15 ms·

I wrote off the notion of ever having kids in my early 20s in large part because of how expensive it is (and thus what it would mean for my lifestyle.) The fun

by kbos87 3y ago

I wrote off the notion of ever having kids in my early 20s in large part because of how expensive it is (and thus what it would mean for my lifestyle.) The funny thing is that thanks to a somewhat successful career in tech, I could afford them more than the average family in my area can. But that doesn’t matter - I’ve conditioned myself to not want them, and I don’t regret not having them one tiny bit.

Aurornis 3y ago
Your story is probably very common. The social media narrative (Reddit, Twitter, HN, etc) around children is hilariously detached from reality at times. It’s bizarre as a parent to read 20-something childless people speak so confidently about what it’s like to have children. I participated in a mentoring program where I worked with younger people entering tech careers. It was mind blowing to hear them talk about children as being impossibly expensive while we had just discussed negotiation of their six-figure offer letter a few days prior. It’s like the reality of having kids got distorted and twisted and exaggerated so much on sites like Reddit that they all lost touch with reality and instead cemented the idea that kids were impossible for them. If you’ve “conditioned yourself to not want them” then that’s a really weird place to be. That implies that you did maybe want them at some point and overrode that via “conditioning” based on facts that turned out to be untrue (that you couldn’t afford them). If I was in your shoes, I’d be taking a long, hard look at what other life assumptions you’ve been “conditioned” out of from exposure to false narratives and internet exaggerations. Maybe kids are not for you, but I’ve seen enough very happy parents into even their 40s who started out thinking they never wanted kids until they finally re-evaluated how they arrived at that conclusion and realized it was the result of bad inputs. If you know the key inputs were false, maybe re-run that whole decision process again with a clean slate and some accurate facts. You might be surprised.
- pyuser583 3y ago
  I see this a lot too. There’s a huge misconception on what having kids is like. Lots of tech folks live in low fertility areas where nobody has kids. So strange ideas just persist.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  I'm not the person you replied to, but I'm now in my mid-30s and I too have written off having children for a number of reasons: * Having and raising children is expensive (both financially and otherwise) regardless any factor(s). Any parent will corroborate this. * I do not find life worth foisting upon a new individual; life is nothing but challenges and hardships. I refuse to throw a newborn life into this hellscape. * Related to the above, I refuse to make my children be witnesses to my inevitable death. I am in that phase of life where I must deal with the eventual passing of my parents, and that is fucking hell. I do not wish this experience upon anyone, and to that end I refuse to have children because to do so means I wish this hellish experience upon them. * Children as a concept is hypocritical: On the one hand I am responsible for their well-being and that implies I can and will and should have a say in their life; on the other hand they are independent individuals whom I cannot violate, and I refuse to impose my will upon them anyway because that is not my place. * I find the entire notion of a family far too bothersome for my life. I do not need nor want a spouse whom I won't ever understand anyway and whom I will grow to resent. I do not need nor want children whom I won't ever understand anyway and whom will grow to resent me. I do not need nor want familial relations which will all be concentrated bullshit. I do not need nor want any of that noise in my life, I desire peace and tranquility.
  - gls2ro 3y ago
    > I am in that phase of life where I must deal with the eventual passing of my parents, and that is fucking hell The life has a way to handle this: children. Not saying you should but just saying that having children makes passing of the parents a bit less hellish. Will not make it easy but children forces us to be in the present and in the local now and contemplate less about about the extended family or past. Just to clarify: it will be extremely immoral and unethical to have children just to alleviate this. And damaging in so many ways. I am just presenting a side effect here.
