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Comment by bell-cot | Hacker News Reader

Geezer* Perspective...

[*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.

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I feel like most young men have always wanted to extend their youth and avoid the responsibility that family life would bring. However, until recently (with easy access to birth control, abortion, and proper education) this wasn't really possible. You would accidentally have a child and be forced into the lifestyle you were trying to avoid. And most of the time things worked out and you were forced into a situation that's probably better for you rather than delaying it until it's too late. Now that we have 'choice' things are more difficult because you need to actually commit to something life changing. For most people it's impossible to know the 'right time' to do that or for them to have the courage necessary to take the change.

Wow yeah you really hit the nail on the head for me. My wife and I weren't trying to have kids but we weren't trying not to have kids either, if you get my drift. Looking back on it, if we had been "smart" about deciding when the right time would happen, we might never have had kids.

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.

The thing that struck me about having kids is that no individual task is all that hard, but there are a lot of them and you have to be available at all times. It can wear you down like any other on-call situation.

Something that still hits me (hard) is how you suddenly have to be a model, or at least try. You can't take the easy road anymore, little eyes are watching your every move.

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.

> It's more of the dramatically uncomfortable shift in perspective: Realizing I'm not the main character in this story

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.

The entire phrase 'trying for kids' is a neologism only enabled by birth control

For most of history, people just did what you did and had the results you did

On the contrary, "trying for kids" was accompanied by an elaborate ceremony to kick off the process. This big ceremony was often so successful that the kids would arrive 5 months after the ceremony!

one person can have a child in 9 months. so two people must be able to have a child in half that time. the math checks out.

Trying for kids means making sure you have sex at the right times of the month, something humanity has known about for millennia. Equally people not 'trying for kids' made sure to only have sex at the 'wrong' time of the month, again something humans have been doing for millennia.

Up until very recently, there was very little knowledge that pregnancy lasted nine months... even among the 'learned'. Old pregnancy manuals talk about pregnancies taking anywhere from a few months to many many months. Without ultrasound and HcG tests, there is very little indication a woman is pregant until she starts showing or feeling the baby (and even then, a new mother may not even notice until she's showing anyway).

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.

Quick comment about your first paragraph. There is a really strong signal that a woman is pregnant in absence of period.

If a woman's periods are regular and she experiences no bleeding in pregnancy. Many women's periods are not regularly, especially so if many woman are malnourished. Moreover, bleeding in pregnancy (esp early pregnancy) is fairly common. Thus, if you read older gynecological manuals, they clearly claim that pregnancy lasts some range of months. Most people realized that it was centered around 10 months, but there were many doctors claiming that the ranges were much higher than we'd accept today, because they had no reliable method to test for conception.

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.

How many millennia? Mary Beard in SPQR writes that the Romans had the right time of the month as wrong as they could.

My experience was that you will never feel "ready" to have kids, you just close your eyes and go for it.

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 don't understand why selfishness comes in this context. I'm considering if and when have children because not doing it would be reckless and egoistical playing with somebody else's life

Sure, it's ok to feel that way too.

That’s exactly my experience (typing with an eight week old sleeping on my chest. I can’t imagine feeling 100% ready before, but the 9 months leading up to the delivery is time to mentally shift and prepare for the enormous change.

i think the smart thing to do is to have kids when you are 20 and then enjoy life when you are 40. at that time you are much better off financially (unless you live in a country where you have to pay for your kids education maybe) which gives you a lot more freedom to explore your interests.

There's trades offs either way. Personally, I would rather have had the experiences I had in my 20's. Anything you can do in your 40's, you can do in your 50's or 60's. Some of the crazy (good and bad) you can experience in your 20's you don't get a chance to experience again. But, it's a trade off still.

i suppose that comes down to specific activities. pretty much everything that i did in my 20s i am still able to and am doing now.

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.

Looking back I don't think I would have been ready at twenty. Also I couldn't afford a house at the time but could at thirty.

the expectation to need to be able to afford a house before you can have kids is something that is very wrong with society today. (but at the same time the difficulties today to afford a house is also something that has gone wrong. and i suppose the expectation to have a house made more sense when it was still possible to afford one. either way something here needs to change.)

