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I think the author is touching on the fact that there is so much uncertainty around this due to children being so long term that putting off making your family

I think the author is touching on the fact that there is so much uncertainty around this due to children being so long term that putting off making your family for short-term financial reasons doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The short-term gain from putting off kids is small.

hx87 10y ago
What about the long term gain?
- rglullis 10y ago
  I am all for delayed gratification, being mindful of your lifestyle and consumption, but this should not translate to having all of our life decisions based on the final chapters of our lives. In the long term, we are all dead. With regards with kids and family planning, the cruel calculus (especially for women) is that the more we get close to the best income-generating years, the closer we get to risky pregnancies and lower fertility. I am losing count of how many mid-30s women I've met who kept postponing to start their families and now are desperately trying to revert their biological clocks.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    Times have changed. When my parents were in their twenties, they were buying their first house, having kids, and starting up the (relatively certain) career ladder. If you're in your twenties today, there's no way you're thinking about either of these because you're saddled with six figures of student loan debt, and do not have the employment certainty it takes to take root in an area to buy a home.
    - phamilton 10y ago
      > they were buying their first house, having kids, and starting up the (relatively certain) career ladder There's still plenty of people still doing exactly that. Get out of the HCOL areas and there are tons of people going to an inexpensive state school and buying a house in a new suburb outside of Boise Idaho or wherever. I bring up Boise because I did an internship with Micron 5 years ago and other interns were meeting with realtors so they could buy a house as soon as they graduated.
      - refurb 10y ago
        I did that. Got a job at 26 in Western Michigan making $50K per year and bought a house a year later for $150K. Beautiful house. Of course there are drawbacks to living in such an area as well.
  - hx87 10y ago
    I agree with what your comment, but perhaps a better solution (instead of having children earlier) would be to freeze eggs and sperm and use them when you are ready. The only problem then would be whether an older mother's body would be more likely to experience problems, and if it is, whether the cost to hire a surrogate would be less than the cost of earlier parenthood.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - rglullis 10y ago
      > freeze eggs and sperm and use them when you are ready. (...) cost to hire a surrogate (...) Sorry if I am reading too much into your comment (or the sibling comment about not being able to start a family in the 20's due to excessive loans), but when I start seeing this line of thinking is where I see how out of touch is this "progressive" mentality of the millennials. Excuse in advance for my little rant. It's so focused on the self and so eager to "have it all", that they never get to exercise the simple task of knowing to establish priorities in life. It has associated so much the idea that "you are what you consume" that it simply does not even consider the possibility of "not going to pay 200k for a stupid degree", or "not be running the corporate treadmill". Women are so self-conscious about not appearing "strong and independent" that the perfectly acceptable choice of "I want to focus on the family and supporting my husband, let him be the breadwinner" looks like things only a loser would do. Not to mention this überization of everything. Would you really like to live in a world where people routinely assess the idea of getting a surrogate to have their kids for them? It is not enough to have kids nowadays being raised by nannies instead of their parents, the parents should also now delegate even the incubation? How much of parent are these parents, after all? What is next? Brave New World-style in-vitro cloning? /rant. Listen to the advice. If you want kids, have them as soon as possible. You will never "be ready" until you have them.
