Hacker News Reader

Comment by mam3 | Hacker News Reader

Change cities then.

Its all about your life project at the end.. if you are happier eating overprice avocado toasts in the Bay instead of having children then good for you. Im not even judging despitz the sarcasm

View on HN

Raising a child takes a village. Parents desperately need the kid-free time offered by aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends, trusted neighbours et cetera.

Moving to a completely different city, away from all your established social networks is a good way to ensure you'll burn out from having to raise your children without any help.

Parenting teaches that many things thought impossible are truly possible, and frequently not important as I thought.

It takes a village and there are support networks in surprising places.

Also, there’s time for planning. It’s not wise to have a baby and move across the world. But it is wise to look 5 years out and move to an area to develop friends.

Comically, big families provide cousins and family in more places to give more opportunities for relocating.

So make local friends and trust your neighbors. Be part of the community. And periodically visit the extended family. We live a five-hour drive from family and it's the closest to them that we've ever been. This isn't ideal but it certainly works.

Instead of asking your parent commenter to change cities, how about change the housing rules in the bay area to something sane? So more housing can be built, within reason? I find it depressing that 95%+ of the population needs to adjust to the other 5% of the population because of NIMBY, racism, entitlement etc etc.

One is much easier than the other. To be fair, OP didn’t use the “too busy dedicating my life to local government activism” excuse. IMO one way you vote for change is by controlling what you can directly control. If the difference between having kids or not means moving to a more affordable area, then those who really would rather have kids will move. This will have the largest impact to the one who moves out of the area, of course, but it also has an impact on both the old and new hometown. I’ve seen this first hand as many are migrating to my city in the wake of the pandemic. They’re finding a better lifestyle for themselves while house prices in my area have risen 25% and still rising.

These are mutually inclusive choices.

Vote to improve housing laws. And leave.

It comes to a point where I can’t improve my situation so I move so as not to be a martyr.

The problem is not housing rules, it's the concentration of companies in the same place that drives the concentration of talents which itself drives the concentration of companies... From my point of view the only things that can solve this issue is remote working on a large scale.

"oh i have a problem, better wish someone else changes the 'system' which i think is responsible for my situation, than finding solutions for myself"

The bay area is not the only place on earth but it's the only one with such high real estate prices

Reply on news.ycombinator.com