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Comment by Afton | Hacker News Reader

The upside is that I was a total basket case in my 20s, completely incompetent to be able to raise a child. I'll leave it to my children on how it turned out in my 30s. Generally I'd expect older adults to have done a lot more maturing and increased ability to emotionally regulate, which is a really critical ability when dealing with the 4th day of 3 hours of sleep and a colicky baby (for example).

Also no point. But honestly, if you want people to have kids earlier, you need to make them think that their life won't be bleak if they do.

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I had my first daughter when I was 20 and grew up very quickly, I can distinctly remember it hitting me like a bus that I was now wholly responsible for a human.

She is an adult now and I couldn’t be any prouder of all she has achieved in life so far.

I also had two more kids in my 30s. It’s harder when you are older, but I’m financially better off so they can have things I couldn’t afford in my 20s. I do have more work responsibilities but it’s balanced by working from home so I get to be a big part of their lives, taking them to school, here when they get home, etc.

There are benefits either way, but I think if you are committed to being a decent parent, having them younger has more benefits in the long term. You get to be around for more of lives too.

>I can distinctly remember it hitting me like a bus that I was now wholly responsible for a human.

the problem of course being that some individuals never hit upon that realization -- and the statistics regarding the matter make it look like that revelation is more likely to come to an individual who is older, financially secure, and mentally well.

> It’s harder when you are older, but I’m financially better off so they can have things I couldn’t afford in my 20s.

I'm a second child with after a large age-gap. My brother was born when my mother was 16, I was born twenty years later. My parents routinely told me how much harder it was with my brother -- lack of cash and profession, the party lifestyle that comes with youth and college-life, constant moving for opportunity and cheaper housing, and an overall lack of time to dedicate to the kid due to the instability and struggle to keep afloat financially.

I was born at a time of great stability for them. They had professions, they could make their own schedules. They had time to participate in my schooling and extracurricular stuff. I had good food, good toys, good clothing, and a stable house. They let me voice my decisions because they had the time and freedom to consider options other than pure survival. I was told that I was the 'easy' one -- not because of my personality but because "The 70s sucked.", which is code for "We were young, poor, un-established and struggling."

So, after the anecdote I feel compelled to ask : Why do you think it is harder when you're older? You have more money, you have the power of flexibility within your scheduling that allows for participation in your childrens' growth and development -- is it simply a 'strength of youth' kind of thing?

I have no kids, I have no plans for them, so I ask just as a curiosity. The opinion varies wildly from person to person, and I think it's fascinating what kind of 'diversity of parenting' exists.

For one, grandkids. If I live as long as my dad, I’ll have 7 fewer years than he did with me and my wife and son.

My family brings me great joy.

We had our first kid when I was about 37, and our second when I was about 43.

The part that's harder is that particularly with #2, I'm just a bit more tired, and he needs a lot of energy. It's not drastic, but I notice it.

The part that's emotionally harder is that I'm sad I won't be there when my kids are approximately my age. I'd love to be around longer to help if they have kids, etc., but statistically, I don't think it's too likely. I lost my own mom two years ago and that was very hard. Barring some advances in health care, my kids are likely to lose me in their 30s-40s as well. Losing a parent is never easy, but I think it would be easier a little later. My kids only have one grandparent left and I wish they still had two.

The part that's easier is exactly what you note: Life is pretty stable. We're financially sound. We've had years of growth and therapy to learn to communicate well and have a healthy relationship with each other and our kids. We can afford to support our kids well, be that with high quality daycare when they were young, or an emergency mid-year school shift (that was interesting), or medically, or whatnot.

Lots of tradeoffs. I plan to make the most of my time with them while they're still young. There's no clear answer on the balance other than doing one's best.

This is exactly why I decided not to have kids. My mum had me at 40. I lost my dad when I was 23 and my mum at 44. I'm 47 now and it's frankly too late for me (I'm male, so theoretically I could father some) to have children now.

