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I'm in my early 40s, I can't really think of anything, maybe because it's too close to realize what mistakes I might have made, and I don't really believe in th

• surfmike 5y ago
  +1 to not postponing having kids. Obviously, people should not do it if they're not ready. But people think they need to have everything figured out (degree, career, house) first. You don't. And the younger you have kids, the longer you'll be around to spend time with them (or grandkids), and the less chance you'll have fertility issues.
  • throwaway19423 5y ago
    +1 Had kids in late 30s, and now have young kids in my 40s. It is hard physically, mentally, career-wise and other dimensions. Only financially, I'd say I'm less worried than if I was in my early 20s. But my financial security was probably strong right after grad school (world was my oyster!)
    • agent008t 5y ago
      Having children is hard. Why do you think it would've been easier physically, mentally, career-wise when you are a lot less established and more stressed in the early 20s? Isn't the conclusion here "Young children will make your life worse, do not have them"?
      • SecurityLagoon 5y ago
        Depends what field you are in but generally later in your career you have more responsibility and requirement to spend more mental energy on work that you could have otherwise put towards looking after a kid. If you are only expected to show up for your 7.5 hours and wack out a handful of lines of code a day you have way more mental and time capacity for family.
  • deleted 5y ago
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• ALittleLight 5y ago
  Getting older has opened my eyes to the benefits of having kids young. For one thing, I had more energy and was more resilient to loss of sleep when I was younger. That would've been nice to pair with kids. My mother had me at 30. My wife's mother had her in her late teens. There's a big difference in energy there too. My wife's mother has more time, and energy, with our kids. I have friends who had kids in college and a friend who had kids in high school. It seemed like a mistake back then - they could never come hang out and had to leave early cause they were dealing with kids or a wife or whatever. I'm not so sure they made a mistake now. I would guess that late twenties are the ideal time to have kids. Early twenties you wrap up your education and start your career, thirties and forties get the kids out the door, fifties settle your retirement, sixties and on enjoy your extended family and retirement. That's how I'd plan it if I were going again.
  • randomdata 5y ago
    > I would guess that late twenties are the ideal time to have kids. In hindsight, I'm thinking teenage years. For all practical purposes your days are wasted anyway, so you may as well waste it enjoying your kids. They'll be much more independent by the time you're deemed old enough to begin participating in society. You are also more likely to have a larger community of people in the household at that age to help raise the children.
    • ALittleLight 5y ago
      I think it wouldn't be terrible to have kids as a teen - provided you have a supportive family and partner. Of course, I've never tried it for myself, but that's my general sense. If my children have kids young I won't be distraught and will provide as much help as possible - expecting it to be quite a lot for the first 5-10 years.
      • randomdata 5y ago
        I imagine that dealing with the feelings of failing society, which has taught us that having children is the worst thing you can do in your life, would be the hardest part. It was still hard to deal with that sentiment when I had my children in my late 30s, even though by that time I had enough life experience to realize that it silly to worry about what other people think. The mind is an interesting thing.
• Wonnk13 5y ago
  welp i'm 33 and single and this hits home so hard. My younger brother is 30 with two under two and he looks like hell most days. I can't imagine 3 hours sleep a night when i'm mid to late 30s. christ.
  • Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
    The 3 hours of sleep is only in the first few months. I have an 11 months and a 3 years old and sleep 8 to 9 hours per night. The first week of the first kid, we slept 3 hours in total (that is, 3 hours in the whole week)
    • leoqa 5y ago
      Yeah it dramatically improves at 3-4 months. Then it’s the odd regression weeks but I get 10 hours of sleep now. The problem is I basically work, sleep and entertain/feed in an endless cycle until he’s old enough to go to daycare or we get a nanny. I hear two kids is pretty brutal until they’re both 3+ years old.
      • Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
        Two kids is hard at the start, but now that one is basically 1 year old, I realized my older one is doing all the work I was doing with her. That is, the favorite toy of the younger kid is the sibling, not the daddy. Spares the boring part (repetitive boring play), gives more time for instructive play. 3 years old is a full time thing, but there are things that are quite fun to do together. We play videogames, board games, or I just let her climb on me and enjoy that. Also going to the pool together is really nice and they get exhausted. Sometimes you TAKE your free time. Kids are bored and want to play with you, but you haven't had time for yourself in 5 days, you just take it, even if they want to play with you. They will get bored, but more often they will figure out something to play together. Overall, pretty happy, when they are both 3+ we can play a whole bunch of things together that I'm looking forward to! I can't tell how it would be with just one, but there are tradeoffs to both sides. We don't use much daycare, our 3 years old goes to school 4 days a week for 3 hours only (purpose was learning, not babysitting).
• acidbaseextract 5y ago
  I don't regret putting it off until my 40s because it let me find a person I want to have a family with Thank you for including this tidbit. I'm a man in my early 30s interested in having kids and recently discovered that I've poorly vetted my 5+ year SO's interest in having kids. Her "yeah, I'm hypothetically interested" has become "hard not interested". The requirement to break up with her if I want kids is deeply painful, but the real source of my dread is the feeling that I won't then be able to find someone good in time. I'm very glad you found someone good to have a family with.
  • ridiculous_leke 5y ago
    > I've poorly vetted my 5+ year SO's interest in having kids. Her "yeah, I'm hypothetically interested" has become "hard not interested". Can't this be a simple yes/no answer? I have never been a relationship. So pardon me if I am being ignorant.
  • temp234 5y ago
    This made me feel really sad. If you had to decide today, what are you gonna do? Did you know you wanted kids 5y ago?
  • MaxHoppersGhost 5y ago
    Break up with her now. There are plenty women your age of younger that know they are getting closer to the point of no return and are desperate to have kids. I’m similar age but my wife is 35 and lemme tell you what, she wants to have some dang kids now (and we’ll have one soon). And what do you mean by “in time”? Assuming you are 32/33 you have plenty of time to find another partner. When you’re 50 you will feel so silly for feeling old at 32/33. Just make sure the next partner is on the same page relatively early. It’s your life, not your partner’s, go live it how you want.
  • beckingz 5y ago
    I just left a relationship for this reason, and it is so deeply painful. I wish you the best. I think it is the right decision and that making it sooner rather than later is best, but it is not easy.
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• deathanatos 5y ago
  > if you are in a position where you could potentially start a family I'm in my 30s, and this seems to be the trickiest part that people older than me — sorry — seem to want to just pave over. House prices are bananas. Trump, COVID, Russia have erased years of investment gains. Student loans are a constant tax on my finances (that I'm almost free of… …soon…). Wage growth has been stagnant (my career has seen ~4.7% YoY gains, mostly me switching employers and trying to renegotiate higher; but I hear my father's career saw much faster progress, particularly in the earlier years…). Costs have not. (E.g., healthcare, and that's an incredible — and bad — incentive to marry.) I imagine we'll hit a "it's now or never" point, and just sort of morally abdicate the idea of being responsible adults and "#yolo we're parents now" it. I don't really see the world changing for the better, anytime soon.
  • slyall 5y ago
    I could change a few words in your main paragraph and match them to any time in the last 40 years. You seem to be hanging on for magic better times but at the same time not expecting things to get better. This doesn't seem to be a good strategy, especially in the case of having children where delaying a few years will very likely result in more difficulties.
  • leonroy 5y ago
    I feel this living in London and seeing my parents having achieved a measure of success at a younger age far greater than my own. But not every country has seen this level of affluence for the generation before ours and indeed not every race. Minorities in the US in particular might argue otherwise about whether the previous few decades were better than the current ones. Whenever I feel tempted to look at the past with rose tinted glasses I only have to look at infant mortality rates which were horrifically high in even affluent countries like the US: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6487507/figure/F2/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6487507/figure/... We are indeed in troubling times, but the Cold War wasn't so long ago and I recall a commentator speaking about how they'd read the newspaper each morning with a knot in their stomach, wondering if a nuclear mishap had occurred somewhere in the world.
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• shetill 5y ago
  surely how you feel and your mental age matters too other than your actual age. Some people (prob myself included) feel like 20 even though I'm 30