‘I just assumed it would happen’: the unspoken grief of childless men
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Similar with kids - there's less pressure to have kids now and easier excuses not to - but that road takes you to not a good place in the long run.
The reality is: the decision to start a family it isn’t just about you. It’s also about your future grand kids. And while 40 might seem like it’s the right time for some…it’s rarely ideal in the grand scheme of things- that puts you at a strong chance of having health issues while your kids start families of their own. But meeting your grandkids if your kids make that same choice. It’s best I think to be at that phase in life when your kids are a bit more settled.
On the other hand I think normalising most men marrying 30 year olds at 45 opens society up for a variety of problems. And that seems obvious to me even if I don’t think it’s true for everyone- or my relationship. That on a larger scale…it would cause problems. And perhaps aggravate things for the younger generation of men quite considerably.
Just because so many people are successfully postponing children doesn't mean it gets any easier after the age of 30 or your children are going to be as healthy as others. Statistically the probability of chromosome defects roughly increases by one factor for every year parents are older than 25. ~7 times higher at 35, 15 times at 40.
If you are generally open to having children, the best time is in your mid-20s. You still have much more options, support and energy and your children will be healthier. By the time you're out of the education system and your career takes off, your children are already in school and mostly taken care of. That also makes you much more attractive to employers. Nobody likes a 30-something who's been a reliable employee for the last years and might even be up for a promotion to a higher role, but now suddenly has kids and will be tired and unreliable for the next ten years.
[*If not in the USA, read "Old geezer". Credit: Aachen]
Many varieties of "I really regret that I [did|didn't] do X when I was younger" occur in older humans.
The stereotype of young men wanting to avoid all the work and commitment of setting down, marrying, and raising children is older than the pyramids. It is obviously not true of all young men, but there's very seldom been a shortage. Sure, their feelings may change as they grow older - but a young man whose main motive for marriage is "so I don't regret not having kids when I'm old" strikes me as a young man who the young women should avoid.
In some cases, I get the sense that "I really regret not having children" is mostly a way of articulating "I am old and socially disconnected and feel lonely and depressed". In the modern world - where kids generally grow up and move far away for jobs - having had children would probably not help much with that.
Having kids is hands-down the best thing I've ever done but also the hardest. Not because of the amount of work, because it's really not that much work. It's more of the dramatically uncomfortable shift in perspective: Realizing I'm not the main character in this story. It still hits me sometimes.
For most of history, people just did what you did and had the results you did
As for fertility awareness, I don't believe the methods used prior to the modern day were super effective. Regardless, the knowledge was not present.
So I'll restate my claim. Up until the modern day, there was no such thing as trying for children. There were married couples engaging in socially sanctioned sex, which obviously leads to children. Or there were fornicators that we knew could have children, but was socially unacceptable, and few fornicators actually wanted children from their unions.
If you bleed like some women do during pregnancy, then you may have no indication you're pregnant until you obviously show. It's unlikely, but not impossible, and the doctors had no objective measure by which to say otherwise unless they could feel or hear the baby.
This! I was the first of our group to have kids, and I'd "the camera isn't on me anymore". I thought of Smallville where the Duke boy was just a background father-person.
I started thinking over my generous way of giving ethical and generally grandiloquent advice when I started being held up to it by ever watchful little eyes... I find this being the hardest, either way: admitting I'm not so great in some respects, or bettering myself. Both are incredibly hard.
I think it is a good idea to look at finances and relationship health; but beyond that I'm not sure much else matters.
It's almost the same as marriage - and your comment is insightful in that when given the choice humans will almost never choose to change, being "selfish" feels great while you are doing it.
i had kids late. but i wasn't really any more ready to have kids in my 30s than i was in my 20s. and on the other hand i don't feel any different as far as life stage goes in my 40s than in my 20s. yes, i am and feel more mature, but my interests haven't changed and i am just as willing to explore the world now as i was then.
but now i have the financial means to do that, which i didn't have then.
and i am from a country where parenting is financially supported by the government, so there is absolutely no need to have saved money to be a parent.
in countries where this isn't the case the situation is perhaps a bit different, but then, lacking financial resources doesn't stop people from having kids, and even those will be better off in their 40s and still be able to explore their interests more than they were in their 20s.
the only thing that gets in the way is the expectation from others, to have a house, to have a career, to stop being impulsive when you are older, lack of support from their own parents, etc.
i see it happening in china. people get married and have children much earlier. most have very supportive grandparents (because the grandparents want kids) and when these couples are in their 40s and 50s they are still full of energy and are able to enjoy their life.
on the other hand there are some activities that i wanted to do in my 20s but i could not because i could not afford them, and now i can't do them because i have kids.
where i come from and in most other countries that i have seen, the idea of a student being homeless is almost unthinkable. being a student alone grants enough support that this simply won't happen, especially if they have kids. it would have to be something really unusual like the student refusing the accommodation they are offered or being mentally ill in some way that prevents them to make the right choice.
so to me it appears that homeless students are a distinctly american problem. one that the communities and government there need to work on to fix.
the very picture of a single parent with children being homeless is so out of place that i have a hard time imagining that this could happen even in the US.
that you can even come up with such an idea says a lot about how bad support for people in poverty in the US really is.
that said, obviously, if you are homeless, choosing to have kids is probably not a good idea.
but if you decide to have kids and become homeless later, then i would say, shame on the government and community for not providing the needed support.
if you live in a country where this is even possible, you should really try to do what you can to contribute to a change. not an easy task, but one that is absolutely necessary.