I’m sure you’re still a cool uncle and good influence to the youngins.

That's super sweet of you. Thank you. I do try my best.

As someone who's had kids at a similar age to you, yeah its not a nice thought not being around for them as long as you'd like to be. Especially the thought of them having lost their parents when still relatively young (e:g in their 30s). Your life expectancy estimate sounds possibly a little pessimistic to me. With modern healthcare, barring bad luck, trying to live to 85-90 might be not a crazy ambition? That'd involve being somewhat focused on not eating cr*p and trying to get a decent amount of exercise, nothing crazy but just a little bit of prioritisation. That's my approach anyway. I wonder if in time older parents will be found to have longer life expectancy because they have an extra incentive to look after their health?

> The part that's emotionally harder is that I'm sad I won't be there when my kids are approximately my age. I'd love to be around longer to help if they have kids, etc., but statistically, I don't think it's too likely.

This bothers me a lot, too (although I had my kids a couple of years earlier than you). Not just the physical presence, but also being physically and mentally fit when they're adults. I'd like to do sports, travel with them, help them move between apartments. I'd like to be mentally on the same page, not an old grumpy fart not understanding what they're thinking about. All of that can be done, but it simply gets more difficult with a larger age difference.

Another thing not yet mentioned is that it literally becomes physically more difficult to have children as you age. Female fertility starts to rapidly drop in their thirties, and many will hit menopause in their 40s. The exact age is somewhat random, and some women will even enter menopause in their 30s.

Before I had children I thought it would be relatively easy - that's why you use birth control after all. But when you actually have children you learn things like at best you're looking at, at best, a 10-30% probability per month if you hit the ~48 hour ovulation window just perfectly. That doesn't sound so bad - because a month isn't such a long time, and ovulation is pretty predictable. But when you start late each month matters, and then if you want to actually have multiple children, then you're already looking at a years long process.

And then add in that as you age, all sorts of birth defects and disorders like Down Syndrome become much more likely, and you can't effectively test for them until about halfway through the pregnancy. It's just not a great idea to start late. I'd also add that for us to have a sustainable population, everybody needs to be having more than 2 children on average. This is going to take a pretty substantial reshaping of society and culture, or our society and culture will simply go extinct.

> This is going to take a pretty substantial reshaping of society and culture, or our society and culture will simply go extinct.

It won't. You can't extrapolate the short-term recent trend to centuries. In the past, social/cultural/religious norms forced you to have children even if you didn't really have a great desire for them. This changed and now there will be selection pressure on personality traits which desire children.

I've been trying to convince my wife to have at least one child, but I'm afraid it's too late already. She's 43.

You've just made me think it would be a bad idea anyway at this point :(.

Oh well, at least I have many nieces.

I think it's more like start early > start late > start never. There's more hurdles, and less chance of success - but I definitely wouldn't say it's a bad idea. The worst that happens is nothing happens. I sincerely hope you two at least try. Good luck.

It seems like she just doesn't want to have kids.

> The worst that happens is nothing happens.

The worst thing that happens is the woman or the child suffers complications that result in short term or even life long sacrifices.

Not that it might be 51% or even 11% likely, but the odds certainly go up for a woman, and will likely influence her decision.

The risks of childbirth for a healthy woman, even 40+, are negligible. And the worst of issues for the child, like Downs, can be screened for with perfect accuracy. The most difficult part with aging is actually getting to the point of childbirth!

I also would emphasize that it's not like not having a child is without issues. Much of the West, including the US, is already suffering with from increasing isolation, depression, and other such issues. And aging, especially without family, is likely to only exasperate these issues. Friends that will last forever, don't. And it becomes more and more difficult to meet new people as you age. Places like Japan and South Korea may be a foreshadowing of where we're headed, and it's not pretty. See things like kodukushi - lonely deaths. [1]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodokushi

In a kinda similar boat, though less "trying to convince" and more "trying to decide if we want a kid". (Because really, the boat for multiple kids for us has sailed.) My wife's five years younger, but we only met three years ago, so it feels like we've been speed-running our relationship while simultaneously dealing with life and career stuff.

