7 ms·

Knowing that you're at high risk of suicide or have other serious mental health problems is also a good reason to avoid having kids. This isn't directed at the

by jstx1 5y ago

Knowing that you're at high risk of suicide or have other serious mental health problems is also a good reason to avoid having kids. This isn't directed at the author of the article or their partner; it's how I think when I plan my own life.

micromacrofoot 5y ago
There are a lot of mental health issues that make this level of self-awareness and future planning incredibly difficult.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  Perhaps a good reason to keep elevating the socially approved age to reproduce? By the time you're in your 40s, you likely have a good idea of whether or not you're a stable enough mind to commit to the minimum 20 years required to uplift a new human adult.
  - selectodude 5y ago
    The body has a clock that's not really compatible with that.
  - saghm 5y ago
    I'd suggest looking up fertility rates for women based on age; it' quite difficult for a woman to get pregnant that late in life, and for some women it might not be possible at all.
    - pengaru 5y ago
      It's historically somewhat common for older, more established and financially secure men to pair up with young women. It does seem like a good practical/pragmatic approach to raising a family.
      - watwut 5y ago
        The 40 years old man marrying young girl were business transactions. The normal coupling differences were much smaller typically. (Like 6 years or something).
        throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        All marriages are/were to varying extents. I would go so far as to say that being able to "pencil out as a sensible business transaction" is a key element of most/all longstanding marriages. Being the 40yo guy marrying the 20yo girl is like being the 40yo guy daily driving a Ferrari. Sure there are some pretty big downsides in the practicality department but you're rich enough to paper that over (this sentence is specifically crafted to apply to both parties).
      - saghm 5y ago
        Women are still people who can have mental health issues; the solution of "just waiting until you're 40" isn't viable for 50% of the population.
        GDC7 5y ago
        Freezing eggs at 18-22 y/o should be the norm. Especially in rich areas such as LA and NYC. Gives women options. The earlier you freeze them the more you can get with a single procedure
        c22 5y ago
        My wife spent over $35k getting her eggs frozen when she was younger and we never even ended up using them (despite waiting till she was 38 to get pregnant). I guess having them around gave her some peace of mind, but that's a hefty price tag for someone in their early 20s, even in a "rich area" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    - anonporridge 5y ago
      That's a technical problem that will improve with time and has been actively improving for decades. It also won't be long before we have artificial wombs and can create embryos more expressively than the current 1 male 1 female demands of nature. I see a future where one waits even several hundred years and dozens of careers and lifestyles before choosing to combine their genes and memes with others to spawn and raise a new consciousness, maybe even committing to a hundred years to raise it.
  - muuglay 5y ago
    Not sure our biology is great at that, but paradoxically as an almost 40 year old... I have the resources to support a bunch of children. Maybe the change to make is change the dynamic between men and women to introduce more age differences for child rearing. My parents fought about money all the time, but if they had delayed then they would have been better off. If they were better off then maybe my mom wouldn't have killed herself...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - anonporridge 5y ago
      While I agree with you technically, there's something icky about a community full of older, wealthy men talking about how maybe it's actually ideal for older, wealthy men to wife up young, fertile women.
    - watwut 5y ago
      People on their 20 ties are more energetic and better handle sleep deprivation that comes with kids. Kids are not just costing money, they cost energy and effort.
      - kbelder 5y ago
        Yeah. In a lot of ways, the push to have kids at an older age is detrimental... although in a lot of ways it's not. It's a tradeoff. My earliest kid I had at 21; my latest, at 45. Sure, I have more money and emotional stability now. But I was also a lot more active back then, with the ability to deal with sleep deprivation when the kids were infants, and to handle playing tag after work for an hour. Plus... whatever emotional strength and resilience I have comes in large part from being a practicing father for 20+ years. If I had been childless this whole time, I'd have far less emotional growth. I'd recommend couples at least consider having kids as soon as they can (a) drag themselves out of poverty and (b) have enough time together that they have some confidence their relationship won't fall apart. Maybe (c) have some 3rd party backup.
  - crocodiletears 5y ago
