Two Incomes, No Kids is really an easy-mode shortcut to life. My wife and I can fully devote ourselves to our hobbies and interests without shame or judgement. All of these parenting articles sound exhausting for the participants.
99% of the time, no one on the proverbial soccer field honestly cares about your family setup - they are more worried about what's for dinner.
Never understood this shame and judgement. Can you explain a little more?
I don't find kids/parenting exhausting at all. They actually give me power to do more, to do better for them, my wife and myself.
I’ll take your word on your intent. But so you might understand my reaction, it’s often the case that people ask these questions in full awareness of those possible answers—asking them as a form of social pressure to undermine the former option and/or to reinforce and exploit the latter.
Whenever the thought even feels like it's beginning to pop up, I visit friends/family with children, and those thoughts magically go away.
I do wonder if DINKs have higher or lower divorce rates during childrearing years. I've known many couples who divorced after the kids got out on their own. They weren't staying together "for the sake of the kids" but raising children together was something that bound them together in a common mission. Once the kids were out on their own and established in their lives, the parents found they didn't have much in common and had different ideas on how to spend the rest of their lives. Do DINKs find their own common purpose that keeps them together or do they have a different relationship structure that really doesn't need one?
I have everything I want and need, and no baggage anchoring me to a place (not attached to my parents, so if they need elder care, sucks to be them).
My wife and I constantly remark how nice our life is and wouldn't change it for anything.
I don't want to read into your family situation at all, but this seems like an extremely weird thing to say to your pre-teen. Could she not wait for you to be a bit older?
But I want to throw in that this is not the default experience. For example, my wife and I love taking care of our little kids although it's obviously challenging. The thing you get out of it is that it's deeply meaningful. I had "more fun" single (eg, would go to 20 countries every year) but to continue that lifestyle, childless, into my 40s, would have been sad. In contrast, I now love being a suburban dad who's all about the family.
Similarly, as our parents age we know we will be there for them even if that presents its own challenges. There's no part of me that would feel better if I told my kids and parents to go fucks themselves to focus on my hobbies.
I guess it goes back to the parents. Our parents modeled good parenthood for us and we want to keep doing it, and to also repay them as they need us. It's not an onerous obligation - we're happy to do it. But we're lucky to have had good parents.
If you create ideas, help people, etc then that outlives you too. It’s unfortunate your parents weren’t able to explain it like this.
I wouldn’t worry about college cost. That stuff is getting disrupted.
I’m not saying not to enjoy the time we have here, but that doesn’t mean that that comes easy or that the burdens of existence are ones I would wish on a child.
I will also say that if you are concerned about future people, I would endeavor to take on climate change in any way I could if I were you. That sure isn’t looking too good either. It actually makes me quite glad I never wanted children due to all the above stuff; it’s another conversation I’m glad I’ll never have to have. Frankly I’m continually stunned that more parents aren’t outraged over what we’re doing to the world. I’m sure they have more near-term worries (as I said they’ve got to pay exorbitant college bills and all that), but the consequences sure look like they’re already starting to bite.
I am convinced that now that "peak oil" is no longer a popular concern, exactly 0 people said "oops, I guess I should have had kids" - they just pivoted to using climate as their retroactive justification for their decision.
So you're right to observe that the kinds of people who become parents are less likely to be paralyzed by climate anxiety but I suspect there is a very strong self-selection bias in either group, and if climate was "solved" tomorrow, people with existential anxiety would find something else to justify their anxiety with.
The fact is there was always "a reason" to be existentially anxious: plagues, poverty, communism, nuclear, terrorism, etc. And yet people who "ignored" those problems and went on to have kids were right to do so.
I would add the certainly of death and the extinction of consciousness and all you ever were to that list, but as we've established, I'm a bit preoccupied with that one personally.
Have you considered that there are more authoritative sources of climate science than your "crazy-looking substitute teacher"?
Why would or should there be, though?
People can find meaning in many things and you can create challenges or struggles for yourself to overcome in other ways, should you desire it.
This mindset sound like a coping mechanism people tell themselves to make the struggle somehow feel more tolerable.