Please, read that sentence again.
i can assure you i meant what i said. there is absolutely nothing wrong with having children at 20, or even earlier. however it requires a community and a society that is supportive of that. it works very well in china, because the culture there does support it.
traditionally, the young couple lives together with the husbands family and can rely on their guidance and support raising the children. this way there is no problem with the young parents continuing their studies or working, because the household is managed by the grandparents. where i used to live every morning i would see lots of grandparents who themselves where in their 40s or 50s playing with babies while the young parents were off to work.
i understand that in western culture of independence where every couple lives on their own away from the grandparents, and with jokes about in-laws, this is hard to imagine. but really this is a different way to look at life and i believe it has many advantages.
That doesn't bode well for the mentioned freedom and independence that you were going to get if you had children in your 20s.
Companionship was never a part of why I fathered children. And in hindsight, raising my daughters was the most meaningful thing I did in this life.
I'm just suggesting that there may be other motives for parenting.
Big Brothers and Sisters of America is an organization that pairs men up with boys who are in single-mother families (and I guess now women with single-father girls). (I was a "little brother" when I was young.)
I am not sure about whether a single male is eligible (I don't see why not?) but AFS and other "foreign exchange student" organizations might be another avenue to "parenting" of a sort. I also found the 10 months or so I spent being a host parent to be very rewarding.
I had a spit take here. When people say they regret not doing something, they are talking about regretting not everything that came along with doing that thing, not just avoiding the emotion of regret later in life.
You could rephrase that into "a young man whose main motive for marriage is to have a loving, fulfilling family which they would prefer much more than staying single, esp later in life" and it's a pretty anodyne take on why anyone gets married and starts a family.
When someone says they regret not quitting smoking 30 years ago or starting to exercise daily, are they just talking about avoiding the emotion of regret in 30 years?
Perhaps I am misunderstanding but isn’t that what regret it? The not having everything (or most things) that come along with having done the thing?
> When someone says they regret not quitting smoking 30 years ago or starting to exercise daily, are they just talking about avoiding the emotion of regret in 30 years?
I think this is exactly right. They regret not having all the benefits of having made these choices thirty years prior, and so the feeling of regret is the umbrella term for what they are trying to avoid.
In short I think you and OP are saying the same thing but you are arguing that the term regret is narrower. I don’t think that’s right.
There is zero guarantee that a family will turn out right, let alone "loving, fulfilling" so this is just a loaded perspective of an issue that has nothing to do with your own world view.
How does the chance of failure track here?
https://www.thirdway.org/report/stuck-in-place-what-lower-ge...
“In the 1950s, about 20% of the population moved every year. By 2017 that number had been cut virtually in half.”
On the one side, it feels like people stay "immature" for longer; instead of starting their careers in their teens and a family not long after, people stay in school until their mid-twenties.
Then, what does it take to start a family? Stability. People need a stable income, a living wage, and a place they can call home.
If people complain about birth rates, pay people a living wage when they enter the workforce, and make it so people can afford to own a house (that they can live in for the rest of their life if they want to) from their mid twenties onwards on a single income.
People can't build a future now, because they worry about the next paycheck.
The start of a family will always be a leap of faith, but difference is if you start on solid ground or not.
Much of it can be "path not taken" but you have to work hard to distinguish actual real regret (which will involve understanding why the choices were made, and what about the choices was wrong (e.g., "I underestimated the work vs reward") vs the "nobody wants to talk to me now, if I had kids I could force them to."
I was having dinner with my wife's parents, along with some folks from our common church. A congregant asked how I came to join up. I nodded to my in-laws and said 'I knocked up their daughter'.*
Which is how a lot of young men got into the parenting racket (and church).
* to which my kids said 'Wow dad. Thanks.'
Some guys think that relationships magically start in a romantic setting, like shown in Hollywood movies. Reality is: if you want something, you should actively purchase it.
So if you don't want kids: fine, enjoy the freedoms it will offer.
If you want a relationship and/or family, don't sit on your ass until it will magically appear to you. Go get it!
There are many men that I know that simply are consumed by the necessity to make ends meet that they barely have any time to go out and meet new people (women specifically).
Also, on top of that, women are far less approachable these days, which increases the effort even further.
This seems like a superficial take. Placating your sadness is a benefit, not the goal, of having kids. You can pop a Prozac and alleviate your sorrows, that's not the same as the deep satisfaction of looking back on a lifetime of meaningful time with your kids and hopefully seeing them grow into good adults and parents themselves.
This thinking is flawed. Here's the solution and your road to happiness. Foster the ability to accept, be grateful and by that weaken tendencies to regret. Because _this_ is the only difference between people who regret when they are old (or pretty much any other time in their life) and those who don't. That's all. What you practice is what you become. You practice regretting and you don't have children => you'll regret that. You practice regretting and you do have children => you'll either regret that or something else.
It's that simple.
> he tries to stay indoors and ignore the family celebrations outside.
there you have it - that's the attitude which has you likely end up lonely. he just keeps up the old pattern without reflecting. why not participate in one way or another. he doesn't have a son or daughter but he can have positive interactions. instead - he stays indoors to protect himself emotionally.
> So many ambushes and triggers for my anguish.
it's ambushes and triggers. looking for reasons of your pain outside of yourself is human and normal - we all do it - but it's often not going to make positive difference.
...
won't bother reading on - this article is lacking any deeper reflection and almost reads like a government ordered attempt to disseminate FUD in men to manipulate the birth rate positively.
Want to adopt some poor kid and give him/her a possibility to have a kind of a standard life and to help to open a door to the world :(
But a single man adopting is considered as pervert. So I am even bigger sad.
Is this evidence or assumption? Not challenging too hard just wondering if you've actually been called or treated like a perv or if it's something you assume will occur
[1] https://www.holtinternational.org/adoption/ See "Quick overview of parental eligibility requirements" section
When I was in Ireland there were many people against single parents "Lone parents" they call them there, it was a real witch hunt in the media.
