4 ms·

A 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

A 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 5mo ago
Maybe 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 5mo 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 5mo ago
  The 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 5mo 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 5mo ago
      That's not true! Sometimes you get to spend time with grandparents of same-aged children!
- matchbok3 5mo ago
  It is hard to explain to 20 year olds that bragging about their trip to Europe means nothing when you are 45.
  - abc123abc123 5mo ago
    How strange. My experiences when I was young mean way more to me, than say, a trip to the US now. Now it's just boring routine, back then, everything was new and fresh. You must have had a very boring time when you were young. It is very sad.
    - matchbok3 5mo ago
      Not sure what you are referring to. My point was that "traveling" is meaningless when you have a family. The personal attack is immature. Grow up champ, you'll be happier!
dh2022 5mo ago
In my city of Seattle you simply cannot have more than one kid in your twenties. You simply do not have the income to pay the Seattle rent / mortgages and pay daycare for more than one kid at the start of your career. Forget about going to a concert or a restaurant: there is simply no money for it. Young people in Seattle either live in studios or 1 bedroom apartments, or live with roommates, or with their parents. You cannot raise more than 1 kid this way. This is the calculus me nu my wife did when we chose to have one kid only. Looking back and seeing how life progressed we made the right choice.
- SoftTalker 5mo ago
  And yet I bet there are thousands of young people in Seattle having kids. These limits are all about what kind of life you want for yourself, and not about what is possible.
  - pixl97 5mo ago
    I mean, living in a garbage dump is possible, millions of of people do it around the world. The problem as a country you are doing to disappear demographically if you're choices are near suffering versus having kids.
    - trumpdong 5mo ago
      It's possible, but if you do it in a developed country they'd take you to jail. Just like the law imposed a minimum wage, it also imposed a mandatory minimum standard of living.
  - Gareth321 5mo ago
    Implied in their comment is that they don’t want to be homeless and hungry, which I think is a fair prerequisite before having children.
  - dh2022 5mo ago
    The parents at my kid’s daycare were in their late twenties / early thirties, had professional degrees (lawyers, physicians, tech) and only one kid in the daycare. [edit to add this: I am talking from experience, it seems you are talking from hearsay]
Xirdus 5mo ago
You don't need to have life figured out before you have kids in the same sense you don't have to fix your car when the check engine light is on, or you don't have to replace a rusted water boiler. You won't immediately die from it. You can do it for years without issue if you're lucky, and many people do exactly that. But if you're in a position you can sort things out properly without financial strain, everyone will tell you to sort this out ASAP and you're stupid if you don't. The problem is that it's literally impossible for most people to have life figured out before hitting 25, and very hard before 30. Importantly, that wasn't the case just one generation ago.
riversflow 5mo ago
I have more energy in my 30s than my 20s
autoexec 5mo ago
> You don't need to have life all figured out before you have kids. You do need to be able to afford to care for them and be reasonably capable of providing them with a stable and healthy environment to grow up in though. People who are one or two missed paychecks away from homelessness probably shouldn't be thinking about having children, and sadly that's a whole lot of people.
- saintvlad 5mo ago
  > You do need to be able to afford to care for them and be reasonably capable of providing them with a stable and healthy environment to grow up in though. You kinda don't though? The government won't let you starve to death. Surprised there aren't more people welfaremaxxing, TBH.
  - trumpdong 5mo ago
    The government absolutely lets people starve to death. Have you ever tried to get any welfare? It's gatekept to hell.
    - autoexec 5mo ago
      I haven't checked the data for myself, but supposedly, while still not a common cause of death, malnutrition is the fastest growing cause of death in the US (https://www.the-independent.com/life-style/health-and-families/malnutrition-deaths-seniors-older-people-cdc-2026-b2894677.html https://www.the-independent.com/life-style/health-and-famili...)
      - sltkr 5mo ago
        Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/1102/ https://xkcd.com/1102/ And according to your article, this is almost exclusively a problem with the elderly: > Those aged 85 and older die from malnutrition at a rate about 60 times higher than the rest of the American population, with deaths in that group increasing about twice as fast. (Of course, I'd expect those aged over 85 to be dying at a much higher rate from _most_ causes.)
trumpdong 5mo ago
If you have kids and don't have life stability, everyone will call you irresponsible and the government may take your kids away, right?
theshackleford 5mo ago
> You don't need to have life all figured out before you have kids My parents didn’t have their life figured out and I paid the price with extreme mental and physical abuse as their life entered a never ending downward spiral. This had impacts on me, which extended to impacts on others. I’m ok now, after years of intensive counselling reversed the violent tendencies that were beaten into me with their fists over two decades. It did contribute to me not having kids of my own as I didn’t want to repeat the cycle, but other things impacted it as well. So yeah, maybe it turns out ok in some cases, maybe in others it doesn’t.
- em-bee 5mo ago
  but this comes from parents being expected to have their life figured out and not giving them any help. if we accept as normal that young parents will not have their life figured out then we will also make sure that we don't leave them alone but actually support them. i think this is especially extreme in the US where some parents tell their kids that at their 18th birthday they are on their own. that's an insane attitude. not everyone is that extreme, but what ever you experienced is more a failure of society, and less a failure of your parents.
  - theshackleford 5mo ago
    I think you are correct, but not in a manner likely to happen. My parents had all the support they needed from their parents, but it wasn’t enough, their life was interrupted before they found their footing and they just never developed that footing once children were added to the mix. To your point though, maybe if there was more support of parents from society from a larger perspective, maybe it would have been different. If my upbringing hadn’t been getting bashed into an inch of my life because apparently being unable to afford rent was my fault, I suspect I would have been far more amenable to children.
    - em-bee 5mo ago
      ouch, i can't imagine the stress your parents must have been under that they lost control like that, or the pain you had to experience. i can somewhat sympathize. my dad had a rough temper too at times, but nowhere near what you describe. and we lived in germany where we got financial support from the government. not being able to pay rent is not a thing there. if that was all it took to set your parents off then this totally could have been prevented with a better welfare system.