I live across the country from my nephew, but if I end up not having kids, he can look forward to notably more visits and funtime with the uncle.

I thought about replying with something exactly like this, but generally this sentiment gets downvoted to oblivion.

I’ll add that we waited longer than we should have, and while it’s hard to conclusively say we would have had an easier time earlier, we ended up spending hundreds of thousands in fertility treatments.

You always think you have more time, but as they say “it’s later than you think.”

> the problem of course being that some individuals never hit upon that realization -- and the statistics regarding the matter make it look like that revelation is more likely to come to an individual who is older, financially secure, and mentally well.

For some it is really never.

Do you mind sharing how your brother and you turned out in terms of career, family, and general life happiness? Sorry for an overly personal question, but I'm very curious as a parent myself with my own theories about the craft.

Everyone's life is completely different, and their choices are their own. It seems you made the right choice for yourself, and I hope your kids agree.

I will say though, I think there's a chicken and egg element in this line of thinking.

A part of my thinks that being childless in twenties provides space that facilitates being a basket-case.

I think that having a child immediately makes most people at least 50% more responsible, and 85%+ within a year.

Again, there's a huge range here for people who: - Never get better - Their 85%+ still isn't really responsible enough.

Unsolicited 2 cents from a guy who had a kid in his twenties

To borrow terms from RFC 2119, "having a child makes people more responsible" is a SHOULD, but statistically, turns out to be a MAY. (#survivorBias: people are likely to acknowledge this, if they did turn out to actually be more responsible - "turned out GREAT for ME", emphasis added. The other case, not so much.)

However, I feel like the age of a parent is a factor, sure - but it's not an overwhelming factor...

Not a parent, but I feel the same about myself. Having a kid at 22 would’ve been a mess to say the least. Looking back at that age halfway through my 30s, at that point I wasn’t much more than an overgrown 16 year old that could legally walk into a bar who wouldn’t get his head screwed on quite right for another 6 years or so at minimum.

I think a potential problem (depending on ones point of view) is that when parents wait till they are responsible they tend to have one, maybe two kids, which is below replacement rate. When coupled with things like costs, you end up with a rapidly shrinking population.

Cost and support networks are both big factors here. 30-somethings are probably more likely to have replacement rate or more if it’s affordable to do so and there’s family/friends around to lend a hand, but few enjoy such circumstances.

Things like remote work could’ve helped here, allowing couples to live near family instead of wherever the best employment prospects exist currently, but the RTO push prevented that.

The (lack of) social prestige for pregnancy and motherhood among UMC women is a bigger factor. Women have been indoctrinated to place career first and only.

Try saying "soccer mom" with an admiring tone instead of a sneer if you want to understand this.

Is it possible women could want financial independence without being indoctrinated?

Or are they incapable of desiring power over their own lives, perhaps unlike men?

Of course a lot of people would like financial independence. Young working women (and men) of today normally have almost no financial independence, because they are indebted or renters. They have to work a salary job or be out on the streets.

A stay at home mother in the past with a part time job had much more financial independence together with her husband than most working young people have today, even though they get fancy titles now.

Basically the current elderly generation used indoctrination to turn their children into serfs in some kind of foolish attempt to end humanity.

Also to remember is that traditionally in most cultures, the wife in the family controlled the household's finances.

> Young working women (and men) of today normally have almost no financial independence,

A greater proportion of women today have more financial independence than they have ever had in the past.

> A stay at home mother in the past with a part time job had much more financial independence together with her husband

This is financial dependence, not independence.

> Basically the current elderly generation used indoctrination to turn their children into serfs in some kind of foolish attempt to end humanity.