So yeah we get these things here but it tends to be localised.
No way this happens in europe. Helicopter americans probably claim there is more child trafficking and kidnapping in europe or something. Yeah, ok. These people watch so many child kidnapping movies and documentaries they don't know which way is up anymore.
This older woman with her 10-ish year old daughter had assumed that I, as a man, had no business being in a family stall. She went to get security to sort me out. Security asked me why I was using the family stall. I opened the door all of the way and pointed at my daughter (we have twin girls who are 4) who was drying her hands. The mom is aghast, "Where's her mother?" I scooped up my daughter and said, "I helped make her, too. Mom's busy. Mind your own business." and went back to my wife.
This is the most egregious example that I have but it's not at all an isolated event. Something in this direction has happened to me well over a dozen times in the last 4 years.
Another strong signal you can find: Many, maybe most, men's restrooms don't have a changing table. I've changed countless diapers while sitting on a toilet with one of my kids in my lap.
Trolling or genuine question from a person that never witnessed what everyone else did?
I've never even heard of it happening outside of Reddit. I figured maybe it might just be redditors coming off as creepy in general, but seeing the sentiment here too I figured I'd ask.
A solo dad out with their kid would probably go home with a pocket full of phone numbers here haha
Different people have different information mate. If I start trolling on HN I promise I'll make the comments more interesting than a pretty mild question :)
Ask your friends and family if they'd feel as confident employing a male child minder as a female one. Then ponder on the answers.
In child custody cases the man stands no chance unless the mother is an addict and a criminal. Or at least that's the case everywhere I've been.
To your point though, "we" already failed as a society by not sufficienty scrutinising the bulk of adoptions to ostensibly stable 'ideal' families in decades past.
A number of these adoptions turned out fine, many did not.
That is correct, and what is trying to be corrected for now.
The social history I'm most familiar with had a wide systemic issue with wealthy elite pillar of the community power couples adopting in "unwanted children" trained for menial servant roles as nannies and living breathing sex dolls .. not that you can accuse chief justices and their scaly mates down the yacht club of that kind of thing, of course.
screening is really a challenge. i mean the only thing you can really do is to analyze the motivation of why someone wants to adopt. but most people that you would not want to allow to adopt can go and have their own children anyways. when does preventing adoption turn into preventing to have children? or why should anyone who could have their own children be prevented from adopting?
short of a clear misaligned motivation or mental (and other serious) health issues anyone should be able to adopt.
https://psychology.org.au/inpsych/2014/august/dudgeon
Reported abuse levels by relatively small numbers of witnesses are here:
https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/projects/bringing-them-h...
with typical stories and it'd take a few years to convey why those fall well short of reality and to go through stories of many who never made it to witness stands.
Yeah, there's been a movie or two made about parts of the stories: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lbnk8wSVMaM
I don't understand this at all. People with a history of abuse or neglect can have their own children—and often they do—but why on earth would you use that as an excuse to give them more children to abuse? Like, what is your thinking here?
what i did mean was: if whatever failures these parents have is mild enough that they are allowed to keep their children, because noone is perfect and the children are never in any danger then why should they not be allowed to adopt as well?
in short, why should adoptive parents have to submit to higher standards?
but, as someone else stated, there are not enough children up for adoption in the US anyways, so that argument becomes moot, because obviously you'll pick the most suitable parents first.
and you do have a point. after rereading what i said: "most people that you would not want to allow to adopt can go and have their own children anyways", this is really a claim that needs further scrutiny. it was supposed to imply that the tests are to harsh, but that is based only on anecdotal evidence so i am not really prepared to defend it. in hindsight, your reading of it makes sense too, so you are right to question it. thank you.
I agree completely.
I'm saying this through a US centric lens, of course.
for foster children the state retains a continuous responsibility for these children, and foster parents need to be able to go along with that.
i think part of the reason why it is otherwise is because it is easier to take foster children away, so if a mistake was made, it can be undone, or so the thinking goes, but i actually think that is wrong.
the most suffering foster children experience comes from changing families all to frequently. it hurts their ability to form trusting relationships. the adopted kids will be fine even if the parents make a mistake here or there, but the foster kids who are moved to another family because the foster parents made that same mistake have their world shattered.
One action can easily be undone, but the other can not.
Edit: one other thing to consider is that there are a huge number of children in the foster system and they are desperate for foster parents.
the fact that foster kids can be taken away easily is the problem, because that should not happen. and that can only be avoided if foster parents are vetted more strongly.
It's an unfortunate situation, but if the barriers are high enough there will be fewer people willing to foster. How many good-enough homes are out there, even if they are not perfect? At what point is the risk of being placed in a less than perfect home worth it?
I have just a few more years until all of my kids are out of the house and living on their own, and fostering children is definitely on my mind. We have already started by hosting foreign exchange students.
How many good-enough homes are out there, even if they are not perfect?
that's actually not what i am concerned about but foster parents that are outright abusive. so basically, i think that even foster kids should only be taken away if they are neglected or abused in such a way that you would even charge native parents with that.
the goal should not be to find perfect parents, but to find parents where the kids actually can stay as long as they need to. the barrier to take them away again is to low because it doesn't consider the hurt caused by being "taken away" itself.
My grandfather died when I was three and I think it hit Dad hard. I was determined to find a woman and have children even if it meant doing so if not married. My Catholic parents were very against that it was unspoken but very obvious in their attitude.
My Dad died a few years ago so my plan fell apart. Now Mom is old so she is not long for this world either. But even so I am early 50s so unless I win a lot of money, get famous fast, find a foreign wife (who won't murder me), or somehow father a child I'm SOL.