    I would think that there'd be a threshold where the elevated risk of birth defects would place a ceiling on how old parents should be. 25-35 seems to be the ideal window, where the parents have had ample opportunity to get to know themselves as individuals, and the risks of a severe disability aren't particularly elevated. Afterwards, the risk seems to climb very quickly. https://www.med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2018/10/older-fathers-associated-with-increased-birth-risks.html https://www.med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2018/10/older-fat... https://www.ivf1.com/age-birth-defects/ https://www.ivf1.com/age-birth-defects/
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- Ozzie_osman 5y ago
  Also social pressure and expectations. How many people would feel comfortable saying "Sorry mom/dad/friend/potential partner, I'm not going to have kids because I'm worried I might not be a good parent or maybe even take my own life"?
  - hh3k0 5y ago
    You could simply state that you've lived with depression your entire life and that it's not something you'd wish for your offspring to inherit... or something along those lines. Just make sure to point out early that you're not interested in kids, you can bring up your motivation for that once you're comfortable enough to share it.
  - holdenk 5y ago
    My partner and I talked about our health (and mental health) in the context of deciding if we wanted to be parents to a kid. I like to think that's a normal enough conversation to have.
  - nonbirithm 5y ago
    It isn't just about pressure. I've told people things like this while not caring about the stigma and it has always negatively affected the relationship, because I'm perceived as acting too vulnerable too soon. As a result, none of my friendships have advanced past a superficial level. From my experience, it seems there is a good reason for the stigma. Depressed people with pessimistic worldviews don't make good friends. The worst time for me to make friends is when I need other people the most (such as when I'm depressed), but when I don't need people my interest in them becomes almost nil. Also, I highly empathize with the idea that when the fear of failure can be linked to the risk of one's life spiraling out of control potentially all the way to suicide, whether or not those consequences logically follow, it takes away a lot of options that might sound common-sense to someone of a healthy mind (aiming for challenging side projects, putting yourself in front of others). For such people, I believe shielding yourself from those signals is a valid option for survival, even if it means having to deceive yourself temporarily.
  - cyberpunk 5y ago
    No one is ever ready to become a parent. I mean, "we" (I assume we're all in relatively stable, high paying, high demand, low risk jobs) certainly are much better placed to be them than say, my parents were... But nothing prepares you for the abject horror of your entire way of life ending in such a dramatic way. I mean... It was worth it, I kinda like the wee guy.. But it's BRUTAL at the start. Doesn't help that all your mrs's intsa-friends are posting bollocks about how great everything is while you've been trying to get your newborn out for a walk for 5 hours and failed.. heh. Don't overthink that stuff though.. I mean, you kinda know deep down if you've got it in you or not. It's kinda like having a puppy times a million..
- decebalus1 5y ago
  Not even mental health. If this level of self-awareness/planning would be universal, we'd reach complete societal collapse within 3 generations.
  - jandrese 5y ago
    Isn't this just the start of Idiocracy?
skissane 5y ago
I have a long history of suicidal thoughts, and I’ve even acted on them a few times when I was younger (albeit half-heartedly-if I’d been really serious about it I wouldn’t be here now.) I don’t know if that makes me “at high risk of suicide” but likely people like me are at greater risk than people who don’t have that history. And yet, having kids has actually made it easier for me to resist those thoughts. They haven’t gone away completely, but I feel more confident that I’m not going to act on them, and their frequency and intensity has definitely declined as well. Maybe I could do that to my wife or family or friends, but I could not do that to my own children. I think that, if there is such a thing as hell-if I did that to them, I’d be going straight there. Having children has given me a new and very compelling reason to not kill myself. The best reason I’ve ever had. It also has given me a new motivation to try to keep a lid on my own “craziness”, which I think has helped my mental health as well. OTOH, it has also led to a lot of stress, and no doubt that stress has aggravated some of my mental health issues. Still, I think overall, the positive benefits of fatherhood on my own mental health have outweighed the negatives. The only situation I can foresee myself now actually going through with suicide, is if both our kids died (say in a car accident), or if I’m terminally ill and trying to hurry along the inevitable. Outside of those two scenarios, I’m definitely not doing it. I don’t think I could have been so firm about that before having children.
- cyberpunk 5y ago
