4 ms·

Life with kids has always been problematic.

lm28469 3y ago
Less so when you could afford a house, a car, 2 kids and a stay at home wife on a single salary. It was also much easier when people didn't move to foreign countries and/or far away cities for their jobs, losing their family network &c. I'm in my mid 20s, in tech and couldn't afford that at all, I could barely afford my gf being unemployed. I don't have a car and live in a small flat. If I can barely afford a comfortable but frugal lifestyle while being paid more than 60% of my peers I'm not too surprised most people literally can't afford kids
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  The irony is that when you can afford kids in your mid to late 30s, it becomes much harder medically to have them (assuming your partner is similar in age). Lots of people just wait until they are ready, and then find out the window has passed, it’s really frightening.
- seec 3y ago
  Yeah, I don't get how they don't see that but to be honest boomer culture is insanely omnipresent and they had it so good they must be thinking that it cannot be that bad. The reality is that if you are a couple both working an average job you won't have a whole lot of extra time depending on living situation (commute and access to transport) but on top of that you have very little extra cash that could be helpful to solve logistical pains kids make. All the people of my age that had kids now have unenviable lifestyles, it feels like they can have what the poor boomers had and not much more and nowadays the expectation is that it will last up to a quarter century because of how much we came to overvalue diplomas (even though they do not sort the good from the bad, at all...). Because of the insanely collectivist system around the world, it makes no difference to have kids or not for the end of your life, so it becomes more of a decision of accepting to be poorer for the privilège of reproduction. This pretty stupid all things considered, it seems like a feature to have parents dependent on their kids for the end of their life, this way they would have a lot more motivation to do the job right and those who would do a bad job would have it coming... In the end, collectivism has a way to always destroy the foundation it relies on, which is hilarious. We just are in the destructive phase, what will come out after is bound to be better I think (hard to do worse).
jdietrich 3y ago
Life with kids has always been problematic, but it has got much harder in the last few decades as social attitudes have changed. Levels of parental involvement and attention that were perfectly normal in the 1970s would now generally be considered criminally negligent. Across most western countries, the amount of time that parents spend with their children has dramatically increased; that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does greatly increase the opportunity cost of having children. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/01/parents-children-parenting-time-spent-work-family-life-balance/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/01/parents-children-pare...

Less so when you could afford a house, a car, 2 kids and a stay at home wife on a single salary. It was also much easier when people didn't move to foreign countries and/or far away cities for their jobs, losing their family network &c. I'm in my mid 20s, in tech and couldn't afford that at all, I could barely afford my gf being unemployed. I don't have a car and live in a small flat. If I can barely afford a comfortable but frugal lifestyle while being paid more than 60% of my peers I'm not too surprised most people literally can't afford kids

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
The irony is that when you can afford kids in your mid to late 30s, it becomes much harder medically to have them (assuming your partner is similar in age). Lots of people just wait until they are ready, and then find out the window has passed, it’s really frightening.
seec 3y ago
Yeah, I don't get how they don't see that but to be honest boomer culture is insanely omnipresent and they had it so good they must be thinking that it cannot be that bad. The reality is that if you are a couple both working an average job you won't have a whole lot of extra time depending on living situation (commute and access to transport) but on top of that you have very little extra cash that could be helpful to solve logistical pains kids make. All the people of my age that had kids now have unenviable lifestyles, it feels like they can have what the poor boomers had and not much more and nowadays the expectation is that it will last up to a quarter century because of how much we came to overvalue diplomas (even though they do not sort the good from the bad, at all...). Because of the insanely collectivist system around the world, it makes no difference to have kids or not for the end of your life, so it becomes more of a decision of accepting to be poorer for the privilège of reproduction. This pretty stupid all things considered, it seems like a feature to have parents dependent on their kids for the end of their life, this way they would have a lot more motivation to do the job right and those who would do a bad job would have it coming... In the end, collectivism has a way to always destroy the foundation it relies on, which is hilarious. We just are in the destructive phase, what will come out after is bound to be better I think (hard to do worse).

jdietrich 3y ago

Life with kids has always been problematic, but it has got much harder in the last few decades as social attitudes have changed. Levels of parental involvement and attention that were perfectly normal in the 1970s would now generally be considered criminally negligent. Across most western countries, the amount of time that parents spend with their children has dramatically increased; that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does greatly increase the opportunity cost of having children. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/01/parents-children-parenting-time-spent-work-family-life-balance/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/01/parents-children-pare...