It is depressing especially seeing in later life how family support is great to have. When I'm old I'll have nobody. And I mean just regular stuff having someone to drive you to appointments, help with home repairs, finances. There are a lot of scammers and bad people ready to pounce on elderly.
We need old time forced dances where a lot of us shy folks are forced to interact.
Instead I chose career, travel and education early in life, and while I do not regret it.. Later in life I noticed that for me such accomplishments feel worth about 5 minutes of cold talk in social events, even more among those who warmly talk about their grandchildren and even great grandchildren.
Each of us have a limited time here, and we make choices that (hopefully) makes it worthwhile. Though perhaps, the choices I made left a feeling of emptiness..
I appreciate your candor and vulnerability with us here. But I can't help but read a good amount of regret in your post, in line with the article.
As middle aged / older guys, there's significance to the message we send out. Perhaps someone reading your post will be inspired to pause and re evaluate their choice based on what you wrote. Thank yku.
Now that I'm 50-ish, although I'm energetic and not yet noticeably graying, when I think about kids of my own, I have to consider:
* A dear friend adored her father, and when he died while she was in college, she was devastated. I could nurture a kid to be resilient in that possibility, but I don't like the idea of setting them up for that possibility to be not-unlikely.
* I'd want the other parent to be a life partner, and that probably means in a close age bracket. So biological clocks are a factor, at least for building from scratch. Or, if partner is significantly younger, that means we'd have to consider how much time we could have before the woman likely outlives the man, and where that would leave her.
That said, I haven't written off the idea of a family, and I'm paying every month to keep a life insurance policy, just in case there's someday a family who might need it.
I used to be the person that said "yeah, go have kids" and now I'm "only do it if you're completely sure its what you want" because if you're not it's the children suffering through it.
Yes, they are a lot of work. Yes, they are a lot of commitment. Lots of sleepless nights, lots of extra work as you want to be a father and a provider. But so what? Its not very complicated work, just lots of it. And life is too beautiful to slack around, so you can just as well spend them with your kids.
Don't worry about being ready, because nothing can truly prepare you for it. You will never be ready for your first child because there's nothing you can do to train for it.
Just do it.
I think it's a certain type of personality that believes this. I know somebody who gets worried for certain friends/family having children because they don't own their house or have high paid jobs. They have a laundry list of todo's (mostly financial) before they will even consider having children. It's almost condescending but I choose to see it as more of an unnecessary fear/anxiety. People make do. People get knocked up, they get unemployed, they get help from friends and family where possible, and they love their kids just as much as the people who planned it on a Jira board.
This is unfortunate to read. Of course everything doesn’t need to be planned, but food and shelter are the bare minimum.
Maybe they won’t be an A student when they reach school but does it actually matter?
There’s kids who literally survived the Holocaust in Nazi Germany and lived very successful lives after.
That said there is a natural instinct to be a decent parent. You don’t really have to try or be ready to. Just need to be around. In my opinion it’s similar to the instinct to turn off a burning stove - a bunch of common sense stuff that requires zero planning.
Are they becoming a happy person? good, moral person? Do they contribute to society or are they a drain on society? Do you, the parent, have to bail them out of jail every other weekend?
Don't neglect your kids, people. Please.
The unfortunate reality is that this groundwork is laid from around 0-10. After that it's a lot harder to correct the mistakes and the influence then definitely falls much more under peers than the parents.
For those that want to dive in a little bit these are Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE). It's not an end all be all chance that you'll develop something with a long term impact but the more you experience the more likely you are to do so.
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/riskprotectivefa...
Lil Timmy falls down a well, or has a really handsy neighbour, or has to see someone get hit by a car.
Like, obviously, don't beat your kids, but you don't need to be superlative parent, esp. since a great deal of their education and raising will happen, essentially, in someone elses workplace (i.e. school).
Parent should first make sure they are good to bring someone else and not to give a disadvantage start, playing gamble with life who did not ask.
How callous can you be to bring a life into the world and think "i'm just gonna wing it" in this day and age. The kid didn't ask to be brought here, it is 100% under the responsibility and care of whoever decided to have it.
> If the life they are coming to is already bad, financially, legged behind from others in many ways, or any other, that's selfish. Forcing someone to terrible start without their consent. > > Parent should first make sure they are good to bring someone else and not to give a disadvantage start, playing gamble with life who did not ask.
Literally every aspect of raising a kid is a gamble, but there are degrees to these things. What counts as a "disadvantage" isn't always clear, let alone the degree to which it is actually harmful. Making a few mistakes or not doing things perfectly is probably fine. There is a huge problem with pregnancy and parenthood where controlled studies can't be done for ethical reasons, the number of confounding variables is about as extreme as it can get, and the outcomes you're measuring often aren't even well defined (what does it mean to have succeeded as a parent? What does it mean for someone to have a happy life?).
It's important to try to make your kids have a happy life, but there's a lot of disagreement on how exactly to do that. One factor that seems to have a huge effect is having parents who express their love for their kids and spend time with them. It's important for parents to take care of themselves and their relationship with their partner. One part of that is not burning yourself out trying to hyper-optimize things.
Now I'm very well off and could retire (fat fire equivalent) at 34 and I do want kids.
The market has changed. Looks is paramount - I worked so hard to be financially stable and didn’t realize that it wasn’t my parents financial situation that had fucked me over so badly in life - it was their dogshit genetics that made me ugly.
A guy with a job and a gym membership is more attractive than 90% of men by default. Do you really have a "looks problem" that wouldn't be resolved in 12 months by actively working out, eating well, a good haircut and a great wardrobe?
A gym only takes you so far. There are things out of one's control - height, hair pattern, face shape, etc.