  Yep. I'm with you. I was chaos and anarchy before becoming a parent. Now if I lost mine in such an accident say, I'd immediately do it. What would be the point of waiting? Not because they were the only thing stopping me, but because life without them, by now, is incomprehensible. To be honest though, I think suicide is probably the best way to go unless you die instantly. I mean, say I get diagnosed with some horrible cancer or other. My son is 3, he would only remember me as some kind of horrible pale monster in a hospital if I went with the treatments.. TBH, in such a situation, I'd probably just wait until I was so sick I was unable to function, somehow attempt to say goodbye, write a ridiculous amount of letters to him and head off to the local euthanasia clinic.. I'm sure I read somewhere a majority of doctors who get cancer don't accept chemo/etc.. But I have no links to back that up. Wow! Sunshine and rainbows.
DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
many people in that risk group aren't aware of these tendencies (now there are words for it we did not have 30 years ago: suicidal ideation) until their kids are ready to leave home. Plenty of us around with families not knowing how to make it, even we've felt healthy all along until some event (or cascading events) changed everything.
downut 5y ago
I have never been suicidal. I do know, having been through a months long Stage IV cancer watch, which provides a solid view of the terminal medical industrial complex experience, I'll efficiently terminate myself before embarking on that way to go. That said, I have never understood why people think that having kids has no effect on your mental health. When we had our child, I thought nothing of it; I was in a partnership and that's what the partner wanted. However, after the year or so larval stage, we began to realize that the experience of having a kid, steadily growing, seeing the world through changing eyes, different from your own: it made us different people. I wouldn't have missed the experience for the world, even if the terrible twos do happen and the teen years can be a trial. It gave us a sense of purpose within our own lives. The very opposite of a screen or a job or a bucket list! We're very different people from the weird/sad, entering their 60s childless couples we know, every single one. I'll be kind and say they seem mostly ruled by a flat emotional narcissism that's... pretty damn boring. I won't say that that never happens to empty nesters; it does. But the childless couples all seem a bit off. I wouldn't have a kid with the idea that it would solve any mental health problems I might have, just as having a kid seems to never solve any couple's relationship problems. I just point out that your mental health is going to change with a kid, and I'd not rule out for the better. Even with those caveats, we've watched a lot of children survive divorce, some ugly. Many of those kids turned out superlatively, and for quite a few the divorce seemed to be a kind of positive stimulus. Not recommending divorce! Same with the death of a parent. Children can be incredibly resilient. It's not always about you, is the lesson. A child has a world that is bigger than the parents.
cardosof 5y ago
I believe the opposite: with more responsibilities life is more meaningful and therefore less prone to suicidal ideation. Not saying that having children is the cure for severe depression, though - just saying that if you had thought about suicide in the past but are OK today, you shouldn't discard having kids because of that past, kids may even help keeping those things at bay.
numair 5y ago
There are so many things that could be said about correlation, causation, million-year-old biological and evolutionary design for the changes that happen to people when they have kids, and so on... But all I will say is that I think you’ve just given people a bunch of lousy advice without prefacing it with the disclaimer of “I am of the personal belief...”
- staticautomatic 5y ago
  I feel like “I am of the personal belief…” goes without saying on the internet.
mercy_dude 5y ago
I disagree. For me and many people I know, a large part of my “unhappiness” was from obsession with work and work politics and other similar nuisances which led to sometimes unhealthy lifestyle and lack of meaning in life. A kid certainly changed that for me and there is nothing more important in my (and partners) life than spending time with them and making sure I bring the best in myself for the sake of them. In fact a lot of thoughts of self harm I used to have, I think of them largely my responsibility to keep them at bay and gradually they have become foreign to me once I realize it is my duty to keep myself in best shape for the sake of my child. My only regret is delaying having a kid and family. That said my well paid tech job definitely made it possible not to have to worry about food plans shelter and other basic needs for my child, something that not everyone is privileged to have.
timwaagh 5y ago
I do feel bad for you if you otherwise would have wanted them. I can't really argue with the idea that having a parent go out that way is going to be good for kids but I guess I don't know how bad and perhaps nobody does. At any rate you can never be sure whether you are at risk. The best we have are rather broad statistical estimates, which isn't the same as risk itself. I wouldn't really put too much faith in such population level phenomena when it comes to individuals though. You might want to carefully evaluate that.