Nonsense. I imagine it is pretty insulting for a woman to read that they could only be capable of wanting control of their own lives if they were fooled into it.

> Also to remember is that traditionally in most cultures, the wife in the family controlled the household's finances.

Also nonsense. In almost every culture, for almost all of time, women did not have power over the family’s assets, much less the ability to earn enough to power a family. They were and are literally married off because they were liabilities. Inheritances passed down to sons instead of daughters. And umpteen other examples.

This is ignoring that even with legal/social mechanisms that provide women equal access to power as men, biology throws them a curveball every month with the effects of menstruation cycles and the effects and risks of pregnancy/childbirth.

> This is financial dependence, not independence.

Do you really think that somebody who owns their own house and has supplementary income is less independent than somebody who works full time and owns nothing? The first has the option to stop working, the second will be out on the streets if they do.

> Nonsense. I imagine it is pretty insulting for a woman to read that they could only be capable of wanting control of their own lives if they were fooled into it.

Both women and men, and yes, the indoctrination is massive to convince the young generations that they want to work full time at an extremely elevated productivity and still not afford to own their homes to have families.

> Also nonsense. In almost every culture, for almost all of time, women did not have power over the family’s assets, much less the ability to earn enough to power a family.

Then you are ignorant of history regarding this, which is your problem and not mine. I trust that you will deny this even if you read about it and find out. Just say "Nonsense!" and shut it out.

We are simply living in different realities. In mine, women only (relatively) recently obtained the right to vote, and have legal systems that try to prevent discrimination against them in the labor market. And this is not even worldwide.

In the world I live in, many or most women are still contending with uneven workloads in the home:

https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/real-reason-south-koreans...

>and grueling workplace norms that are inhospitable to family life, especially for women, who are still expected to do the bulk of housework and child care.

>Do you really think that somebody who owns their own house and has supplementary income is less independent than somebody who works full time and owns nothing? The first has the option to stop working, the second will be out on the streets if they do.

False dichotomies, and also most women did not own their own house outright and have supplementary income. Either in laws own it, or they had mortgages and had to work outside the home, or they were expected to do all the housework. There was no option to stop working (housework is work).

I think we are living in different realities yes. And also, none of us are living in the past to really know how things were. We can not rely too much on the testimony from the elderly generation, because they are known liars and cheats.

But what we can do is try to look at things today in the most logical way possible. Why should young men and women work hard and be highly productive at their careers? For financial independence and freedom says you and others, and that makes it worth foregoing having families. But the fact is that young people are more broke than ever. They are working hard and are highly productive, but all their productivity is eaten by taxes, profits and land rent (either outright rent or a mortgage). They didn't get the financial independence they were promised. So they've sacrificed everything and become erased from history and from the genome in exchange for almost nothing. To the benefit of other people who are reaping all their productivity, not least the elderly generation.

Why would somebody do that voluntarily to themselves? What sane person would forego taking care of their own family, people who love them, to instead sacrifice their life to take care of shareholders, political rulers and unrelated beneficiaries of their labour. All of them who are at best completely indifferent to the welfare of young workers who are supporting them.

It takes some indoctrination for that, most importantly schooling, which indoctrinates children to stay locked in a place for 8 hours a day, five days a week, and put obedience to authority as the most important thing in life.

> Either in laws own it

Those in-laws didn't live forever, and I think this is something crucial to the whole issue that the article brings up.

> or they were expected to do all the housework.

If you limit the definition of "housework" to anything the woman is expected to do and nothing the man is expected to do, I guess.

Independence is cool and all that, but I'd rather go with the teamwork of marriage and family.

Power over their own lives... well, I'd say both men and women give it up in marriage, at least in a functioning, idealistic one.

If you want absolute power over your own life, and your goal in life is financial independence, that's okay, but maybe marriage and family is not for you.

You can simply ask whether women really are financially independent today: You have student debt, mortgage costs, credit cards etc on one hand and the necessity of keeping that job once you're "independent" of your family and significant other on the other hand. How independent are you if you're paycheck to paycheck?