Although I do believe that you're right in the sense that not being overweight and having a stable job already places you in the top 10-15% of men. It's just that sometimes it's not enough and looks are pretty important for women (even though it's not often said out loud)
An obvious counter-point to that are the millions of short/bald/ugly/whatever guys who are married and have kids.
FWIW, women are turned off by guys who are gross and don't take care of themselves. A guy who intentionally makes the best of what he's got is already ahead.
It's a counterpoint only if you don't understand statistics at all.
Sure, there are millions of short/bald guys married to women. Out of billions.
I've already outlined a number of things that are not under one's control.
We don't have to keep going in circles. You're free to disagree.
I can think of, just off the top of my head, like 3+ guys I used to work with.
More like 6 if you include friends and my barber.
the "I need Looksmaxxing" my appearance is everything screams "I am an incel and can only date supermodels, who seem to reject me"
You're a real catch!
The result is superficial but the confidence gains will be real and you'll feel better either way.
After that I would advise signing up to a rock climbing gym or something and getting out to meet girls in real life, in case your dating app profile still doesn't help by then.
I think most of all, let go of your hate towards yourself/your parents/your appearance. This kind of bitterness consumes you after a while and it will show in your personality.
You sound bitter. That’s an unattractive trait. Your emotions are genuine and shouldn’t be ignored, but you need to process them in a healthy way, let go, and move on.
A good therapist is priceless for this. Easier said than done, though. It took me 4 attempts over a few years to find the right one.
Am I lucky? I work in tech. I'd say about half of the women I talk to at bars in NYC end up turning away as soon as we shift to the discussion of what I do for work. I dress much better than most men but I am short, ugly, and not blessed with the high T that is required to gain lots of muscle mass even if I am in the gym obsessively.
Hate to break it to you but the market has changed.
> surprised that he only interacts with shallow hoes
Never, not once, had a random woman interested in my IT shit unless they're also in STEM themselves. "Boring IT guy shit" is the correct answer, and then change the subject. If they know anything about it or care, they'll ask.
You probably just boring. Change that.
I wish my parents had had this wisdom.
I think more people are ready to be good parents despite doubts that your post implies. If you are completely broke, drug addicted, violent, etc - then yes you should work on those things first. Otherwise, if you're anything like a mainstream member of society you're probably ready and capable.
I found that my "ability" to be a dad switched the moment the kids arrived. Most of us do our best when the occasion demands it and being a dad elevates what is asked of you in the best of ways. Even things that would seem like nigh mares to a single version of myself (eg: changing diapers), feel totally fine - like I am doing exactly what I should be doing right now.
To answer your literal question -imagine someone dying from lung cancer in their 40s. If they regret smoking and wish they never started, should that have, in retrospect, dictate their life decisions? Or do the "thousands of days" they happily smoked matter more?
I find that most success in life comes from this ability to mentally associate with your ultimate self and do things today that will make that person most satisfied. Which happens to also be way more satisfying in the moment.
The spectrum goes from, I've talked to quite a few people who only talk about negatives of having kids as long as they are talking about anything specific (health, hobbies, friends, work, even their spouse), but as soon as they start talking in abstract they reiterate how having kids / their kid is great. Usually 5 minutes after an endless stream of complaining. It's either Stokholm syndrome or social desirability bias...
To, I know / knew lots of people who are either terrible to their children or whose parents were reportedly terrible to them, anywhere from emotional distance and clearly not wanting them around, to outright physical abuse or extremely controlling behavior, or basically abandoning them to their own devices. I fully expect people like that to regret having kids, but I've never heard or read anyone admit it.
I think having kids is a boring chore that (pretty much by definition) nearly anyone can learn to do. Sure, it might be necessary, but that combination makes it about as special, fulfilling and exciting as farming rice. Most would rather have brunch, so perhaps we should pay people to do it. Except that with kids, you cannot admit that you'd rather have done something else...
Of course comparing to "brunch" is done in the same snide spirit, but even disregarding pastimes that are actually fulfilling, I'd also much rather have more brunch :)
But anyway good for them. I'm glad I never had any and I have no regrets.
Are you sure? People aren't stupid and then they marry a woman who wants kids and then agree to have kids with her, they are not doing it against their will.
The fact that they are happy and love the kids once they arrive suggests they had room inside them for that happiness and love to begin with and they just allowed the wife to be the impetus to it.
There are plenty of women who are perfectly happy without kids, too.
And that doesn't mean those men and women don't like kids or don't have kids in their lives. It's nice to get some kid time. And it's nice to go home later and not have to deal with them. Or the inevitable ex spouses.
I wish I'd find some :) For me it has generally been a breaking point in relations or at least a very contentious point.
However at this point I'm so old that with a partner of the same age it's simply not really relevant anymore. Either they have never had them, have had them and they grew up, or they just can't get them anymore.
When I tried to adopt, Florida's child welfare agency decided - after doing a background check - decided to declare me "legally gay" since I was heavily involved in LGBT rights (all my friends were lesbians and I was mad at how badly they were treated). And back then, it was illegal in FL for gays/lesbians to adopt. Not that I was/am one.
That sounds like something from a dystopian novel...
> In the United States, the “one-drop rule” — also known as hypodescent — dates to a 1662 Virginia law on the treatment of mixed-race individuals. The legal notion of hypodescent has been upheld as recently as 1985, when a Louisiana court ruled that a woman with a black great-great-great-great-grandmother could not identify herself as “white” on her passport. [2]
> Not only does the one-drop rule apply to no other group than American blacks, but apparently the rule is unique in that it is found only in the United States and not in any other nation in the world. In fact, definitions of who is black vary quite sharply from country to country, and for this reason people in other countries often express consternation about our definition.