foobarian 5mo ago

Maybe 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 5mo 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 5mo ago
The 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 5mo 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 5mo ago
    That's not true! Sometimes you get to spend time with grandparents of same-aged children!
matchbok3 5mo ago
It is hard to explain to 20 year olds that bragging about their trip to Europe means nothing when you are 45.
- abc123abc123 5mo ago
  How strange. My experiences when I was young mean way more to me, than say, a trip to the US now. Now it's just boring routine, back then, everything was new and fresh. You must have had a very boring time when you were young. It is very sad.
  - matchbok3 5mo ago
    Not sure what you are referring to. My point was that "traveling" is meaningless when you have a family. The personal attack is immature. Grow up champ, you'll be happier!

dh2022 5mo ago

In my city of Seattle you simply cannot have more than one kid in your twenties. You simply do not have the income to pay the Seattle rent / mortgages and pay daycare for more than one kid at the start of your career. Forget about going to a concert or a restaurant: there is simply no money for it. Young people in Seattle either live in studios or 1 bedroom apartments, or live with roommates, or with their parents. You cannot raise more than 1 kid this way. This is the calculus me nu my wife did when we chose to have one kid only. Looking back and seeing how life progressed we made the right choice.

SoftTalker 5mo ago
And yet I bet there are thousands of young people in Seattle having kids. These limits are all about what kind of life you want for yourself, and not about what is possible.
- pixl97 5mo ago
  I mean, living in a garbage dump is possible, millions of of people do it around the world. The problem as a country you are doing to disappear demographically if you're choices are near suffering versus having kids.
  - trumpdong 5mo ago
    It's possible, but if you do it in a developed country they'd take you to jail. Just like the law imposed a minimum wage, it also imposed a mandatory minimum standard of living.
- Gareth321 5mo ago
  Implied in their comment is that they don’t want to be homeless and hungry, which I think is a fair prerequisite before having children.
- dh2022 5mo ago
  The parents at my kid’s daycare were in their late twenties / early thirties, had professional degrees (lawyers, physicians, tech) and only one kid in the daycare. [edit to add this: I am talking from experience, it seems you are talking from hearsay]