Eh it's rational to expect stable housing before having kids. Even during medevial time, while you don't have much freedom, you have at least the certainty and stability of a place to live and a role to play. I don't think modern society does that anymore.

well, over here, renting is considered stable housing because we have sufficient protection for renters. i keep forgetting that this is not the case everywhere.

That's an opinion an algorithm could come up with based on raw data, but in real life you will not enjoy life the same way when you are 20, especially given at what life stage other 40s are at in most societies.

well that's the thing.

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.

Erm, no. Jobless, homeless student with few kids. I will be very very sorry for my kids.

are you saying you are a homeless student with kids right now? or are you giving an hypothetical example?

hypothethical. sorry if not clear

no worries, i just wanted to avoid being insensitive.

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.

> i think the smart thing to do is to have kids when you are 20

Please, read that sentence again.

it appears you are coming from an area/culture where this idea is ridiculous or unheard of.

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.

> this way there is no problem with the young parents continuing their studies or working, because the household is managed by the grandparents

That doesn't bode well for the mentioned freedom and independence that you were going to get if you had children in your 20s.

you still have more freedom as a grandparent. it's more balanced. you are not locked in to take care of the grandchildren all the time

> but a young man whose main motive for marriage is "so I don't regret not having kids when I'm old"

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?

> 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.

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.

> 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"

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.

We're talking about what compels people to do something.

How does the chance of failure track here?

“It’s better to regret something you have done than to regret something you haven’t done.”

Mixed feelings.

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.

Another side of that is not having such obnoxiously specialized careers that every job change means having to move to a different state.

Not really. Starting a family is a leap in the dark. Always was, always will be. The only difference today is that people (may) have a lower risk tolerance, and a tendency to plan everything in advance. I had my first son with no house and no income. I just did the best I could, and things fell into place as I needed them.

I'm not trying to diminish your hardships, but the fact that everything worked out for you in the end is either the result of luck or (mild) privilege. Imagine that everytime somebody helped you out, that didn't happen?. how much worse off would you be right now? There are loads of people who are in your situation who don't have any family, or have a mental or physical handicap, or who happened to get twins instead of just one kid?

The start of a family will always be a leap of faith, but difference is if you start on solid ground or not.

Agreed. However, I also think that help does tend to "materialize" if you end up needing it. I've noticed that couples who make a lot of "wrong" decisions (e.g., financially, timing wise) end up getting help while couples who make the "right" decisions seem to get less help. And both types of couples end up with almost the same outcome.

Perhaps risk tolerance has remained the same, it's just that risk has gone high enough that it is outside of that risk tolerance. Taking on the task of raising a child when you can barely keep yourself fed is simply impossible from a risk assessment perspective. You are either not disclosing your full set of circumstances and they weren't as risky as you make them sound, or raised your child on the streets which most people would consider to be wildly irresponsible and bad for the child (I am assuming it is the former).

> where kids generally grow up and move far away for jobs - having had children would probably not help much with that.

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 was a big brother while single and in college. So it's likely still possible.

As the title says, it's not about not wanting kids, it's about thinking it will happen automatically.

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!

The reality is that for an average guy, earning a stable long-term relationship in the Tinder era is an enormous amount of work, to the point that many find this challenge insurmountable (at least 5% more men, than women, as we can see from the article).

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.

The elites don’t want you to know this but the regrets at old age are free you can take them home I have 458 regrets.

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."

Why is wanting to do X now so you don’t regret not doing X later not a valid reason for wanting to do X? I want to eat lunch now so I’m not hungry later. I want to study hard now so I don’t regret not studying later. Aren’t most motivations essentially based on the possibility of future regret?

depends on your personality. for me, most of my motivations are based on what I feel like doing right now

THIS. People vary greatly in how strongly they weight the present vs. the future when they are making decisions. (And they're often darn inconsistent - being (say) very-long-term in planning their career, yet reckless about their health and safety.)

(For anyone else not in the know: Geezer being USA slang for an old man apparently, or in Brittain just any man... I assume it's supposed to be the former)

// 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"

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.

> a young man whose main motive for marriage is "so I don't regret not having kids when I'm old"

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.'

People are actually moving less than years past.

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.”

The large majority of Americans live within 50 miles of where they grew up. And this number has been steadily ticking up. Geographic mobility is the lowest it’s ever been in the post war period.

I don't agree. You're making a big assumption that the person expressing regret actually wants something else, but that in my experience is not true.

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