> The phenomenon known as "passing as white" is difficult to explain in other countries or to foreign students. [3]
This happened back in the 1990s. In 2007, Florida repealed the ban on homosexuals adopting, but I had left the state years before.
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passing_(racial_identity)
2 - https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/12/one-drop-rule...
3 - https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/mix...
After that I had to read your post carefully to notice that it has happened in 90s. But still, I was alive back then, it is not that long.
Thank you for this info, we still live very close to the Middle Age...
1. Create bumble account
2. Filter for Age: > 35, Kids: "Want someday"
3. Swipe right
And... you're in bed with a borderliner or covert narcissist before you know it.
Maybe this important step is missing: vetting the prospective mother of your children for some time?
Age 35+ woman without kids is such a massive red flag, it might as well be Communist China invading.
If you are a basically decent human and can support yourself and a child, give a look at adoption rather than having this regret for your lifetime.
In another generation, I believe this number will jump. That's mostly because of current economics. Two people making the most commonly earned wages can not afford housing (then add sharply increased costs of insurances and transportation).
Stated otherwise, most couples can't afford to be an independent couple.
As a child I assumed most of my peers would go the usual route, so eventually start a family.
Being in my mid 30s now I'm the only one out of three siblings who is a parent and in my immediate social circle there are just two others - that's three out of at least twelve people.
The rest are either single, divorced or just childless, with no plan for starting a family in the foreseeable future(or ever) with maybe one exception, but if you asked me two years ago about that person's prospects I would have to say the were looking bleak.
I don't go around asking people why aren't they having children, but those who did tell me cite either finances or unwillingness to give up their current lives - sometimes both.
Funny, the exact opposite sentiment is mentioned in the article. I'm not sure who is right.
Much more likely, parents (and anyone else) don't think about you nearly as much as you think they do. Probably don't think of you at all. And they probably look at their kids as something they love and makes their live much richer, not a "status symbol."
Literally no idea what this means.
“It’s the family name that lives on. It’s all that lives on. Not your honor, not your personal glory, family.” — Tywin Lannister
I find it funny how in popular fiction it's the villains who seem to care the most about family. Otherwise, family seems to be portrayed in a negative light these days.
> Instead, he said: “There’s this mistaken belief that men are fertile across their lifespan, so there’s no imperative to get on with it.”
I don't really understand that social norm of having kids. I can understand sexual desire, but is there really a "desire to have kids"?
Is having kids really some kind of moral imperative to "continue the human species"?
Anyway, women have high standards, which is normal, so it's normal that a lot of men will be left on the side.
And women also suffer for not having kids if they wanted to.
Yes, unequivocally there is such a thing as a "desire to have kids". Speaking for myself and many others I know!
Sometimes the parental instinct or desire activates the moment the kid is born, but is not present before that. It it an interesting phenomenon.
there is even a desire for kids without desire for sex. which can be filled with adoption.
the desire that i don't understand or feel is the need to have kids to be my biological descendants
i see my kids as given to me as a responsibility to raise and care for. regardless of our biological relationship. for me "i want kids" means "i want that responsibility"
Yes, people recognize that you get to have a lot of fun times with your kids and that even the "hard" parts make sense when you are in it. Your daily life has structure and purpose which is beneficial. People have an obvious instinct for this and are able to recognize this in others. If you met many parents who weren't happy they had kids, you'd know.
Also, for those of us who value hard work and long-term impact, kids provide an amazing opportunity for that. I get to influence how these people turn out, and in turn that prolongs my impact on the world beyond my lifetime. I want that.
Has been proved to be culture induced. Human body in a vacuum can only feel lust.
The desire for someone to carry on your skills, the desire to care for someone and to make them happy and to watch their joy.
And understanding that loving someone unconditionally makes you stronger.
Over {mumble} decades, I've been stereotyped as good uncle / father / grandfather / etc. material pretty often, based on how I reacted to or interacted with various kids.
I've also seen quite a few men react less well to young children, and had less-favorable stereotypes quickly applied to them.
I wonder how the men featured in the article were stereotyped when younger. Back when couples mostly got together in larger/richer social contexts (churches, tighter-knit communities, etc.) - having the young women hearing unflattering whispers (about a young man's parenting aptitude) could certainly dim his prospects for having children.
That being said, having kids brings so much perspective to a life already lived. You almost live a second (or third, forth, fifth, etc) life vicariously though them, so it's up there in "experiences to have".
And yes, in general there is almost nothing more important other than reproduction from the perspective of species. Nothing controversial about that either.
Nevertheless, that statement does not say that there is not a life for everyone. It merely states that there is an inner drive to have children, see them grow and ultimately take care of you and the world. And this inner drive exists despite many people trying to say otherwise.
I mean it might be cool to work for $BIGCORP and build your career. You get cool things like nice car, nice suit... But the $BIGCORP will not hold your hand when you are scared before surgery, it will not help you move something when you are old and most certainly will not wipe your butt when you are too old to get up on your own.
i have children because i love them and want to care for them. i would adopt children for the same reason. i felt no drive to have children be my own. i could not care less if it is me who reproduced instead of someone else.
of course if humanity as a whole were in danger because there are not enough kids then i would want to contribute that however i can. but even then that could mean helping someone take care of their kids so they can have more kids.
If you personally don't feel that drive, there is nothing inherently bad with you and you certainly can have full and happy life. Maybe even happier because you can separate your decision and weigh pros/cons of having kids wihtout emotional involvement. But you are still probably a statistical anomaly. :)
as for offending, i guess i am generally bothered when people make assumptions about other peoples motivations
Plus I'd say that to have kids (in a family sense) does not necessarily mean they have to be your biological kids as I think that the bonding/family aspect of it is much more important than simple reproduction. Atleast for the mental well being of a person that is.