> How independent are you if you're paycheck to paycheck?

This is a useless measure of independence in the context of this discussion since it applies to men and women. When discussing differences in genders, obviously we are discussing one gender being able to achieve more financial independence than the other due to laws/customs/discrimination.

> You can simply ask whether women really are financially independent today: You have student debt, mortgage costs, credit cards etc on one hand and the necessity of keeping that job once you're "independent" of your family and significant other on the other hand.

Student debt is optional and highly variable, mortgage is irrelevant in this discussion since it applies to men and women, credit cards are also highly variable, and the job thing was also irrelevant as pointed out above.

Also, note that 99% of women (and men) in 99% of the world for 99% of history have never had or been in families with enough wealth such that they did not have to work. They simply worked for their own family, with no explicit pay, and hoped they would get a sufficient spot at the decision making table.

But all of that is irrelevant anyway. The question is does my daughter have the same opportunities available to her as my son? Or would she have to hope for having nice in laws while my son could aim for the stars and secure a high paying job?

It is possible to live well enough to raise children with "a job", requiring high school or maybe two-year technical college training, instead of a four year college degree and postgraduate degree as is required for "a career". A job with flexible hours.

Women have been indoctrinated (as have men) to see "a career" as preferable.

Independence is a complete illusion, especially in our modern globalized world. Someone has to pay you the money, so even if you go as a solo entrepreneur selling real stuff that you made yourself, you largely depend on your customers at least.

The reality is that it is extremely stressful and for most people with no guarantee of how it will work out overtime.

And the fact is that it is much better to have one person focused on getting the ressource while the other runs the household, "making" other humans in the process.

It could be the man at home, but most woman don't actually want that even if they may say so to win an argument; and there is the added problem that only woman can make other human being.

Then you have people complaining that our society doesn't make babies anymore, well maybe if we didn't push the bullshit of independence on woman we wouldn't have this problem...

The sneer of "soccer mom" isn't that she's a mother busy raising children. It's that she's too busy shuffling the kids between enrichment activities to take the downtime to be their mother. That and her children are her personality.

add that waiting longer also increases the replacement rate.

Don't worry, there's plenty of irresponsible people out there still. And the planet is thankful for a bit of steady decline in population.

The planet doesn’t care either way. The question is what’s best for the humans - and those things or beings that humans value.

the component that is getting lost in our culture, which in other cultures is still more present is that grandparents play an active role in helping the young parents to raise their children. in chinese culture for example the young couple moves in with the husbands parents, and so grandparents are always around to give advice and help.

when our first was born we moved to live a few km from the grandparents, and there was always someone nearby to help and to show us how things are done.

oh, and going with the theme of the article, great-grandpa from my wifes side was still around, but my son does not remember him now.

and as my dad was the youngest of 7 kids, i just barely remember his parents.

> the component that is getting lost in our culture, which in other cultures is still more present is that grandparents play an active role in helping the young parents to raise their children. in chinese culture for example the young couple moves in with the husbands parents, and so grandparents are always around to give advice and help.

That's great if the grandparents are good people. Not so much if they aren't.

This retort is true of literally everything involved in raising kids.

Substitute "parents" "preschool teachers" "sports coach" &c. for "grandparents" in the sentence and it's still true for the domain for the children. It's true that with grandparents you have a maximum of 4 to choose from, but you might not have more than 4 preschools to choose from either.

Arguably you can chose other teachers and coaches and daycare

What about crappy parents?

Exactly. That's the distinction. While you can chose other people in most roles for your kids, you cannot pick their grandparents.

You have up to 4 grandparents to choose from (in the case where all 4 are still living, but separated).

The best part about being a mature parent is that you have much more control over how you raise your kids. No way in hell did I ever trust teachers, grandparents, coaches, etc. over my actual parents.

