Comment by dingnuts | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dingnuts | Hacker News Reader

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working and travelling on occasion -- "on an average net salary" implies not actually quitting your job -- is not what the GP described.

The GP described quitting their job and going traveling for an entire decade, which is an incredible luxury over an enormous timespan that only the luckiest will ever be able to enjoy. The fact that the GP then chooses to treat this gift as though it makes him better than his colleagues who had to stay and work for that decade is.. frankly just gross. "They stood still" no bud, they had a life experience that 99% of the world population has no choice but to experience. Maybe instead of being pretentious about your experiences, try gratefulness?

I say this as a "privileged" tech worker, with "only" a six figure salary. I could quit my job and go traveling, maybe for a year, and then be broke and set far back on my retirement goals, and my hopes of ever retiring. And I could only do that if I was tremendously selfish, like you: choosing to have no kids, choosing to allow the elders in my family to face poverty instead of proper end of life care, etc.

If you have the ability to not work and travel for a DECADE of your life, I suggest you have an immense gratitude towards everyone else keeping society running while you luxuriate, instead of pretending as though the fact that you've had this opportunity somehow makes you superior to those who had to work

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together;)

I did make a choice, and it didn’t involve all that much luck beyond what everyone here has, a lucky break in a good career and a high income birth country. Actually there was bad luck, my partner and I were laid off at the same time. Sometimes the good comes from the bad.

I don’t think I am better or worse, but I do push myself always to experience new things. It’s hard to imagine my life any other way, but then lots of people are deeply passionate about things that I’m not going to understand and vice versa.

I think it’s interesting that you call not having children a selfish act. Having biological children always struck me as very egocentric. For me I have no choice. I am gay and our families live in places where one day in the not too distant future LGBTQ couples could have their children taken away. Maybe that would have been a good road to walk down, but it was not my road to take.

It’s also interesting what you project onto me around elder care. What I see is that most people I know live far from their parents and families. They spend their whole professional lives in major cities and visit home maybe 2 weeks a year. That pattern of life doesn’t make sense to me. I love my family and want the flexibility to see them often. If they needed money or needed care, I would give it to them, but they have no need. Besides spending some of the year near them, I know that I inspired them to travel more and take bigger risks in their retirement. I know I have helped enrich their lives. We will go on a few trips together this year and I never have to decline an invite because of not enough PTO.

If there’s something about your life you feel trapped in and unhappy with, try to change it!

> Having biological children always struck me as very egocentric.

How else should people have children? Someone's genes are required, even if you do it in a test tube.

I guess I have a different perspective since having children naturally is not in my cards. Needing the child to be genetically related to me through IVF vs. adopting always seemed a bit self centered.

> The GP described quitting their job and going traveling for an entire decade

You replied to the person who wrote the GP. I don't see anything in their post that confirms not working - they just work remotely, as the post you are replying to confirms.

> And I could only do that if I was tremendously selfish, like you: choosing to have no kids, choosing to allow the elders in my family to face poverty instead of proper end of life care, etc.

This is deeply unfair. Choosing not to have kids is not selfish at all. By some metrics it's even laudable, but you don't have to go that far to simply not condemn people who make that choice. And you have no idea how much they make or whether their parents are "facing poverty". Perhaps their parents died younger. Perhaps they have excellent retirement savings. Perhaps OP is one of seven children who contribute equally to their parents' care. You don't know.

I'm in full agreement with you that traveling like this is a privilege of the wealthy. But I think the way you condemn it falls pretty flat.

You’ve already been called out but I feel like confessing that I thought the “no kids” decision was selfish until I had kids.

For various reasons I won’t bore people with, I now go out of my way to tell young people that they should feel absolutely no obligation to do have kids. Yes, as animals it’s our collective responsibility to bring up the next generation of our species, but that doesn’t mean every individual should, and it’s awful to feel forced into doing so if you aren’t comfortable with the very real risks. And the risks are worse than I ever thought. And I don’t even have it the worst.

Sorry to hear that. My mom and two of my sisters and my brother in law all work in childhood disability social work. When I was young I went on a lot of home visits or visited my mom’s workplace. The bundle of joy narrative broke down for me at a pretty early age as I witnessed a lot of heartbreak and impossible struggles. Funny how those stories never seem to show up on social media or only the ones with happy endings.

Yup. I felt like some kind of massive failure or something for the first 4 years because I didn’t even know what was wrong and I basically didn’t know any other parents had struggles this bad. Now I still feel terrible because everything sucks, but I know it’s not all my fault or normal.

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