Of course not. Humans (including men) show parental care to increase their young's fitness as well. Human males are not solely obsessed with the mechanics of reproduction (as many animals are). Instead, most men also want to pass something on to their children that will set them up for success, and if you look at it, throughout history, most men were striving for this and most social structures evolved to make this possible.
We looked at the choices, and made ours. Don't tell me it was the wrong choice, without knowing literally anything about me or my wife. That's pretty patronizing.
Sensitive about it? I don't see where you get that impression from.
Even when it's not meant to be judgmental, those kinds of questions can get old after a while. Then, add in the fact that the line of questioning often is judgmental and you'll frustrate even the most patient person.
It doesn't take an overly sensitive person to get frustrated by that. Hell, I got frustrated by the attitudes and questions, and I actually wanted (and now have) kids.
Nothing sinister here...
Everyone around me at around 28 years of age started having a kids and guess what: our coffee talks started to revolve around parenting quite a lot more...
Makes sense since it is literally the biggest experience/thing in life for them at the time. I don't care that much - I either join in or just wait a while for another topic.
Let's be lenient, there is a whole cocktail of dont-abandon-your-child hormones in that brain.
There is NO LIMIT to what people will do for their kids and sometimes in a very corporate way they will use those kids to justify their awful behavior on others.
I'm dealing with some burnout related to bad job experiences, something in the way you punctuated your statement just gave me the heebie jeebies.
I apologize if this is rude just trying to articulate something I can't quite explain. Family members have kids that are awesome, I have friends that are parents that have managed to remain respectful and tolerant.
I think having kids changes your brain in an irrevocable way and sometimes people don't want to admit that.
I'll ignore parenting advice, even more from people without children. The thing is that everyone is different, and I don't believe that there is a better way or a miraculous method which will make your kids the greatest.
Secondly, it is a selfish reason: Being parent is a unique opportunity to grow a human to your values, and hopefully leading to success. I don't see why I should adopt someone else's values.
Sticking to your values is all well and good but being willfully resistant to introspection is the problem. Assuming your values are always good and never without bias is lying to yourself. Nobody is perfect.
My parents tell me VERY convincing stories about how I had a great childhood and they did the best they could. They fucked me up in ways they could have never imagined and at times they just CAN'T understand why what they taught me isn't helpful or useful.
Pass on values to your kids but make sure you're not giving them blind spots too. This requires honesty and self evaluation most people are unwilling to engage in.
Genesis 1:28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth..."
There's no reason this childless person can't change his situation if he's capable of caring for a kid.
That's not to mention that at 72 years old, there's a good chance he's going to keel over and leave that child fatherless pretty soon. Super traumatically too because guess who's going to find his body after he passed in his sleep?
It also doesn't stop him from fostering.
- Adoption/fostering isn't actually a guarantee for all people. It's a challenging process that may or may not be successful.
- Just some gentle advice: mentioning "just adopt" to people suffering infertility is considered a faux-pas. It's best to avoid it.
This society is completely broken. My craving to return to the 1980s and 1990s is just getting worse and worse.
We replaced so many functioning structures with an ocean of mirages.
I legitmately have not seen an adult man who looks and acts like an authority figure should, in about fifteen years.
I literally cannot take 90% of 'authorities' seriously. Their advice is self-serving and just telling the truth about circumnstances is enough to end the conversation and burn out emotions, never mind getting to the point in the conversation where an informed decision could be made.
Discipline in the management structure used to be the backbone of society, now every level is scheming for themselves, and breaking the structure to get there. Or just low effort incompetence, understandable in the chaos. Or just friends killing time, promoting friends and family.
Everybody's here today, gone tomorrow in commitment and planning and structuring some jobs is a chaotic nightmare.
People keep leaning harder and harder into tech to ASSERT authority. Not a gosh darn soul in this country actually believes or cares what their phones/scheduling system tells them. The apps update every few weeks anyway and we can all sense the impending global lockdown coming, so why bother.
And in this chaos we have to commit to literally any woman, have kids and a house and gamble our lives on the churn.
Society used to be predictable and rational, now the media has gone to the dogs, the 'adults in the room' are not believable and are pushing more tech tyranny.
There's literally nobody to turn to. Grifts and false hope is virulent. Churches just want you to do their thing, with zero practical application in the short term. The media is a total clusterF.
The compassion from the comfortable families is a dismissive band aid, so they can go back to ignoring reality.
If I were younger I'd join the military just for the permenant sense of order.
Now don't mind me, I'm going to waste another 6 months battling C++ without anything to show for it, because solving some small tech problems is my best bet at keeping my sanity and providing a sense of achievement, that I <insert real name here> did something that was believable and good, before I lost it all to government and time.
All people want from a regular joe, is to control him. Literally everyone and their dog gives their condemnation and their gut reaction as 'advice'. Then if you don't immediately comply, it's taken as sufficient reason to ignore you.
Life hurts and then you die. Where is the children in that?
waves my countries' flag sardonically
No. It really wasn’t. Read some history books.
There was nothing uniquely great about the 80s-90s.
Impending global lockdown? You might be well served from a lot less time online and more time with your fellow humans or nature.
I don't need history books and I'm not going to correct you. It's a waste of 'breath' if your intial reaction is that.
It is easy to doubt, doubt is cheap.
When the time comes to say 'I told you so..' I won't want to and you won't want to remember.
Tell me why deaths of despair have jumped up 100k. Then I'll accept your casual dismissiveness. Dismissiveness that is ripe 'online'.
Answer: it's complicated.
https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/2019...