  - tomp 3y ago
    > Having and raising children is expensive (both financially and otherwise) regardless any factor(s). Any parent will corroborate this. I’m a parent, I disagree. I might have thought in my 20s that having kids is expensive, but in my 30s I make so much money that is not an issue. Buying a house, that is expensive :) > I do not find life worth foisting upon a new individual; life is nothing but challenges and hardships. I refuse to throw a newborn life into this hellscape. Have you spoken to a therapist recently? You might be depressed. From my point of view, life is beautiful and challenges make it interesting.
- AequitasOmnibus 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - y7 3y ago
    You don't think that having children is a selfish decision in itself? I have thought long and hard about whether I want kids or not, and ultimately I concluded that I should only have kids if I myself really wanted to raise kids (regardless of say, whether my partner wanted to have kids). Kids do not ask to be born, and life is not a guaranteed net positive.
  - mackrevinack 3y ago
    a lot of people say things like "ive always wanted kids". seems kind of selfish as well. just pick any of the cliche things, passing on your genes etc, its all selfish in a way
  - parineum 3y ago
    I don't think there's any real mystery on the increase in selfishness, though I think that's the negative perspective of it. Individualism has been the cultural focus of education and child rearing for a long time. Having children changes who you are and can stand in the way of achieving your personal or professional goals. I'm not sure it's a bad thing but it's easy to see how that could lead to less people wanting to be parents, especially women who've had a much more dramatic cultural shift in the last several decades.
  - satvikpendem 3y ago
    Personally, I've never understood the selfishness argument, especially by parents, as 1) Isn't it more selfish to create a literal new entity of life just for your own whims? and 2) What is wrong with selfishness, especially in light of their own selfishness in 1? This is not even to mention that many parents simply do not care for their children well, as parental child abuse cases as well as the number of potential adoptees in the world is non-trivial. Now that is truly a cruelly selfish act more than any amount of not having kids can be, to bring a conscious entity into the world and then to let it suffer.
  - wiseowise 3y ago
- camillomiller 3y ago
  So, one is conditioned to “not have kid”, but having them is perfectly natural and there is absolutely no conditioning in wanting them? When my partner in a childless relationship gets asked “but why?” when she says she doesn’t want children, her answer is this: “would you have asked the same question, had I said I want them?”
  - bigyikes 3y ago
    No, they would not have asked that question, because literally 100% of their ancestors for millions of generations had children (or otherwise reproduced). That’s the default option.
    - camillomiller 3y ago
      Which reinforces my point. Reddit, an irrelevant blip in history is a stronger conditioning than millennia of “default option”?
      - chr1 3y ago
        The default option worked not by conscious thought but by desire for sex. Now we have found a way to decouple that from procreation, so people have to actually think, and they often end up choosing a path that leads to dead end.
    - wiseowise 3y ago
      For millions of generations there were millions of generations that came to another conclusion and didn’t procreate. And also your assumption that all those millions of generations that you’ve mentioned procreated willingly is false.
      - RestlessMind 3y ago
        > ...that came to another conclusion and didn’t procreate and then they didn't survive for the next generation. If that is okay with a society, nature will simply replace that society with another one.
- abenga 3y ago
  Having children is a horrible deal for women though. Given the effect on their careers, health, and social life, I can understand why fewer would willingly choose to have them. This explains why whenever civil protection and economic freedom gives them any semblance of a choice, the number of children they get goes way down.
  - sambazi 3y ago
