People will tell you whatever they like or has worked for them: have kids, get married, upskill in a certain field or w/e, but there's a small likelihood that this will also work for you.
Take charge of your life and stop delegating your choices to other people. You don't need to solve the world's problems, but your own.
So many people have kids being mentally not prepared because they have their own sort of issues. They end up adding yet another human being with many issues to this world, which has enough plenty.
Don't go work in a field because their family or friends told them to do it. But they end up hating it, or just not really being excited enough about it to succeed at it.
And so on. There'll be plenty of people wanting to give advice either for egotistical reasons or to make their own audience (like on social media platforms). But they won't be accountable for your life on your outcomes, you are the only person accountable for yourself.
You can read a few books and decide for yourself whether the contents make sense, and if there's anything you would take the risk to follow through. But don't make the mistake of thinking that because of somebody wrote a book about a subject, or because an anonymous post on the internet has a lot of upvotes, that this should also matter to you. You make your own choices, always.
The only real tip that should function well for all human beings is taking care of yourself and visiting the doctor regularly: exercise/sports(whatever works for you) and also find some activities to keep your mind happy and working.
The more we learn about heritability and environment the stronger genetic determinism (at scale) gets.
If you are smart and relatively well off (as is your partner) have as many kids as you can.
The challenges we face in the coming century require as many of the best and brightest of us as possible.
There is too much people in the world already.. We have all the bright people we need already, we just need to cater and take care for the ones already here..
Until we can get around and have everyone already here feed and sheltered we should stop multiplying like rabbits..
in my opinion 1 kid is enough, 2 kids tops.. that is more then enough to keep us (humanity) around for a long time..
The Flynn effect reversed sometime in the mid 80s. The pattern is currently for less educated people and people in worse financial situations to have more children than those more well off.
That's significantly concerning given we have extensive evidence genes matter more than environment does in humans:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270739/
It is far more efficient in the long run for that trend to invert, and the average intelligence of the population plays a huge role in facing the challenges of the future successfully.
Pretending this is not a significant and increasingly dire problem does nothing but avoid confrontation with hard truths.
that was the same in the past of the now called developed countries, but as overall economy improved more people had access to better medicine, child mortality decreased and people raised above misery, all that mean that families did not had the need for as many kids as before..
In fact having more kids now can be detrimental in many places because kids can be expensive to raise..
So not only having many kids is no longer a necessity, it can be a financial burden that many families cannot take and lets be realistic that will not change anytime soon..
All in all i do not see why we should not make an effort ensure the people in worst financial situation have their situation improved.. And for the less educated people to be more educated.. And that not only in undeveloped countries but everywhere..
Last, but not least.. Let me tell you something.. People in undeveloped countries are just as smart as people anywhere else if you give then the change to achieve their full potential..
So i maintain my opinion.. we should worry to feed and shelter the people already here before we worry about reproducing like rabbits.. people can do wonders if they do not have to worry about their next meal..
But, again being realistic, i do not see any of this changing anytime soon as well.. but one can dream..
and i will not even comment on the racist implication that people in developed countries have better genes just because they are from developed countries..
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
It's probably not going to work by first finding out a potentially useful person. What I mean is: when you meet people who share a common interest, don't let the relationship die when one moves away, just try to keep in touch.
Anyway, I'm an antisocial introvert so maybe I'm not a good person to teach anyone how to network... (shrug)