like me. I’m a 41 year old cis woman and never in my life have I ever felt the desire to have children. I didn’t play with baby dolls even when I was little. I just had other interests and have zero understanding of how people have such strong feelings about having children that they go through great lengths with fertility treatments/IVF and such. I also don’t feel a strong pull of the idea of family or needing family.
My husband and I are happily without children and I’m thankful to finally be at the point of the biological possibility closing up. My coworker is going through a fertility thing and I feel very unequipped for the social contexts of that, so I am trying to remind myself that people care about this a lot and I need to listen and be nice and not accidentally say something stupid.
Lol maybe I’m also autistic?
Aside from a couple of very blessed, very particular places and times–a few particularly prosperous areas and times in the past several decades–there has never been a better time in the history of humanity to safely and comfortably raise a child.
My grandparents had a very prosperous middle class lifestyle, getting paid well and having only moderate expenses. They bought a lot of land cheaper than I ever could. But they both grew up in one room shacks with heaps of siblings. There were people better off than them, but what they knew was not far below standard, and they could have told you about people they knew who were worse off than them. And that was prosperity beyond what anyone in the family had known since long before the average person had access to any kind of indoor toilet.
There are a lot of things that suck right now, and they need to be fixed or things are going to be worse. But there’s more prosperity and hope today than ever before. Don’t compare yourself to a bunch of boomers bought cheap houses a while back and are riding high on it now. They basically won the lottery. There are still people today who live in literal cardboard shacks in literal garbage dumps (I’ve met some.) Our problems are fixable, and fixing them can help a lot more people be lottery winners compared to the entire history of humanity.
Cause they think forcing people into this world is their right despite it being unethical to do so. They think their want to be a parent trumps the fact that they’re forcing the responsibility of life onto that child who will become an adult and have to deal with all the shit like economy, physical and mental health issues, cancer, accidents, assault, abuse, war, environment and then die one day even if those parents are no longer around. They think their kids will be fine despite millions of examples of kids and then adults who are struggling despite having the best upbringing their parents can give. They can’t fathom the concept that their kids aren’t special nor the concept that it might be better if we went extinct
Because you don’t want to end up like South Korea by 2060.
Im turning 32, my daughters turning 13. I got pregnant young. I dont personally believe in abortion so here i am. Love her more than anything on this planet. Will not be having another. Life is hard enough, i cant add another soul to be responsible for honestly.
They’re dumb
Kids are the most awesome people to be around. They are fun and remind us to play. They teach you a lot. They challenge you. You grow as a person in order to be the best parent you can be. It’s deeply fulfilling even though it is also very challenging. The best things in life usually are. Becoming a mom made me more loving, more patient, more loving, more fierce and less selfish.
It’s an innate desire. Things are pretty good all things considered
Love and an adventure. Who doesn’t want more love in their life? I loved my husband, we knew it would be the best adventure to have children together. About to have my third and now I get to spend my life with the 4 people I absolutely adore.
Some people learn to manage on the fly. Some do well, some don’t. So, meh.
If you worry about every little detail, even those outside your control, and deem yourself not ready because well it all seems too much, then yeah thats fine. Youre not doing good, youre not doing bad.
Because Reddit doesn’t represent reality. Most people love raising their kid(s).
I didnt feel the want or need, until recently (34f). Now it was an intentional decision after being in a solid relationship for 7 years, own home, stable jobs (as stable as they can be!) And solid finances.
Just got my second one. Can’t think of a life without kids both before and after. For some people it is a trip for Thailand for others it’s kids and that is fine.
Because we can afford it. We’re not even rich, it’s just not as horrible as it’s made out to be if you make strategic moves. Single income too, I am a stay at home mom to THREE. We own a home, have two cars, two pets, a full refrigerator and pantry….
Things that help: We live in the Midwest so housing isn’t the worst, we’re debt free and don’t get back into it with car payments or credit cards, both of us did trade jobs so very little student loans that we paid off early before kids, we eat at home most of the time, we thrift nearly all of our clothes, my husband is handy so we almost never call repairmen/plumbers/painters/mechanics/etc, we cloth diapered and I breastfed, no childcare costs since I’m home, and we’re all healthy.
I’m 32f, my husband is 34m. We’ve been married 10 years and our kids are 8/7/4
Because they hate freedom.
I’m a cancer survivor in my late twenties. Life is unpredictable, who knows if now is the best time to have children or ten years is an even worse time to have children. All I know is that I personally can look after my children financially (just about) and the sooner I have them the more time I get with them. I’m also over any chance of my cancer coming back so I can provide them with a stable childhood. Obvs everyone’s choices are different but that’s why I had children when I did.
Not sure if that explains but hope it helps.
Get off reddit and the internet. Things aren’t as bad out there as they seem. It’s not all doom and gloom when you aren’t reading about it everyday. Coming from a father of a toddler with one on the way.
It’s an honor to be a wife and mother. Husband n children bonds are so special you can’t get it from anything else. Truly special. The RIGHT partner matters cuz then it can easily feel like a curse.
