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Comment by austincheney | Hacker News Reader

The only logical answer here is youth. The younger you are the more fertile you are. This is true for both men and women, but more true for women. If you want children at some point in life then prioritize children first and early.

I know, this puts your ambitious career on hold for a while and start ups require huge ambition. Still, start up opportunities will not be hyper critically different in the future than they are now. In the future you may not be able to have children.

This is so completely clear based upon my commute to work. Closer to the downtown where I live there are all kinds of clinics for young mothers in mostly poorer areas. Where I work is the wealthiest county, per capita, in Texas and there are fertility clinics lining the street. That difference is striking. People who put their careers first tend to have more trouble having children and are willing to pay massive sums of money to fix biology.

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I feel like part of the problem is the obsession in media and social circles with young success. I see lists like Forbes 30 under 30, 40 under 40, and the celebration of young billionaires who are worshipped and held up as the example of what high performers should strive to be, and its quite unhealthy. I wish there were more stories about people who found success in their 40's, 50's and beyond, especially the ones who took time to fail, learn from it, and apply it later in life.

Yeah, but those people are the one-in-100-million types.

Most people have lack-luster careers in their 20s, which pick up in their 30s and peak in their 40s-50s. It makes a lot of sense for the average person to prioritize family building in their early 20s so that the kids are more self-sufficient right at the time where your career is taking off.

Plus, if your blessed enough to have parents who can help out, having babies when your parents are in their 40s-50s is substantially better than when they are 60+. My parents (50s) do really well at caring for their grandkids while my in-laws (60s) actually aren't capable of being alone with their grandkids, aunts or uncles "come to visit" anytime they watch the kids.

> It makes a lot of sense for the average person to prioritize family building in their early 20s so that the kids are more self-sufficient right at the time where your career is taking off.

It does make a lot of sense, but my point is that's not what people are doing. The ages that women have their first babies have been increasing [0], and a large part of that is that women are more focused on their careers in their 20's than they have been in the past [1].

[0] : https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/04/upshot/up-bir...

[1] : https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2020/05/01/new-stud...

> It makes a lot of sense for the average person to prioritize family building in their early 20s

I'd say it used to make sense before the late 1970's when wages started stagnating. As the gap has grown the average person in their early 20's has to struggle to afford to pay for their own basic needs, much less trying to afford to have kids. Once their career is starting to pick up in their 30s they finally have the financial situation to start considering kids.

Oddly, the wage stagnation really took off as we doubled the workforce over less than a generation...

I wonder if "children raised mostly by their grandparents" will start to become more common. There's been a rise in multi-generational households lately due to pandemic shifts.

Maybe younger parents who are also clawing their way up the career ladder will be able to take advantage of this situation to offload some parenting to their own parents, and then pay it forward when their own kids have children later on? Might be the only practical way to have kids in your 20s these days.

I kinda wish it would. Anecdotally, as a dual income household grandparental assistance was indispensable in raising our baby, and I've sorely missed it since the pandemic hit and no one's visiting any more. I recognize how lucky we were to have that available, since not everyone does.

I think it can also have great benefits for the grandparents, who find a new sense of fulfillment and purpose and something to fill their time later in life. It reminds me of the studies on combining preschools and nursing homes showing positive outcomes for both populations. Also, intuitively, multi-generational households were the norm throughout human history before industrialization and economic centralization encouraged "leave your family behind and go Seek Your Fortune".

Adoption is another logical answer that can be very rewarding. All of us in the family I grew up in were adopted as infants. It's more expensive than birthing your own children but I imagine parents that left their fertile years focused on a career would be able to afford adoption.

In most places adoption is also very expensive. For some absurd reason prospective adopting parents must prove they are worthy of raising children to the state, while biological parents don't have to prove anything.

Because orphans are wards of the state, and if the state thinks you would do a worse job providing for them why would they hand the child over?

Children are taken off the parents to protect them from harm. We can only justify that if we then protect them from harm, and that means not placing them with abusive parents.

This advice is likely economically bad though. Capital now is better than capital later. I would think money made early and saved by not having children and invested will end up being much more then what will be spent on a fertility clinic later.