      - hx87 10y ago
        Oh, we have our priorities alright. We want to be financially comfortable and secure before bring children into this world, and if that means "running the corporate treadmill", freelancing, what have you, so be it. Due to how precarious incomes are today, single-earner households are often too fragile to raise kids, so "focusing on the family and support my spouse" (not necessarily husband, mind you...if single-earner households are the solution men should take it more often) is an unfeasible choice for many. "Having it all" is not a decadent luxury--it is a necessity in order for children to have a stable family life. It's not selfish, and I resent progressive-haters more and more for saying it is. We're not out of touch (except to a 20th century society that no longer exists); we're in touch with the challenges of life and parenthood today. > Would you really like to live in a world where people routinely assess the idea of getting a surrogate to have their kids for them? I would love to live in such a world where parents aren't restricted to their own genetic material or gestational capabilities when conceiving a child. I'd much rather delegate the incubation than the raising; I'd gladly ditch the nanny and pay for the surrogate.
- Jtsummers 10y ago
  Opportunity. The longer you wait to have children, the harder it'll be to raise them and really participate in their lives unless you do manage to become some true success story. I'm almost 34, unlikely to be married for at least another year (based on current relationship's progression), and don't want kids until we've been together for at least 3 years (I want us to have an opportunity now to act as a couple, so we have that relationship and not just children holding us together for the rest of ours lives). So I'm basically not planning to have kids until I'm 37. That's assuming this relationship works out. I'll be 55 when the youngest might graduate high school. 60 when they graduate college. They'll have children in, what, 10-15 years after that if they imitate me? So I'll see grandchildren when I'm 70-75. I'll never see great-grandchildren. And, thanks to already existing issues with my back, my mobility is going to be reduced each year despite my efforts to stay in shape. I won't be able to take my children camping and hiking like I'd like to. Neither the challenging areas, nor the long backpacking trips. I'll be able to watch them participate in physically challenging activities, but unable to participate myself. Parenting at a distance. OTOH, had I pursued relationships more actively in my early 20s, I could have the kids out of the home by my mid-40s. That 10+ year difference is huge. It may have impacted my long term earning potential. Or, it could have given me better motivation at the time to maximize my income, for the sake of the family, rather than being contented with more middling offers because it was just my wellbeing and interests at stake.
  - sixdimensional 10y ago
    I know your argument seemed to be simply stating some logic, I wanted to respond because even though you didn't say it outright, I sensed some degree of anxiety or sadness or something in your comment. Or maybe, others in a similar boat might be experiencing that. In my case (turning 35 shortly), for reasons completely out of our control, my wife and I have not been able to bear children. We are getting to the point where the only option is adoption, which we are not against. The risk and cost of any other options are just far too high. I didn't wait, I was married once in my 20s but my ex-wife had an affair and that was the end of that relationship. Took me a number of years to meet my current wife, and several years to get to the point of trying for children. All I guess I'm trying to say is, even though you say you could have tried harder in your early 20s - I did, and it still didn't work out for me with regards to having children as young as possible (yet). So for yourself, I hope you don't hold it against yourself that you did what you did. Even if you had tried hard, it might not have worked out - and I guess this is just how it goes.