We could probably come up with a lot of things that have improved since the 80s and 90s too. That doesn't mean things are dramatically improving.
I hope you find some peace.
Please stop trying to gaslight people. I too would have thought such a thing impossible in 2019/early 2020, but we saw that that is not beyond our leaders. Many people in the world have a lot of trauma from the government-imposed lockdowns and subsequent seizing of basic human freedoms. Unfortunately, one is often unable to mention this trauma without being dismissed as a kook, which you are doing to OP.
Please stop. Global lockdowns are now a thing that has happened and -- given the right circumstances -- may happen again. Given how recent it was, people should be cut some slack, even if you perceive them to be hyper-vigilant.
The only surprising or novel thing about the "global lockdowns" of 2020 was the degree of international cooperation on the matter, and even that - positive though it was - left a lot to be desired. It certainly didn't signify any kind of ominous freedom-hating shadow government. Pandemic-driven quarantines, crisis-driven restrictions on movement etc are hardly unprecedented in the 20th century. "Basic human freedoms" are subject to restriction when lives are at stake, that's just a fact of life. Londoners in 1940 weren't even allowed to turn the light on.
There’s a very significant difference between “the coming global lockdown” and global lockdowns have happened and might happen again under the right circumstances.
There is no gaslighting, a term massively overused and often wrongly, in questioning and pointing out the paranoia in the former statement.
The person I was replying to seems to have a very dim view of the current and future. They reference the increase in “deaths of despair” and I think that online negativity only provide further fuel.
In America, war (as defined by a loss in civil liberties) has not happened for over 80 years (true wars must be actually... declared by Congress). The various military engagements since then have not arisen to the same level of mobilization as an actual war.
Nevertheless, COVID was not a war, and the impositions were not made after a majority vote of Congress. They were just... imposed. That is sufficiently different. Claiming that COVID lockdowns were justified because similar reductions in civil liberties have happened in war, despite COVID sharing no characteristics with a war, is the epitome of gaslighting. A pandemic does not justify the mass removal of civil liberties. Honestly, when it's been done in war, it's always been seen as a necessary evil, whereas most lockdown supporters instead seem to view the lockdowns, as you seem to do, as an unalloyed good.
I said there are other circumstances where civil liberties were restricted and war was a common one, not that they were justified or anything else you’ve said. Civil liberties have been restricted in past pandemics as well.
I’m not going to debate the rest of what you said because it’s a response to an argument that I didn’t make, but it’s largely wrong.
Not universally throughout the country, no. There has been none.
I can't take seriously anyone who claims the COVID response was anything other than unprecedented
0.5% of the US population died due to the Spanish Flu.
Look, I understand where you're coming from, but I don't know that you would actually prefer 1918 policies if the same scenario were to be replayed in the present day.
You say
> And all the warning they get is a random guardian article in the slew of media rain.
The truth is some decisions take a long time to 'make good'. I can assure you any father having kids will, at times when his newborn is fussy, his toddler annoying, not see the wisdom or 'practical application in the short term' of his decision to have kids.
You clearly realize that there are some things society ought to tell people that they will only understand at a very large picture.
Yet you then criticize churches, the source of many traditions in the West that I'm guessing you like, as having zero practical application in the short term.
I would suggest you change that and give it a real go.
Change to what? Authority is clamping down, my church leaders tell me I have no choice(s). Random adults in society are shooting down the idea of free will. I don't recognize myself when I look in the mirror. I am guilty of despairing.
You guys are going to 'operationalize' psychology and data, (aka men), in favour of maintaining 'planetary boundaries'.
I am conscious of all this, and the huge amount of responsibility I have for my family and their lives.
What is the point of a self, if we are all surrendering to unknowable, electronic control. What's the point of being conscious at all.
There are no ropes/levers/relations to oneself in my heart.
I was an institutional man in the 90s, I used to be myself in relation to a larger structure, built on relations and goals and achievements within it. It was heavenly.
Now my soul dies everyday, as we drift further from the light.
I just cannot get up every morning and answer a text message on a phone from a random boss and pretend I relate to it.
It is difficult having to watch yourself become the villian in relation to yourself, just to survive some unknown global change.
The same adults that describe how lovely airports were before 9/11 security (an older pilot I spoke to), are the ones in favour of stricter and stricter control.
The problem is that I can understand. I was raised to understand, analyze, critically think, interpret, calculate.
Important facts take forever to mine out of public sources, no strategic knowledge is communicated (that I can act on) and we can only observe the changes and interpret, nearly always coming to pointless narratives, but not wanting to forget the past, or the self.
How can one plan their life (or even relate to themselves) when everything changes every 2 years. Order 66 can't come fast enough, so we can have an end to the cycle of betrayals and 'unpromises'.
In conclusion, go away with the preachy suggestions that have no substance that we (or me) could bank on.
I haven't been banned (even though I'm often abrasive-ish), so I'm grateful for that, at least.
Politicians have always been self-serving liars, that was no different in the 1980s and 1990s. Instead ancient relics pushing "tech tyranny", there were ancient relics pushing state-sanctioned racism openly.
Titans of industry like Jack Welch were given vastly inflated and undue amounts of respect for financial engineering tricks and clever marketing. And half the upper management of any sizeable company was snorting cocaine.
Crime was several times worse than it is today. Yellow journalism has always been a thing albeit perhaps cyclical in prominence.
> Instead, he said: “There’s this mistaken belief that men are fertile across their lifespan, so there’s no imperative to get on with it.”
As they get older, the chance of random infertility increases but this is something that's present at any age.
The bigger impediment would be age difference though. I wouldn't want to have a child in my 50s as I'd be so out of sync with their life.
I'd wager most of these men who are sad they missed out would rather have a child at 50 than never at all.