7 ms·
i put off children because it takes longer to establish a foothold. not because i loved to travel or eat out necessarily, or felt i needed to prioritize hedonis
by trgn 4mo ago
i put off children because it takes longer to establish a foothold. not because i loved to travel or eat out necessarily, or felt i needed to prioritize hedonistic activities over building a family. but, during that time of getting my degree, figuring out my career, get some savings, etc.. those were the things to fill up time with.
i'd trade it all for having kids younger though. it's just that they would have come at a time that any kind of grip on my future was still tenuous.
- ninininino 4mo agoRespectfully, you don't know why you put off children. You may tell yourself a story of why you have, but for example if there was an environmental contaminant shaping population level stats on endocrines and hormones that reduced human sex drive and desire for children, you wouldn't necessarily be conscious of that.
- card_zero 4mo agoThat sounds more like "hormone-driven people don't know why they had children".
- trumpdong 4mo agoIt sounds like "nobody knows why they do or don't have children"
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- aaarrm 4mo agoOkay
- dfee 4mo agoboth points are fair, but operate at different levels. the former: willpower. the latter: constraints. and, the latter is indeed dependent on the former. but, arguing that humans have no free will is an argument that should be tried independently of rebutting the former comment.
- ninininino 4mo agoI didn't make a claim humans have no free will, moreso that we cannot accurately judge our own motivations/drives.
- trgn 4mo agoyeah make sense, we do things, rationalize them later, i get it, i certainly am sensitive to it.
- close04 4mo agoPeople are very conscious that a child costs a lot to raise and the reality is usually worse than their estimates. They know children will impact their career and promotion opportunities, so a lower expected income just when they need it more. They know they no longer live next to their parents so the support structure they have in place is flimsy. You make a philosophical point while the reality is already clear enough. Everyone has a friend with kids so they hear the stories. The “scary” ones stick longer than the nice ones because it’s easier to understand financial woes, health issues, and problems of this kind.
- zbentley 4mo agoEh, that argument works on any claim and is nonfalsifiable-ish, so I think it can be ignored. People buying more chocolate ice cream than vanilla? Could be changing preferences or Hersheys marketing, or it could be undetected brain worms. People voting for one political party over others? Could be that party is campaigning/governing in a more popular way, could be brain worms. If there’s evidence of contaminants or whatever influencing behavior strongly enough to change large scale demographic trends, then present it. Otherwise, your best chance at good data is to take people at their word when they say why they do things.
- trumpdong 4mo agoWe know some of the pharmaceutical residues in our sewage turn frogs gay (that really happened, that wasn't AJ making something up). We know pharmaceuticals can greatly affect people's sex drive, general mood, and other psychological factors. It's definitely not a stretch to guess we might be doing it to ourselves.
- mannanj 4mo agoYou got people angry about that. I agree with you. Most people can be sick and not see it because they are surrounded by other sick people. To them, that baseline of health feels healthy. You won't even really know why certain other people may cry, and smile, and laugh so easily and you can't. Maybe you received conditioning and beliefs about it in your environment which molded you into the sick person you are, and the other healthy ones are the sick ones to you!
- everdrive 4mo agoEveryone claims it's the cost, but poor people used to have kids constantly. When I lived in Baltimore the guy on my block grew up there. They had 12 kids in a ~1100 sq foot row home with two bedrooms and 1 (or no?) bathroom. You can find similar stories everywhere.
- m_fayer 4mo agoWe've gotten smarter, to our detriment.
- laughing_man 4mo ago[flagged]
- cess11 4mo ago[flagged]
- laughing_man 4mo agoNo, I'm responding to a comment.
- pixl97 4mo agoAnd other people are judging your comment as dumb and somewhat misunderstanding of genetics/fitness.
- laughing_man 4mo agoAnd I'm judging them in turn for not understanding intelligence or genetics or fitness and for being passive/aggressive.
- cess11 4mo agoRight, and you seemed to imply that smartness can be measured in how many live copies of one's genes one manages to produce.
- SoftTalker 4mo agoA lot of people think they need to do this but it's really not true. You don't need to have life all figured out before you have kids. And in terms of avoiding complications and having energy, 18-25 years old is probably the best time.
- foobarian 4mo agoMaybe that is exactly the mechanism this happens with. People don't necessarily make these choices consciously, they might be railroaded into them by the environment in an industrialized society
- Daishiman 4mo ago> You don't need to have life all figured out before you have kids. Sure, you just need to do away with international trips, going out, losing your group of friends, losing your chances for higher education and career progression and all of the associated prestige.
- Spooky23 4mo agoThe only thing you lose there are the trips. If anything your social life can blossom. My wife was a city treasurer and had a masters. I was a .gov and later a tech executive.
- tasuki 4mo ago> If anything your social life can blossom. Yes, if you value spending time with parents of same-aged children. My social life is still fine, but the people I spend my time with are competely different. Not better, nor worse, just entirely different.
- bombcar 4mo agoThat's not true! Sometimes you get to spend time with grandparents of same-aged children!
- 4mo ago
- testing22321 4mo agoI was 41 when my first and only child was born. Super happy I had so much life experience, not wanting to go out and party etc. Trying to keep up with her snowboarding and biking and climbing and hiking and all the rest through her teen years is going to be a great motivator to stay fit and strong.