    no problem, immigration's gonna fix it
  - hzay 3y ago
    Women who've had kids live longer & have fewer diseases btw. Breastfeeding reduces risk of breast cancer. It's not such a bad deal actually.
  - Penyngton 3y ago
    > Having children is a horrible deal for women though Women in every rich country have fewer children than they desire: https://medium.com/migration-issues/how-big-is-the-fertility-gap-in-america-fd205e9d1a35 https://medium.com/migration-issues/how-big-is-the-fertility...
    - 8note 3y ago
      This is evidence in support of it being a bad deal. If it was a good deal, women would have more children than they want because the economics were right
      - Penyngton 3y ago
        Yes and no. Maybe I should have quoted the following part of the parent's comment: > whenever civil protection and economic freedom gives them any semblance of a choice, the number of children they get goes way down. Which is clearly falsified by the link I posted. I certainly agree with you that the economics of raising children is not right in western countries, but this still doesn't deter women from wanting more children than they're having, so I don't think it's at all fair to say that fewer are willingly choosing to have them.
- kbos87 3y ago
  Your point about questioning our own assumptions (especially those we may have made early in life) is very fair and reasonable advice. The way I look at it though, the desire to have children comes from societal and self conditioning too. For the majority of people, building a nuclear family is what they see all around them, and few ever really question whether or not their desire comes from the fact that it seems like the default and it would be too hard to go against the grain. I don’t have the drive to have children. Maybe I would have if I saw it as more of a possibility earlier on in life, but I think we underestimate how much of that drive actually originates from outside forces for many people.
  - jraby3 3y ago
    I never wanted kids and then in my late 30s (currently 51M) I really started feeling deeply that something was missing in my life. I had close friends, made good money, had a lot of freedom, and yet still suddenly felt a deep desire and almost a loneliness without them. My father had me when he was 50 so I didn’t feel like I was too old. Ended up having 3 and wouldn’t trade them for anything. For all the hardship there is such an overwhelming joy that also comes with children that I’ve never found anywhere else.
    - RestlessMind 3y ago
      Agreed. I wasn't sure if having kids was a right decision given all other entertainment we could have had and hobbies I could have continued to pursue. My partner was absolutely sure about having kids. Looking back now, kids are the best thing to have happened to me without any doubt.
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    These outside forces have been explored: https://iep.utm.edu/girard/ https://iep.utm.edu/girard/
- BeFlatXIII 3y ago
  How much of "conditioned not to want them" is from overly effective anti-teen pregnancy campaigns? Scare the kids straight that children are a one-way trip to the poorhouse so they keep it in their pants at prom. A decade later, some of them who easily could afford a family choose not to raise one because the lesson stuck.
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    It’s incredibly effective. People leave that thinking most children cry non stop at completely random intervals, as if our millennia of evolution hasn’t informed us how to do this simple task.
gls2ro 3y ago
I think in general we should try to re-assess decision taken early in life. Some of them work some not. I say this from a personal perspective where it took me years to undo some decisions I took early and they were so hard established that it was a long process to unlearn/undo them. I quite like the idea that when it is about vision or meaning of life we should carefully make the learning or setting in stone kind of process harder. I think when young we are very biased to see the world in some way as we are biased to see it in some other way at 50. Not trying to convince you to revisit specifically the decision about children. Just sharing my own learning
RestlessMind 3y ago
> I’ve conditioned myself to not want them A lot of young people have done exactly that because a childless lifestyle seems much more appealing. Particularly for women who have to sacrifice their careers as well.