by jstx1 5y ago

micromacrofoot 5y ago

There are a lot of mental health issues that make this level of self-awareness and future planning incredibly difficult.

anonporridge 5y ago
Perhaps a good reason to keep elevating the socially approved age to reproduce? By the time you're in your 40s, you likely have a good idea of whether or not you're a stable enough mind to commit to the minimum 20 years required to uplift a new human adult.
- selectodude 5y ago
  The body has a clock that's not really compatible with that.
- saghm 5y ago
  I'd suggest looking up fertility rates for women based on age; it' quite difficult for a woman to get pregnant that late in life, and for some women it might not be possible at all.
  - pengaru 5y ago
    It's historically somewhat common for older, more established and financially secure men to pair up with young women. It does seem like a good practical/pragmatic approach to raising a family.
    - watwut 5y ago
      The 40 years old man marrying young girl were business transactions. The normal coupling differences were much smaller typically. (Like 6 years or something).
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        All marriages are/were to varying extents. I would go so far as to say that being able to "pencil out as a sensible business transaction" is a key element of most/all longstanding marriages. Being the 40yo guy marrying the 20yo girl is like being the 40yo guy daily driving a Ferrari. Sure there are some pretty big downsides in the practicality department but you're rich enough to paper that over (this sentence is specifically crafted to apply to both parties).
    - saghm 5y ago
      Women are still people who can have mental health issues; the solution of "just waiting until you're 40" isn't viable for 50% of the population.
      - GDC7 5y ago
        Freezing eggs at 18-22 y/o should be the norm. Especially in rich areas such as LA and NYC. Gives women options. The earlier you freeze them the more you can get with a single procedure
        c22 5y ago
        My wife spent over $35k getting her eggs frozen when she was younger and we never even ended up using them (despite waiting till she was 38 to get pregnant). I guess having them around gave her some peace of mind, but that's a hefty price tag for someone in their early 20s, even in a "rich area" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - anonporridge 5y ago
    That's a technical problem that will improve with time and has been actively improving for decades. It also won't be long before we have artificial wombs and can create embryos more expressively than the current 1 male 1 female demands of nature. I see a future where one waits even several hundred years and dozens of careers and lifestyles before choosing to combine their genes and memes with others to spawn and raise a new consciousness, maybe even committing to a hundred years to raise it.
- muuglay 5y ago
  Not sure our biology is great at that, but paradoxically as an almost 40 year old... I have the resources to support a bunch of children. Maybe the change to make is change the dynamic between men and women to introduce more age differences for child rearing. My parents fought about money all the time, but if they had delayed then they would have been better off. If they were better off then maybe my mom wouldn't have killed herself...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - anonporridge 5y ago
    While I agree with you technically, there's something icky about a community full of older, wealthy men talking about how maybe it's actually ideal for older, wealthy men to wife up young, fertile women.
  - watwut 5y ago
    People on their 20 ties are more energetic and better handle sleep deprivation that comes with kids. Kids are not just costing money, they cost energy and effort.
    - kbelder 5y ago
      Yeah. In a lot of ways, the push to have kids at an older age is detrimental... although in a lot of ways it's not. It's a tradeoff. My earliest kid I had at 21; my latest, at 45. Sure, I have more money and emotional stability now. But I was also a lot more active back then, with the ability to deal with sleep deprivation when the kids were infants, and to handle playing tag after work for an hour. Plus... whatever emotional strength and resilience I have comes in large part from being a practicing father for 20+ years. If I had been childless this whole time, I'd have far less emotional growth. I'd recommend couples at least consider having kids as soon as they can (a) drag themselves out of poverty and (b) have enough time together that they have some confidence their relationship won't fall apart. Maybe (c) have some 3rd party backup.
- crocodiletears 5y ago
  I would think that there'd be a threshold where the elevated risk of birth defects would place a ceiling on how old parents should be. 25-35 seems to be the ideal window, where the parents have had ample opportunity to get to know themselves as individuals, and the risks of a severe disability aren't particularly elevated. Afterwards, the risk seems to climb very quickly. https://www.med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2018/10/older-fathers-associated-with-increased-birth-risks.html https://www.med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2018/10/older-fat... https://www.ivf1.com/age-birth-defects/ https://www.ivf1.com/age-birth-defects/
- deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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Ozzie_osman 5y ago
Also social pressure and expectations. How many people would feel comfortable saying "Sorry mom/dad/friend/potential partner, I'm not going to have kids because I'm worried I might not be a good parent or maybe even take my own life"?
- hh3k0 5y ago
  You could simply state that you've lived with depression your entire life and that it's not something you'd wish for your offspring to inherit... or something along those lines. Just make sure to point out early that you're not interested in kids, you can bring up your motivation for that once you're comfortable enough to share it.
- holdenk 5y ago
  My partner and I talked about our health (and mental health) in the context of deciding if we wanted to be parents to a kid. I like to think that's a normal enough conversation to have.
- nonbirithm 5y ago
  It isn't just about pressure. I've told people things like this while not caring about the stigma and it has always negatively affected the relationship, because I'm perceived as acting too vulnerable too soon. As a result, none of my friendships have advanced past a superficial level. From my experience, it seems there is a good reason for the stigma. Depressed people with pessimistic worldviews don't make good friends. The worst time for me to make friends is when I need other people the most (such as when I'm depressed), but when I don't need people my interest in them becomes almost nil. Also, I highly empathize with the idea that when the fear of failure can be linked to the risk of one's life spiraling out of control potentially all the way to suicide, whether or not those consequences logically follow, it takes away a lot of options that might sound common-sense to someone of a healthy mind (aiming for challenging side projects, putting yourself in front of others). For such people, I believe shielding yourself from those signals is a valid option for survival, even if it means having to deceive yourself temporarily.
- cyberpunk 5y ago
  No one is ever ready to become a parent. I mean, "we" (I assume we're all in relatively stable, high paying, high demand, low risk jobs) certainly are much better placed to be them than say, my parents were... But nothing prepares you for the abject horror of your entire way of life ending in such a dramatic way. I mean... It was worth it, I kinda like the wee guy.. But it's BRUTAL at the start. Doesn't help that all your mrs's intsa-friends are posting bollocks about how great everything is while you've been trying to get your newborn out for a walk for 5 hours and failed.. heh. Don't overthink that stuff though.. I mean, you kinda know deep down if you've got it in you or not. It's kinda like having a puppy times a million..
decebalus1 5y ago
Not even mental health. If this level of self-awareness/planning would be universal, we'd reach complete societal collapse within 3 generations.
- jandrese 5y ago
  Isn't this just the start of Idiocracy?