Another alternative is to design your startup around a very low burn rate and change nothing else in your life. I mean, if it is going to take 5-10 years as the blogger claims, what's 8-12 years if you get to tick all the other boxes in life?

8-12 years of child rearing is very expensive. That's without even taking into compounding returns from working longer hours, seniority, experience, and investments.

The blog post starts with your same premise: pull out all the stops on working hard. It's just a choice. Why not have a startup that takes longer to grow?

To make the point clear: children raised by young and growing parents and different from children raised by old and established parents. Slow startups are different from fast startups. No judgement, they are just different. But the premise that a fast startup is the only way to do a startup is false. It's just choices for different outcomes.

I am the child of two young parents who had to drop out of college to raise me and my siblings, eventually on my father's "lifestyle business" when working multiple jobs didn't balance the books, so I am well aware of the tradeoffs. In my experience though it's not a question of just adjusting your lifestyle for many people, it's a question of financial survival.

My parents have not come close to being financially recovered relative to later-parents a decade after we've all left the house. The delay you are talking about compounds to absolutely massive differences in my experience. Trying to multi-task both the other "life" check boxes and your work is going to have large hidden costs on work because of these compounding advantages.

The chances of having a kid with a serious disorder go up dramatically for older mothers (and recent research shows this is true for fathers too). Even if we decide only to care about economics and not the kids health, health issues are expensive.

Can you point to the 'dramatic' risks for older fathers? Usually it is a minor change in chance blown up by sensational press.

First hit on Google: https://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/news/20100208/autism-risk...

77% increase seems pretty dramatic to me.

That stat is for mothers. He asked for fathers.

Unfortunately, that is the other side of the coin. Most people who have children at young ages tend to be less well off financially for the rest of their lives than people who wait until late to have children. That is simply because time and principle are the only factors that really matter in building wealth.

This difference can also be taken to absurd extremes though. I honestly wonder why single people without children in my line of work aren't millionaires just based upon the compensation of their day jobs. After having 5 military deployments I can live in a cardboard box and would require only the cheapest of cars to commute to work. I don't spend money very often.

> I honestly wonder why single people without children in my line of work aren't millionaires just based upon the compensation of their day jobs.

I'm not sure that people who never have children necessarily end up with more wealth than people who do have children, due to psychological impacts.

Having a kid can inspire parents to get their shit together and succeed financially and think about the future, compared to a single person just spending on their hobbies and playing video games.

Mother's age at birth directly affects a child's health and life outcomes [1]. It is impossible to replace a woman's 20s with any amount of money.

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-1...

Minor nit, this article is mostly about how teenage mothers result in worse outcomes, and talks about the many advantages older mothers have up to over 35 when complications dominate the better resources older mothers tend to have.

If you have very good health insurance then the main cost for having children is going to be the increased cost of housing, which can be a capital investment. In addition to mortgage deduction, families also get deductions for children so there really isn't much to be saved by not having children until later in life.

It's certainly economically worse, sure, but on the other hand you might be optimizing for other things. I for one would like to know my grandkids, and if I have my first kid at 40, and my kid has their first kid at 40, I'll have likely died of old age before my first grandkid reaches high school. Plus, I really like the idea of my kids being out of the house before my 60s. Factor those in with the studies about the relationship between the health of children and the age of the parents, and I'm willing to trade some potential income for those considerations (although that has limits, and having kids early can have quite substantial economic downsides, especially if you're a woman, and doubly especially if you end up out of the workforce entirely to raise them).

time is worth more than money. I'm glad I spent some time in my 20s raising little tikes so I can have more time with them.

Having kids late in life is like a deathbed confessional. people just want to cross "birth children" off their list, but don't really think about being a mother/father for the rest of their life.

If you value career over family thats cool, but you wont get returns on "family-as-an-asset" if you invest late in life. Invest early for greater returns.

If your only goal is to accumulate capital over your lifespan, then you won't have children at all, since they're tremendously expensive and have no dollar return.

They're a great way to add some diversity to your retirement portfolio. Young able bodies that can get a job and provide you with food and shelter in your old age are the original inflation proof investment. Also, kids are awesome.

