Ask HN: Do You Have Kids? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do You Have Kids?

5 pointsroschdal19 comments

Since I was 15, yes. Still with the mom over two decades later. She had to take a year off high school and skipped college. I graduated on time and got academic scholarships to cover tuition for university. A hard start; I don’t recommend it. I like how things turned out, and I like who I am and my history is a major part of that. But man, things were hard and many choices were driven by immediate needs over long term planning; this hurt income for a long, long time.

Having a kid that young your life is going to be determined a lot by the support of your immediate and extended family. Can a 15 year old dictate how they want their kids to be raised like a 30 year old with their own means, when they are reliant on everyone else for both child raising help and financial support? Can't imagine how tough it is in every way.

We had little to no support from parents. Having full support of immediate and extended family would have been really, really helpful. Instead, my dad's girlfriend decided to kick my then-girlfriend-now-wife out when we were living at my dad's, my mom did the same, her dad was not in the picture, and her mom was at best a terrible room mate with mental issues. We were able to finally (through help provided by my best friend's dad) rent our own place at age 19. From there, my wife worked 2-3 jobs at a time while I had 1-2 part time jobs while being a full time student (one was doing php programming which would eventually lead to the way out of poverty). I eventually got my degree (BS Business Admin, minor CS) where I worked for the same friend's dad selling insurance, then went out to be a financial advisor with Edward Jones, did some construction work, got my teaching credential and taught inner city high school math (very rough), and all the while through those years I worked on programming/web-dev as a hobby. After losing my job as a teacher, I was able to work with a recruiter and able to get my first real programming job. We are now well adjusted upper middle class people and my wife is a stay at home mom and homemaker. Quite a wild ride!

This is the high quality content and discussion that I come to HN for.

Nope, and I do not have plans to have them since for the first time in my life since finishing college my mental health is in a good place.

I acknowledge some people like the idea of having a family, but I have zero interest rolling the dice on my mental health where someone else's life is on the line. Especially when my ability to keep a partner "happy" bears the penalty of half my net worth.

Yes, big mistake

Why ? Honest question.

Because I now have to choose between working extra hours to pay child support or going to prison

Fuck, hope it gets easier for you. The only way I can think of is getting a pay rise so you can earn that salary without needing the overtime.

No and childfree (won't have them)

3 of them.

Yes

Almost

Yeah

Yes

Yep

nope

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