80% of people I know were an ‘accident’, myself included. People just make the decision to keep the baby due to circumstances (good or bad) and go from there. If the act of making babies wasn’t fun, there wouldn’t be many of us.
If you take a step back and have a historic perspective has there ever been a better time to have kids? I mean for the most part health and life expectancy are best ever, there is more opportunity and comfort in this world now than ever before. I understand the financial aspect is maybe tougher than the previous generation but living standards have improved dramatically. I’d recommend reading ‘factfulness’ – just to have a bit more balanced look at how things are today vs historical times.
For the most part birthrates are cratering across every culture, system, religion as countries rise up the income ladder so this view is quite prevalent. I think people like convenience, freedom and focusing on themselves more now than in the past and they use external things like the ‘ political climate’ to convince themselves it’s not a good time for kids.
I’m big on personal choice so to each their own but I do believe the absolute pinnacal of life I to have a great marriage with at least one child and preferably more. Something about having your own squad hits deeper and is more fulfilling
Sex is fun and contraception doesn’t always work
It’s the strange paradox that the people that should have kids often times don’t have them and those that should be sterilized tend to have lots.
Some people genuinely want to be parents, think it would “save” their marriage, or it was an unwanted pregnancy but still had the baby anyways.
Emotional and financial demands aren’t a problem for many people, and the risks, for them, do not outweigh the positives. I have a 10 year old and watching her grow up and seeong the lessons we’ve taught her take root is very fulfilling.
I wanna make it clear to people that I understand that I may not be immune to any accidents.
Definitely wouldn’t hurt allowing population. Help the planet heal.
I’m bored and I put over half in my salary in savings and I would like to raise a minion..
The world right now is one of the best times ever to be alive…maybe it’s a bit worse than it was when we were kids (but I don’t know if that’s just nostalgia)
My partner and I looked at our lives and decided we wanted to add a new person—-being a parent is the bravest and most adventurous thing we’ve ever done. It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life….and I think (like much of the research has shown) it’s given me much more meaning/fuflilment/purpose in my life (even if it means I have less time to do things I enjoy)
If you don’t have children you will regret it soon or later.
Life is a journey not a destination. Live your life as you please. Not everyone is suited for parenthood.
Most people find that having kids and a strong marriage helps make their lives whole
There’s always a reason to live in fear, most of us decide that we’ll make decisions based on what we want and what’s physically possible.
There was a higher birthrate when society pushed families to have many children, whereas now it’s lower because you should only have kids if you want, and that’s good. Which means for you, if you think it’s too much and not fulfilling enough, then absolutely, don’t have kids and there’s nothing wrong with you for that decision.
But the political climate has always been up and down, the world economy has survived multiple crashes, and most people do end up being decent. Everything is a chance that you’re taking, and the current political and economic climate is far from too poor for the average person in America and many similarly developed countries to have a hard time raising kids compared to 20 years ago
Because I am a history teacher and understand that this is still easily one if the better half of not best third of all ages in recorded human history. People had children during both World Wars, the Great Depression, slavery, the Black Death, Genghis Khan and the Huns’ attacks, the colonial era as colonised subjects, etc.
Dooming doesn’t help anyone. I love my kids, they love me, we are a pretty happy family. I dare say they don’t regret being born. Guess it also helps not to live in the US right now.
The fact that people believe that NOW is even in the top 100 worst times in human history to have a child will never not astound me.
Everyone is in a different position. Can finances and the economy effect people’s childbearing choices? Of course. But not everyone is in the same financial position, and not everyone has the same life goals and desires.
I’m a bit older than you, 33, and I have two children. I had my first at 27. I had a masters degree and a solid career. We were moving from our starter home to a larger family home and felt ready. It was an easy choice for us to have kids. It’s something my husband and I desired, and we had been married for 5 years at that point.
Having my children was the greatest gift in my life. It can be challenging, and we would have more savings without them. But they are wonderful kids and a joy to be around.
I had internal desire clock that went off. Now mine are teens and I can think clearly. You will be fine without kids but I will say be a damn awesome aunt/uncle or join big brother’s/sisters because kids need more than mom or dad. Mom or dad can try to do everything perfect but kids need more connections.
We joke about how much money we would have saved minus kids because we want to pay for college too.
Look, having kids—it’s a big decision, maybe the biggest. Not for everyone. But people still do it because they believe in legacy, in hope, in family. Very traditional, very beautiful. Sure, the world’s a mess—tremendous disaster in some places—but people want to build something, create winners. And yes, you don’t know what you’re gonna get—but that’s life! You take the risk, you raise them right, maybe they turn out tremendous. Or maybe not. But that’s the art of the deal, sweetheart.
One thing to consider is that different people have different standards for being stable enough to have children. You say we are in a state of “current economic challenges and the increasingly unpredictable political climate around the world”, but that’s only true in the very short run. In the long run, we are in one of the most positive times in the history of humanity, and if you think about it people used to have more children when they knew half of them would die by age 5 than they do today. That’s an extreme example, but it serves the purpose of getting the point across.
I’m not ready or prepared I just found out too late and I couldn’t have an abortion so I had to put my big girl pants on and become a mother. Yay..?
I don’t get it either. I could never have them.