>Young able bodies that can get a job... are the original inflation proof investment.

Not quite sure that is true: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Mk1AG.jpg

>Also, kids are awesome.

If I am a dollar optimizer, the only thing I care about is money. How much can I sell "awesome" for? Can I skip a step and sell the children directly?

Children have massive potentials for dollar return. Not least because you can't buy the type of care your child might give you in old age for any price. But also because if they succeed, then you have access to their networks, which can also be worth quite a lot.

You won't be able to calculate a precise number, but the saying "It's not what you know, it's who you know" shows the dollar price of networks is very high.

It's almost as if human social norms solved this dilemma by division of labor: men bear the brunt of earning capital, while women are freed up to have and raise children.

The women's "empowerment" movement in this context can be seen as a cynical ploy by capital to convince women their "power" is tied to earning wages and having a career instead of having a family and they must pursue economic independence over over strategic "dependence" on a husband to help them realize commons goals.

At the end of the day women, and men, will ultimately want what they want. The argument here is that in the grand scheme of things they want a family, and will regret early choices that threaten this goal long term. Whether they are distracted away from this goal by capitalist propaganda to increase the labor supply, or they combine forces to achieve it is the challenge.

People will argue "men and women should make their own choices and determine this for themselves". Yes, but what is the default cultural message nowadays? What is promoted as the norm? What is the institutional and political rhetoric around this question? Western liberal democratic, capitalist nations stand firmly on the side of promoting careerism for women over early motherhood and marriage.

They also promote careerism for men, a notion that doesn't ever seem to come into question. It's true that only women can gestate and breast feed, but after that fatherhood and motherhood are very similar callings. Men could opt out of the capitalist summons to the labor supply just as easily as women, and it shouldn't have to fall entirely on women to choose between "careerism" and "motherhood".

If we shifted the norms to allow that, women would be able to make their decisions freely and fairly, rather than just accepting that the lion's share of of parenting should be up to them. Rhetoric that shifts solely to ending careerism for women, but not for men, does indeed disempower women.

Ultimately you're arguing for reality to change to fit your utopian whims. I'm saying, for the average couple, we should lean into reality.

Would it be great if we could all have it all? Of course. I'm more concerned with the actual happiness and fulfillment of people who really will regret not having started a family early, and instead wasted their efforts following the neo-liberal careerist path.

Someone's got to have the children and raise them. Someone's got to put in the time at work. Because of the time, effort and physical realities of women bearing children, for most couples the division of labor falls most efficiently on men putting in most of the time rising up the corporate ladder.

People that recognize this happy path and want to go their own way are welcome to it. But we shouldn't lie to people. We should be honest with men and women from a young age what reality is.

> It's true that only women can gestate and breast feed,

If you have multiple children, that can add up to a significant chunk of prime career building years.

> Still, start up opportunities will not be hyper critically different in the future than they are now. In the future you may not be able to have children.

This is not accurate for people with kids. A startup is an all encompassing job that pays very little in the short term and has a small chance at ever paying out a large amount. The opportunity cost of a real job is enormous.

> The only logical answer here is youth.

No, the only real answer is that you are in no way required to reproduce. There are more than enough humans. Humanity is basically a plague.

> Humanity is basically a plague.

This succinctly states the premise behind a lot of progressive thinking.

This is essentially ecofascism and is not compatible with a modern free society.

I actually like humanity, and I want it to persist. Many of my best friends are humans.

(I'm not trying to throw around "fascist" as a cheap insult: this is an actual ideology, and "humans are basically a plague" is a core tenent.)

It's completely unethical to have kids and like another commenter has said brings a great disadvantage economically. I would suggest to anyone to not follow your advice.

edit: I won't be further commenting on the topic because the same people asking everyone "when are you going to have kids like me?" are just going to downvote. Yes, I rather see an end to humankind because that ends suffering. Less suffering in a universe is better than a universe that experienced more. Yes, nobody cares about the ones that wish they never had been born because of whatever reason that was inflicted upon them.