hx87 10y ago

What about the long term gain?

rglullis 10y ago
I am all for delayed gratification, being mindful of your lifestyle and consumption, but this should not translate to having all of our life decisions based on the final chapters of our lives. In the long term, we are all dead. With regards with kids and family planning, the cruel calculus (especially for women) is that the more we get close to the best income-generating years, the closer we get to risky pregnancies and lower fertility. I am losing count of how many mid-30s women I've met who kept postponing to start their families and now are desperately trying to revert their biological clocks.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  Times have changed. When my parents were in their twenties, they were buying their first house, having kids, and starting up the (relatively certain) career ladder. If you're in your twenties today, there's no way you're thinking about either of these because you're saddled with six figures of student loan debt, and do not have the employment certainty it takes to take root in an area to buy a home.
  - phamilton 10y ago
    > they were buying their first house, having kids, and starting up the (relatively certain) career ladder There's still plenty of people still doing exactly that. Get out of the HCOL areas and there are tons of people going to an inexpensive state school and buying a house in a new suburb outside of Boise Idaho or wherever. I bring up Boise because I did an internship with Micron 5 years ago and other interns were meeting with realtors so they could buy a house as soon as they graduated.
    - refurb 10y ago
      I did that. Got a job at 26 in Western Michigan making $50K per year and bought a house a year later for $150K. Beautiful house. Of course there are drawbacks to living in such an area as well.
- hx87 10y ago
  I agree with what your comment, but perhaps a better solution (instead of having children earlier) would be to freeze eggs and sperm and use them when you are ready. The only problem then would be whether an older mother's body would be more likely to experience problems, and if it is, whether the cost to hire a surrogate would be less than the cost of earlier parenthood.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - rglullis 10y ago
    > freeze eggs and sperm and use them when you are ready. (...) cost to hire a surrogate (...) Sorry if I am reading too much into your comment (or the sibling comment about not being able to start a family in the 20's due to excessive loans), but when I start seeing this line of thinking is where I see how out of touch is this "progressive" mentality of the millennials. Excuse in advance for my little rant. It's so focused on the self and so eager to "have it all", that they never get to exercise the simple task of knowing to establish priorities in life. It has associated so much the idea that "you are what you consume" that it simply does not even consider the possibility of "not going to pay 200k for a stupid degree", or "not be running the corporate treadmill". Women are so self-conscious about not appearing "strong and independent" that the perfectly acceptable choice of "I want to focus on the family and supporting my husband, let him be the breadwinner" looks like things only a loser would do. Not to mention this überization of everything. Would you really like to live in a world where people routinely assess the idea of getting a surrogate to have their kids for them? It is not enough to have kids nowadays being raised by nannies instead of their parents, the parents should also now delegate even the incubation? How much of parent are these parents, after all? What is next? Brave New World-style in-vitro cloning? /rant. Listen to the advice. If you want kids, have them as soon as possible. You will never "be ready" until you have them.
    - hx87 10y ago
      Oh, we have our priorities alright. We want to be financially comfortable and secure before bring children into this world, and if that means "running the corporate treadmill", freelancing, what have you, so be it. Due to how precarious incomes are today, single-earner households are often too fragile to raise kids, so "focusing on the family and support my spouse" (not necessarily husband, mind you...if single-earner households are the solution men should take it more often) is an unfeasible choice for many. "Having it all" is not a decadent luxury--it is a necessity in order for children to have a stable family life. It's not selfish, and I resent progressive-haters more and more for saying it is. We're not out of touch (except to a 20th century society that no longer exists); we're in touch with the challenges of life and parenthood today. > Would you really like to live in a world where people routinely assess the idea of getting a surrogate to have their kids for them? I would love to live in such a world where parents aren't restricted to their own genetic material or gestational capabilities when conceiving a child. I'd much rather delegate the incubation than the raising; I'd gladly ditch the nanny and pay for the surrogate.
Jtsummers 10y ago
Opportunity. The longer you wait to have children, the harder it'll be to raise them and really participate in their lives unless you do manage to become some true success story. I'm almost 34, unlikely to be married for at least another year (based on current relationship's progression), and don't want kids until we've been together for at least 3 years (I want us to have an opportunity now to act as a couple, so we have that relationship and not just children holding us together for the rest of ours lives). So I'm basically not planning to have kids until I'm 37. That's assuming this relationship works out. I'll be 55 when the youngest might graduate high school. 60 when they graduate college. They'll have children in, what, 10-15 years after that if they imitate me? So I'll see grandchildren when I'm 70-75. I'll never see great-grandchildren. And, thanks to already existing issues with my back, my mobility is going to be reduced each year despite my efforts to stay in shape. I won't be able to take my children camping and hiking like I'd like to. Neither the challenging areas, nor the long backpacking trips. I'll be able to watch them participate in physically challenging activities, but unable to participate myself. Parenting at a distance. OTOH, had I pursued relationships more actively in my early 20s, I could have the kids out of the home by my mid-40s. That 10+ year difference is huge. It may have impacted my long term earning potential. Or, it could have given me better motivation at the time to maximize my income, for the sake of the family, rather than being contented with more middling offers because it was just my wellbeing and interests at stake.
- sixdimensional 10y ago
  I know your argument seemed to be simply stating some logic, I wanted to respond because even though you didn't say it outright, I sensed some degree of anxiety or sadness or something in your comment. Or maybe, others in a similar boat might be experiencing that. In my case (turning 35 shortly), for reasons completely out of our control, my wife and I have not been able to bear children. We are getting to the point where the only option is adoption, which we are not against. The risk and cost of any other options are just far too high. I didn't wait, I was married once in my 20s but my ex-wife had an affair and that was the end of that relationship. Took me a number of years to meet my current wife, and several years to get to the point of trying for children. All I guess I'm trying to say is, even though you say you could have tried harder in your early 20s - I did, and it still didn't work out for me with regards to having children as young as possible (yet). So for yourself, I hope you don't hold it against yourself that you did what you did. Even if you had tried hard, it might not have worked out - and I guess this is just how it goes.