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First of all, having children and having a family are two different if related things. You can have children without having a family, and you can have family wi

by hx87 10y ago

First of all, having children and having a family are two different if related things. You can have children without having a family, and you can have family without having children. Having children alone does not give you any stronger a support network than you otherwise would have. Second, if we prioritize being financially secure over having kids early, that /is/ a priority, and criticize that priority all you want, but it is a consciously made and valid choice, and one that does not take away from being "grown up", whatever that means. Settling down and being responsible does not require having children, and as we too often see, the reverse is also true. Egg harvesting + IVF + surrogate is certainly very expensive. However I doubt it is more expensive than having a nanny for a few years, especially if nothing is done under the table, so for those who have enough money to pay for a full-time nanny, trading the nanny for a surrogate is not necessarily financially illogical. > You are proposing a world where some privileged "elite" gets to postpone their fertile years and make more money at the expense of poorer women who will nothing but breeders for you, and that in the end might not even be able to have kids of their own. It's better than a world where the "elite" have to choose between having children early and forgoing earnings (and non-childraising contributions to the world) or not having kids at all and the poor often lack resources to raise children to prevailing standards. If that's a dystopia, then that's one I'd rather live in than the world we have right now.

rglullis 10y ago
> if we prioritize being financially secure over having kids early, that /is/ a priority, and criticize that priority all you want, but it is a consciously made and valid choice. Not quite. It would be a priority if people said "I prefer financial stability for myself over a family", and it would be perfectly acceptable. What I do not get is the amount of people (especially women) who say they want a family, but that there are other things they need to have "first", or that "they are not yet ready" and so on. It is not "financially secure/healthy kids later" vs "financial uncertainty/healthy kids earlier". It is more "slight less uncertain financial/uncertain kids and family later" vs "financial uncertainty/certain kids and family earlier". To ignore biology is the part that I don't get. It seems that these people are playing poker with their fertile years and justifying it as an "investment". > the poor often lack resources to raise children to prevailing standards. Which prevailing standards? If you are surrounded by people living in big coastal cities from the USA, then you'd probably be expected to be providing things such as having your kids going to expensive private kindergarten schools, extra-curricular activities, pay for all the doctors for all the treatments and special care required due to having a late pregnancy, spending lots of money so they can have the gadgets and clothes and everyone else in their school have, etc... And what does this game of keeping with the Joneses give you? Some networking and good connections, so that maybe you have an influence where your children will go to university and grow up to be as neurotic and anxious as everyone else? It doesn't have to be this way. This "prevailing standard" is sick to the core. It is fueled by consumerism, it benefits only the status quo and sucks the soul out of everyone. I'd never argue against looking for ways to give the best education possible to your child. But education is not something that you buy, and that the more expensive the better. The best thing one could do would be to not have their kids living like this. Which doesn't mean that getting out of the city and moving to the suburbs is the solution. The millennials are without a doubt among the richest, most educated and with the whole world at their fingertips. They could take all this power and do some actual change, break away from this broken system. Yet it seems that the more they want to prove they can be better than their parents' generation, the more they commit the same mistakes.

by hx87 10y ago

rglullis 10y ago

> if we prioritize being financially secure over having kids early, that /is/ a priority, and criticize that priority all you want, but it is a consciously made and valid choice. Not quite. It would be a priority if people said "I prefer financial stability for myself over a family", and it would be perfectly acceptable. What I do not get is the amount of people (especially women) who say they want a family, but that there are other things they need to have "first", or that "they are not yet ready" and so on. It is not "financially secure/healthy kids later" vs "financial uncertainty/healthy kids earlier". It is more "slight less uncertain financial/uncertain kids and family later" vs "financial uncertainty/certain kids and family earlier". To ignore biology is the part that I don't get. It seems that these people are playing poker with their fertile years and justifying it as an "investment". > the poor often lack resources to raise children to prevailing standards. Which prevailing standards? If you are surrounded by people living in big coastal cities from the USA, then you'd probably be expected to be providing things such as having your kids going to expensive private kindergarten schools, extra-curricular activities, pay for all the doctors for all the treatments and special care required due to having a late pregnancy, spending lots of money so they can have the gadgets and clothes and everyone else in their school have, etc... And what does this game of keeping with the Joneses give you? Some networking and good connections, so that maybe you have an influence where your children will go to university and grow up to be as neurotic and anxious as everyone else? It doesn't have to be this way. This "prevailing standard" is sick to the core. It is fueled by consumerism, it benefits only the status quo and sucks the soul out of everyone. I'd never argue against looking for ways to give the best education possible to your child. But education is not something that you buy, and that the more expensive the better. The best thing one could do would be to not have their kids living like this. Which doesn't mean that getting out of the city and moving to the suburbs is the solution. The millennials are without a doubt among the richest, most educated and with the whole world at their fingertips. They could take all this power and do some actual change, break away from this broken system. Yet it seems that the more they want to prove they can be better than their parents' generation, the more they commit the same mistakes.