What impact do you foresee any economic gains from childlessness having in 100 years, if your advice is followed universally? Who will inherit those gains?

I believe the context for the advice is directed to whoever is capable of having children. So, economic gains are meaningless to them when they're dead in 100 years.

Put another way: let's say everyone who is capable of children follows your advice. To whom are these economic gains meaningful in 100 years? Who would their parents be?

What you're implying is meaningless to the ones that are dead. So maybe you can now realize why I wrote my response and it was directed towards anyone considering conceiving a child.

OK, from a pure hedonistic view - let's say at some time in the future, there are no more humans left. Why would it make sense to invest anything into economic gain in the time before that happens? You'd rather run the economy into the ground to extract as much value as you could from it, before the end of human existence. You - or else someone else who is the last human alive - are "leaving something on the table", so to speak. Otherwise they are just leaving value around for wildlife.

In other words there would be a time, maybe dependent on the rate at which remaining humans can unwind the human economy, past which any effort at collective economic gain wouldn't be worth it.

I think of this as a non-issue; either my partner, or a friend, or a charity of choice will inherit my gains if I don't spend them all enjoying life first.

It's unethical to have kids? I don't follow.

You might find the following interesting: https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/choosing-children-ethical... I, for one, would never bring another life into this world and while so much suffering occurs. It's ethical to adopt contrary to conceive children.

I am certain your parents had same ideas. Until they decided to have babies. Having kids is powerful natural drive after finding suitable enough mates.

Statistically, you will have children in future, if you’re under 30 right now.

statistically, you will be attracted to women, if you're a man right now. and yet...

Attractive men and women will find each other and make babies, as they have done for thousands of years.

Instagram, Raya, Tinder make it much easier for attractive people to find each other efficiently.

That was my interpretation. There are some antinatalists out there.

Can I just say we should really stop using these 'turf' labels, the flat-earthers, the anti-vaxxers, now this 'antinatilist' label.

It makes it seem like a binomial thing, you are either in my group or in the other. Discussion stops being about the ideas and more adversarial, focused on taking sides.

Also it creates a group identity which in my opinion makes it harder for people to change their minds based on discussion or new info.

If my aunt tells me vaccines are bad I might trust her. But if there is whole group of 'anti-vaxxer' people who make me feel good about myself then I suppose I am now an anti-vaxxer and that becomes an identity more so than an opinion which would be more fluid and mutable.

The antinatalist point of view is incredibly damaging to the long term progress of our species.

Seeing as a big chuck of what someone believes is culturally inherited from their parents, and thus hypothesizing that meme* survival partially follows parent-child relationships, I'd say that that's a problem that will end up self-correcting :)

* In the original Richard Dawkins sense, not in the funny gif sense.

You would think this is the case. But yet, they keep on reproducing while complaining bitterly about it.

Above commenter will likely have children very shortly.

Amusingly we have a case study for this: the Shakers.

"They practice a celibate and communal lifestyle, pacifism, uniform charismatic worship, and their model of equality of the sexes, which they institutionalized in their society in the 1780s."

Needless to say there's only 2 left.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers

I'm not intimately familiar with all the different strains of antinatalism, but I think that's kinda the point? an antinatalist would not consider funding existing people's retirements or possibly even the survival of the species to be sufficient justification for creating new conscious beings who cannot consent to their creation.

At which point that philosophy has completely jumped the shark.

The premise that the universe is somehow "better" with no conscious life is just silly sophistry.

> The premise that the universe is somehow "better" with no conscious life is just silly sophistry.

meh, no more than all the other moral philosophies. some are more practical than others, but none are more "true" than others.

That's what the corporations want you to believe because they want you to spend as much time and energy as possible being a cog in their machine and source the next generation of workers from the lowest bidder on the global scale.

> brings a great disadvantage economically

yeah but you forgot about my platinum, enterprise-grade DNA. really good for the economy as a whole.

Other people are going to have kids, their kids will encounter hardships and need problem solvers among the pack. Its unethical to deprive their posterity of my web-scale® DNA.

This could work as Tinder bio. It’s unethical to deprive future generations of my DNA.

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