skissane 5y ago

I have a long history of suicidal thoughts, and I’ve even acted on them a few times when I was younger (albeit half-heartedly-if I’d been really serious about it I wouldn’t be here now.) I don’t know if that makes me “at high risk of suicide” but likely people like me are at greater risk than people who don’t have that history. And yet, having kids has actually made it easier for me to resist those thoughts. They haven’t gone away completely, but I feel more confident that I’m not going to act on them, and their frequency and intensity has definitely declined as well. Maybe I could do that to my wife or family or friends, but I could not do that to my own children. I think that, if there is such a thing as hell-if I did that to them, I’d be going straight there. Having children has given me a new and very compelling reason to not kill myself. The best reason I’ve ever had. It also has given me a new motivation to try to keep a lid on my own “craziness”, which I think has helped my mental health as well. OTOH, it has also led to a lot of stress, and no doubt that stress has aggravated some of my mental health issues. Still, I think overall, the positive benefits of fatherhood on my own mental health have outweighed the negatives. The only situation I can foresee myself now actually going through with suicide, is if both our kids died (say in a car accident), or if I’m terminally ill and trying to hurry along the inevitable. Outside of those two scenarios, I’m definitely not doing it. I don’t think I could have been so firm about that before having children.

cyberpunk 5y ago
Yep. I'm with you. I was chaos and anarchy before becoming a parent. Now if I lost mine in such an accident say, I'd immediately do it. What would be the point of waiting? Not because they were the only thing stopping me, but because life without them, by now, is incomprehensible. To be honest though, I think suicide is probably the best way to go unless you die instantly. I mean, say I get diagnosed with some horrible cancer or other. My son is 3, he would only remember me as some kind of horrible pale monster in a hospital if I went with the treatments.. TBH, in such a situation, I'd probably just wait until I was so sick I was unable to function, somehow attempt to say goodbye, write a ridiculous amount of letters to him and head off to the local euthanasia clinic.. I'm sure I read somewhere a majority of doctors who get cancer don't accept chemo/etc.. But I have no links to back that up. Wow! Sunshine and rainbows.