My parents were in their 30s when I was born. Their skepticism not only decoupled them from depending on people they didn't trust, but their perspective rubbed off on me and set me up for success. Older parents have no problem showing their kids the reality of the world early on.

Individualism is not a bad thing at all if only you could convince all these people stuck in the past. This world will fall apart if we don't focus on higher quality parenting from the actual parents. Since long ago we've been saying we don't want "kids raising kids". My parents weren't the only ones thinking this way.

> That's great if the grandparents are good people. Not so much if they aren't.

This is specious. If they are particularly awful, their kid probably won't want anything to do with them raising his/her kids.

you can't choose your parents obviously, but having parents so bad that you don't want them in your life is not the norm. you have my sympathies if that is your experience.

for most people the problem is not that they don't want their parents around, but that the parents don't feel like helping as much as their kids would need it. and here the culture makes a difference.

my wife was not her mothers favorite. girls in china were always treated as secondary. and according to their tradition we should have been living with my parents. they favored their son and his wife in everything, and yet they did what they could to help their daughter, because that is simply what what grandparents in china do regardless of how well they relate to each other.

but in our culture it's not, and whether grandparents are willing to help varies a lot, and it depends on the relationship to their kids

Additionally, in generational cycles where you can maintain or exceed your parent's class status without moving away.

Whole swaths of the US don't have enough good jobs to maintain a middle class lifestyle for kids of middle class parents.

And parents are working longer as well, meaning that overlap is less likely to happen.

I went to my grandparents every Wednesday. My mom just retired, my kids are 12 and I didn't have kids until my 30s.

There's so much about life that has changed the fabric of families in the last few decades

> in chinese culture for example the young couple moves in with the husbands parents, and so grandparents are always around to give advice and help.

Same for Indians. And 90% of Indian dramas are about mother in laws butting heads with daughter in laws.

Obviously, a daughter in law that earns sufficient money herself is not going to give up her agency, and many in laws who are expecting the deference they had to give their in laws when they were young are going to have trouble meshing with the new power dynamic.

But only 20% of Indian women are in the workforce, due to culture--family honor concerns.

It is due to those Indian women not having the opportunity to earn money. If you look at American women who are children of Indian immigrants, the rate is much higher, because women have a far easier time obtaining higher income jobs in the US (or UK/Aus/Can/other developed countries).

But that is rapidly changing amongst the upper classes in India too, almost everyone will support their daughter to get as good of an education as they can and secure as good income earning opportunities as they can.

Children of immigrants rapidly absorb the core culture of their new country. Especially when in grants them greater independence.

The upper classes in India are a rounding error, maybe the population of Spain at most.

Edit: you are right that it's a trade-off. In Bangladesh keeping women at home may mean starvation, so they are grudgingly allowed to work.

28% of Indian students are enrolled in higher education. The gender split is 52:48 in favor of males.[1] For the US those numbers are 39% and 45:55 (more women than men).[2] Since they're from different sources the participation rates might not be directly comparable shrug but the gender stats should still be applicable.

At least going by that, there doesn't appear to be a great deal of "lock your girls and women away" going on over in India.

1. https://opportunities-insight.britishcouncil.org/news/news/i...

2. https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/college-enrollment-sta...

Sure, they go to college. Which makes the low labor force participation rate even more of a tragedy for them and the country.

> in chinese culture for example the young couple moves in with the husbands parents, and so grandparents are always around to give advice and help

That's a common mode. Another common mode in Chinese culture is that the young couple lives separately from their parents, and the child is raised by the grandparents, rarely seeing its parents.

I thought you were going to say it for a minute there - the cultural component that you speak of that I feel is missing in our US culture during the younger years is 'duty'

I was also a mess in my 20s and i had a lot of growing up to do to prepare for kids. Yet. Even after kids, I didnt really grow up quickly enough until kids forced the issue.