Xirdus 5mo ago

You don't need to have life figured out before you have kids in the same sense you don't have to fix your car when the check engine light is on, or you don't have to replace a rusted water boiler. You won't immediately die from it. You can do it for years without issue if you're lucky, and many people do exactly that. But if you're in a position you can sort things out properly without financial strain, everyone will tell you to sort this out ASAP and you're stupid if you don't. The problem is that it's literally impossible for most people to have life figured out before hitting 25, and very hard before 30. Importantly, that wasn't the case just one generation ago.

riversflow 5mo ago

I have more energy in my 30s than my 20s

autoexec 5mo ago

> You don't need to have life all figured out before you have kids. You do need to be able to afford to care for them and be reasonably capable of providing them with a stable and healthy environment to grow up in though. People who are one or two missed paychecks away from homelessness probably shouldn't be thinking about having children, and sadly that's a whole lot of people.

saintvlad 5mo ago
> You do need to be able to afford to care for them and be reasonably capable of providing them with a stable and healthy environment to grow up in though. You kinda don't though? The government won't let you starve to death. Surprised there aren't more people welfaremaxxing, TBH.
- trumpdong 5mo ago
  The government absolutely lets people starve to death. Have you ever tried to get any welfare? It's gatekept to hell.
  - autoexec 5mo ago
    I haven't checked the data for myself, but supposedly, while still not a common cause of death, malnutrition is the fastest growing cause of death in the US (https://www.the-independent.com/life-style/health-and-families/malnutrition-deaths-seniors-older-people-cdc-2026-b2894677.html https://www.the-independent.com/life-style/health-and-famili...)
    - sltkr 5mo ago
      Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/1102/ https://xkcd.com/1102/ And according to your article, this is almost exclusively a problem with the elderly: > Those aged 85 and older die from malnutrition at a rate about 60 times higher than the rest of the American population, with deaths in that group increasing about twice as fast. (Of course, I'd expect those aged over 85 to be dying at a much higher rate from _most_ causes.)

trumpdong 5mo ago

If you have kids and don't have life stability, everyone will call you irresponsible and the government may take your kids away, right?

theshackleford 5mo ago

> You don't need to have life all figured out before you have kids My parents didn’t have their life figured out and I paid the price with extreme mental and physical abuse as their life entered a never ending downward spiral. This had impacts on me, which extended to impacts on others. I’m ok now, after years of intensive counselling reversed the violent tendencies that were beaten into me with their fists over two decades. It did contribute to me not having kids of my own as I didn’t want to repeat the cycle, but other things impacted it as well. So yeah, maybe it turns out ok in some cases, maybe in others it doesn’t.

em-bee 5mo ago
but this comes from parents being expected to have their life figured out and not giving them any help. if we accept as normal that young parents will not have their life figured out then we will also make sure that we don't leave them alone but actually support them. i think this is especially extreme in the US where some parents tell their kids that at their 18th birthday they are on their own. that's an insane attitude. not everyone is that extreme, but what ever you experienced is more a failure of society, and less a failure of your parents.
- theshackleford 5mo ago
  I think you are correct, but not in a manner likely to happen. My parents had all the support they needed from their parents, but it wasn’t enough, their life was interrupted before they found their footing and they just never developed that footing once children were added to the mix. To your point though, maybe if there was more support of parents from society from a larger perspective, maybe it would have been different. If my upbringing hadn’t been getting bashed into an inch of my life because apparently being unable to afford rent was my fault, I suspect I would have been far more amenable to children.
  - em-bee 5mo ago
    ouch, i can't imagine the stress your parents must have been under that they lost control like that, or the pain you had to experience. i can somewhat sympathize. my dad had a rough temper too at times, but nowhere near what you describe. and we lived in germany where we got financial support from the government. not being able to pay rent is not a thing there. if that was all it took to set your parents off then this totally could have been prevented with a better welfare system.