DyslexicAtheist 5y ago

many people in that risk group aren't aware of these tendencies (now there are words for it we did not have 30 years ago: suicidal ideation) until their kids are ready to leave home. Plenty of us around with families not knowing how to make it, even we've felt healthy all along until some event (or cascading events) changed everything.

downut 5y ago

I have never been suicidal. I do know, having been through a months long Stage IV cancer watch, which provides a solid view of the terminal medical industrial complex experience, I'll efficiently terminate myself before embarking on that way to go. That said, I have never understood why people think that having kids has no effect on your mental health. When we had our child, I thought nothing of it; I was in a partnership and that's what the partner wanted. However, after the year or so larval stage, we began to realize that the experience of having a kid, steadily growing, seeing the world through changing eyes, different from your own: it made us different people. I wouldn't have missed the experience for the world, even if the terrible twos do happen and the teen years can be a trial. It gave us a sense of purpose within our own lives. The very opposite of a screen or a job or a bucket list! We're very different people from the weird/sad, entering their 60s childless couples we know, every single one. I'll be kind and say they seem mostly ruled by a flat emotional narcissism that's... pretty damn boring. I won't say that that never happens to empty nesters; it does. But the childless couples all seem a bit off. I wouldn't have a kid with the idea that it would solve any mental health problems I might have, just as having a kid seems to never solve any couple's relationship problems. I just point out that your mental health is going to change with a kid, and I'd not rule out for the better. Even with those caveats, we've watched a lot of children survive divorce, some ugly. Many of those kids turned out superlatively, and for quite a few the divorce seemed to be a kind of positive stimulus. Not recommending divorce! Same with the death of a parent. Children can be incredibly resilient. It's not always about you, is the lesson. A child has a world that is bigger than the parents.

cardosof 5y ago

I believe the opposite: with more responsibilities life is more meaningful and therefore less prone to suicidal ideation. Not saying that having children is the cure for severe depression, though - just saying that if you had thought about suicide in the past but are OK today, you shouldn't discard having kids because of that past, kids may even help keeping those things at bay.

numair 5y ago

There are so many things that could be said about correlation, causation, million-year-old biological and evolutionary design for the changes that happen to people when they have kids, and so on... But all I will say is that I think you’ve just given people a bunch of lousy advice without prefacing it with the disclaimer of “I am of the personal belief...”

staticautomatic 5y ago
I feel like “I am of the personal belief…” goes without saying on the internet.

mercy_dude 5y ago

I disagree. For me and many people I know, a large part of my “unhappiness” was from obsession with work and work politics and other similar nuisances which led to sometimes unhealthy lifestyle and lack of meaning in life. A kid certainly changed that for me and there is nothing more important in my (and partners) life than spending time with them and making sure I bring the best in myself for the sake of them. In fact a lot of thoughts of self harm I used to have, I think of them largely my responsibility to keep them at bay and gradually they have become foreign to me once I realize it is my duty to keep myself in best shape for the sake of my child. My only regret is delaying having a kid and family. That said my well paid tech job definitely made it possible not to have to worry about food plans shelter and other basic needs for my child, something that not everyone is privileged to have.

timwaagh 5y ago

I do feel bad for you if you otherwise would have wanted them. I can't really argue with the idea that having a parent go out that way is going to be good for kids but I guess I don't know how bad and perhaps nobody does. At any rate you can never be sure whether you are at risk. The best we have are rather broad statistical estimates, which isn't the same as risk itself. I wouldn't really put too much faith in such population level phenomena when it comes to individuals though. You might want to carefully evaluate that.