Having kids and being responsible for someone else who is solely deoendent on you to have a shot at decent life is a monumental duty. I did not have this imprinted on me and I can see why. Our values today are very different from those of my parents and grandparents, and I think that's the big difference.

Im not sure how we lost that as a culture. Maybe its bad leaders (bill Clinton affair etc), loss of religion, loss of community time due to diminished economic opportunity locally (flyover states, most former industrial towns and even cities), economic migration to large metros breaking family ties, all certainly played a role.

it seems correct to say that duty was the slowly boiled frog in the pan, and it looks increasingly hard for the frog to jump out

> Maybe its bad leaders (bill Clinton affair etc

I would add to this the increasing speed and volume of news. I don't know whether today's leaders are truly worse so much as that were all just much more aware of their failings than we were in the past.

There are no secrets these days.

I also think there's an aspect of societal propaganda breaking down in the face of the internet. "Duty" is a clearly artificial term, people are only bound to it so far as they believe in it. Society has gotten less good at convincing people to believe they have a duty.

We also have a lot of infighting between political and cultural factions that ruins the sense of shared obligation underpinning duty. It's hard to feel a duty to someone Fox News or Reddit has been telling you to hate your whole life.

I personally think it stems from a strong focus on individualism in the western (and, increasingly, the wider) world. We're all taught to prioritise our own needs over those of others around us, and go it alone if necessary to achieve that.

well, i think it is or was more than duty. it was necessity because your children were there to take care of you in old age. (and i have seen that in action with the great grandfather of my kids)

and there is also a sense of purpose. with the same conviction that young people work to provide for their family, which is something they learn to do because everyone else is doing it, grandparents simply see their purpose as taking care of their grandkids. i think that's much more than just duty. its their reason to live.

this is in part demonstrated by the distraught reactions by the hopeful grandparents when there are no grandchildren coming. (based on one person sharing their experience with me)

The boomer generation in general kind of broke this social contract. Too busy being eternal teenagers.

Yeah, same here. I don't think I was mature enough to have a kid at 22, apart from the fact that I was still studying, and when I started working I had low salary and needed to work long hours to fight for job stability in a competitive sector. However, it would likely have worked at 30, and reading through all this makes me think that it would have been better than waiting until 36 as I did.

Easier said (especially in retrospective) than done, though.

As someone who had his first kid at 23, you grow up real quick once you become a parent. Moreover I doubt it’s even possible for a person to fully mature if they don’t have kids. Or to really understand their own parents for that matter.

I often see people settled into being more financially responsible, and it's good. But not in term of personality maturity.

I was 24 and still in college. This thread is full of people saying "I was a mess" or "I wasn't mature enough".

When we found out we were pregnant, I was working at a gas station, my off hours spent riding around in a truck with my friends yelling things at people walking by on the street for reactions. There's maturity and stability.

Now I'm "ahead" of many of those friends because I knew I needed to hurry up and get things done. Didn't have time to rage quit jobs. Didn't have time to sit around and make less because it was easier.

So I agree with you. It tells me a lot about being responsible and mature. Most won't until they have to, and a kid has that effect.

What really cracks me up is that people have this expectation that they’ll ever be “ready” to have kids. Not going to happen. The whole thing reminds me of the first few minutes of “Idiocracy”.

> Moreover I doubt it’s even possible for a person to fully mature if they don’t have kids.

This is my favorite of the lies parents tell, it's so obviously nonsensical

I take it you don't have kids.

Emotional maturity is important, but there's also financial readiness.

People don't have extended families and villages to be nannies-on-demand anymore, so older parents have a lot more financial resources to raise kids and more likely to give the kid a comfortable life.

Especially when housing prices have gone up much faster than salaries in the past 30 years, and that is reflected not only in one's own mortgage/rent but also that you have to indirectly pay the rent increases of every Chipotle worker you interact with.

It's complicated. It's definitely true that we're less mature in our 20s than we are in our 30s. But, also, maturity doesn't just accumulate on us like growth rings. You can easily be a completely immature thirty-something if you don't have the kind of challenging life experiences that cause maturity.