by kbos87 3y ago

Aurornis 3y ago

Your story is probably very common. The social media narrative (Reddit, Twitter, HN, etc) around children is hilariously detached from reality at times. It’s bizarre as a parent to read 20-something childless people speak so confidently about what it’s like to have children. I participated in a mentoring program where I worked with younger people entering tech careers. It was mind blowing to hear them talk about children as being impossibly expensive while we had just discussed negotiation of their six-figure offer letter a few days prior. It’s like the reality of having kids got distorted and twisted and exaggerated so much on sites like Reddit that they all lost touch with reality and instead cemented the idea that kids were impossible for them. If you’ve “conditioned yourself to not want them” then that’s a really weird place to be. That implies that you did maybe want them at some point and overrode that via “conditioning” based on facts that turned out to be untrue (that you couldn’t afford them). If I was in your shoes, I’d be taking a long, hard look at what other life assumptions you’ve been “conditioned” out of from exposure to false narratives and internet exaggerations. Maybe kids are not for you, but I’ve seen enough very happy parents into even their 40s who started out thinking they never wanted kids until they finally re-evaluated how they arrived at that conclusion and realized it was the result of bad inputs. If you know the key inputs were false, maybe re-run that whole decision process again with a clean slate and some accurate facts. You might be surprised.

pyuser583 3y ago
I see this a lot too. There’s a huge misconception on what having kids is like. Lots of tech folks live in low fertility areas where nobody has kids. So strange ideas just persist.
Dalewyn 3y ago
I'm not the person you replied to, but I'm now in my mid-30s and I too have written off having children for a number of reasons: * Having and raising children is expensive (both financially and otherwise) regardless any factor(s). Any parent will corroborate this. * I do not find life worth foisting upon a new individual; life is nothing but challenges and hardships. I refuse to throw a newborn life into this hellscape. * Related to the above, I refuse to make my children be witnesses to my inevitable death. I am in that phase of life where I must deal with the eventual passing of my parents, and that is fucking hell. I do not wish this experience upon anyone, and to that end I refuse to have children because to do so means I wish this hellish experience upon them. * Children as a concept is hypocritical: On the one hand I am responsible for their well-being and that implies I can and will and should have a say in their life; on the other hand they are independent individuals whom I cannot violate, and I refuse to impose my will upon them anyway because that is not my place. * I find the entire notion of a family far too bothersome for my life. I do not need nor want a spouse whom I won't ever understand anyway and whom I will grow to resent. I do not need nor want children whom I won't ever understand anyway and whom will grow to resent me. I do not need nor want familial relations which will all be concentrated bullshit. I do not need nor want any of that noise in my life, I desire peace and tranquility.
- gls2ro 3y ago
  > I am in that phase of life where I must deal with the eventual passing of my parents, and that is fucking hell The life has a way to handle this: children. Not saying you should but just saying that having children makes passing of the parents a bit less hellish. Will not make it easy but children forces us to be in the present and in the local now and contemplate less about about the extended family or past. Just to clarify: it will be extremely immoral and unethical to have children just to alleviate this. And damaging in so many ways. I am just presenting a side effect here.
- tomp 3y ago
  > Having and raising children is expensive (both financially and otherwise) regardless any factor(s). Any parent will corroborate this. I’m a parent, I disagree. I might have thought in my 20s that having kids is expensive, but in my 30s I make so much money that is not an issue. Buying a house, that is expensive :) > I do not find life worth foisting upon a new individual; life is nothing but challenges and hardships. I refuse to throw a newborn life into this hellscape. Have you spoken to a therapist recently? You might be depressed. From my point of view, life is beautiful and challenges make it interesting.
AequitasOmnibus 3y ago
[flagged]
- y7 3y ago
  You don't think that having children is a selfish decision in itself? I have thought long and hard about whether I want kids or not, and ultimately I concluded that I should only have kids if I myself really wanted to raise kids (regardless of say, whether my partner wanted to have kids). Kids do not ask to be born, and life is not a guaranteed net positive.
- mackrevinack 3y ago
  a lot of people say things like "ive always wanted kids". seems kind of selfish as well. just pick any of the cliche things, passing on your genes etc, its all selfish in a way
- parineum 3y ago
  I don't think there's any real mystery on the increase in selfishness, though I think that's the negative perspective of it. Individualism has been the cultural focus of education and child rearing for a long time. Having children changes who you are and can stand in the way of achieving your personal or professional goals. I'm not sure it's a bad thing but it's easy to see how that could lead to less people wanting to be parents, especially women who've had a much more dramatic cultural shift in the last several decades.
- satvikpendem 3y ago
  Personally, I've never understood the selfishness argument, especially by parents, as 1) Isn't it more selfish to create a literal new entity of life just for your own whims? and 2) What is wrong with selfishness, especially in light of their own selfishness in 1? This is not even to mention that many parents simply do not care for their children well, as parental child abuse cases as well as the number of potential adoptees in the world is non-trivial. Now that is truly a cruelly selfish act more than any amount of not having kids can be, to bring a conscious entity into the world and then to let it suffer.
- wiseowise 3y ago
camillomiller 3y ago
So, one is conditioned to “not have kid”, but having them is perfectly natural and there is absolutely no conditioning in wanting them? When my partner in a childless relationship gets asked “but why?” when she says she doesn’t want children, her answer is this: “would you have asked the same question, had I said I want them?”
- bigyikes 3y ago
  No, they would not have asked that question, because literally 100% of their ancestors for millions of generations had children (or otherwise reproduced). That’s the default option.
  - camillomiller 3y ago
    Which reinforces my point. Reddit, an irrelevant blip in history is a stronger conditioning than millennia of “default option”?
    - chr1 3y ago
      The default option worked not by conscious thought but by desire for sex. Now we have found a way to decouple that from procreation, so people have to actually think, and they often end up choosing a path that leads to dead end.
  - wiseowise 3y ago
    For millions of generations there were millions of generations that came to another conclusion and didn’t procreate. And also your assumption that all those millions of generations that you’ve mentioned procreated willingly is false.
    - RestlessMind 3y ago
      > ...that came to another conclusion and didn’t procreate and then they didn't survive for the next generation. If that is okay with a society, nature will simply replace that society with another one.
abenga 3y ago
Having children is a horrible deal for women though. Given the effect on their careers, health, and social life, I can understand why fewer would willingly choose to have them. This explains why whenever civil protection and economic freedom gives them any semblance of a choice, the number of children they get goes way down.
- sambazi 3y ago
  no problem, immigration's gonna fix it
- hzay 3y ago
  Women who've had kids live longer & have fewer diseases btw. Breastfeeding reduces risk of breast cancer. It's not such a bad deal actually.
- Penyngton 3y ago
  > Having children is a horrible deal for women though Women in every rich country have fewer children than they desire: https://medium.com/migration-issues/how-big-is-the-fertility-gap-in-america-fd205e9d1a35 https://medium.com/migration-issues/how-big-is-the-fertility...
  - 8note 3y ago
    This is evidence in support of it being a bad deal. If it was a good deal, women would have more children than they want because the economics were right
    - Penyngton 3y ago
      Yes and no. Maybe I should have quoted the following part of the parent's comment: > whenever civil protection and economic freedom gives them any semblance of a choice, the number of children they get goes way down. Which is clearly falsified by the link I posted. I certainly agree with you that the economics of raising children is not right in western countries, but this still doesn't deter women from wanting more children than they're having, so I don't think it's at all fair to say that fewer are willingly choosing to have them.
kbos87 3y ago
Your point about questioning our own assumptions (especially those we may have made early in life) is very fair and reasonable advice. The way I look at it though, the desire to have children comes from societal and self conditioning too. For the majority of people, building a nuclear family is what they see all around them, and few ever really question whether or not their desire comes from the fact that it seems like the default and it would be too hard to go against the grain. I don’t have the drive to have children. Maybe I would have if I saw it as more of a possibility earlier on in life, but I think we underestimate how much of that drive actually originates from outside forces for many people.
- jraby3 3y ago
  I never wanted kids and then in my late 30s (currently 51M) I really started feeling deeply that something was missing in my life. I had close friends, made good money, had a lot of freedom, and yet still suddenly felt a deep desire and almost a loneliness without them. My father had me when he was 50 so I didn’t feel like I was too old. Ended up having 3 and wouldn’t trade them for anything. For all the hardship there is such an overwhelming joy that also comes with children that I’ve never found anywhere else.
  - RestlessMind 3y ago
    Agreed. I wasn't sure if having kids was a right decision given all other entertainment we could have had and hobbies I could have continued to pursue. My partner was absolutely sure about having kids. Looking back now, kids are the best thing to have happened to me without any doubt.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  These outside forces have been explored: https://iep.utm.edu/girard/ https://iep.utm.edu/girard/
BeFlatXIII 3y ago
How much of "conditioned not to want them" is from overly effective anti-teen pregnancy campaigns? Scare the kids straight that children are a one-way trip to the poorhouse so they keep it in their pants at prom. A decade later, some of them who easily could afford a family choose not to raise one because the lesson stuck.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  It’s incredibly effective. People leave that thinking most children cry non stop at completely random intervals, as if our millennia of evolution hasn’t informed us how to do this simple task.

gls2ro 3y ago

I think in general we should try to re-assess decision taken early in life. Some of them work some not. I say this from a personal perspective where it took me years to undo some decisions I took early and they were so hard established that it was a long process to unlearn/undo them. I quite like the idea that when it is about vision or meaning of life we should carefully make the learning or setting in stone kind of process harder. I think when young we are very biased to see the world in some way as we are biased to see it in some other way at 50. Not trying to convince you to revisit specifically the decision about children. Just sharing my own learning

RestlessMind 3y ago

> I’ve conditioned myself to not want them A lot of young people have done exactly that because a childless lifestyle seems much more appealing. Particularly for women who have to sacrifice their careers as well.