Probably the number one life experience that increases maturity is having kids. If you'd had kids younger, you would have grown up faster too and earned some of the maturity needed to raise them well earlier.

Of course, there's an obvious counter-argument that no one should deliberately have children as a tool for their own person growth. That's fair. But it's also reality than you can never be fully prepared for any situation until you're in it. Sometimes you just have to accept that live is one long improv scene and do your best.

I'm not saying anyone should have kids early, or at all. But I think there's pernicious, unhealthy meme in our culture today that says kids deserve perfect parents and therefore no one should have children until they're perfectly prepared, but that's just an impossible bar.

A very close friend of mine was murdered at 18, his sister was a year younger and she matured very quickly as a result of this experience. She’s now in her early 20s and you’d assume she’s 35 by her personality and view points.

I wonder if you’d mind sharing some examples of her viewpoints? It’s not obvious to me what sort of maturity a sibling murder would induce. She moved to the suburbs already?

> no one should deliberately have children as a tool for their own person growth

I’m not suggesting you’re saying this, but there seems to be an idea floating around that any motivation to have children that incorporates your own good is evil. There is absolutely nothing wrong with anticipating and desiring an ancillary benefit to having children or from any other relationship for that matter. Yes, if it’s your primary goal then that is cold and inhuman since children have a right to exist and be loved and cared for for their own sake, and they and other people do not exist merely to sate your desires. However, the fact that they also sate one’s good and ordered needs and desires and that those are part of the equation of forming relationships and having children is perfectly natural and an unavoidable human experience across cultures and times.

> there seems to be an idea floating around that any motivation to have children that incorporates your own good is evil.

This is a really good observation.

Yes, there's a whole toxic thread in today's culture that if you are not 100% altruistic towards any dependent then you must be an evil person who is traumatizing them. It seems like there are a lot of people out there today who believe that no one is good enough to deserve to have kids or pets.

> The upside is that I was a total basket case in my 20s, completely incompetent to be able to raise a child.

You see, in a proper early childrearing situation, you would be a) near your parents and inlaws ideally b) they would share in the burden of child-rearing.

We had kids later in life (33-ish) and I think if I were to do it again, I'd have moved quicker to having kids earlier (waited 2 years to marry and 3 years before having first kid).

More and more people are living closer to their parents - which opens up this possibility.

A lot of this assumes so many things that I think people who were born and raised in stable UMC (like most on HN) take for granted.

Even if I lived close to the family I was born into, I would never let them get near my children. The years of neglect and child abuse are reason enough that they should never see them - let alone be caregivers.

Similarly, you’re assuming that your marriage would have gone smoothly still and so would the childbearing if you hadn’t waited. I was with someone for five years and we never got legally married. We talked a lot about kids and marriage. I still felt like we had years to go before we were ready for marriage and kids. We separated over financial differences once it became clear they were never going to resolve. Imagine we had ignored our intuitions and married and had kids based on arbitrary deadlines? It would have been terrible. The differences wouldn’t have solved themselves with marriage or kids - we would’ve gone separate ways and both would experience truly insane hardship due to such poor decisions.

Living near people who can take care of your kids sounds lovely if you grew up where all the jobs are. Not uncommon for many SV types here who grew up in Palo Alto and such but it’s farfetched for so many more.

We need better regulations to give better paid leave and lower the cost of housing so I’m not homeless when my spouse decides to stop working to take care of the kids.

I'm not denying your experiences - I was reasoning using my own. I did not have a typical upbringing - I'm felt like an outsider and went to a different school for like 7 years in a row.

Clearly your circumstances dictated your options. Nowadays, in this truly oligarchic economy, most young people simply don't feel they'll ever be able to afford a home or family either (which is a massive regression). Perhaps the future means - you raise your family in your parents house (with their help)... if you trust your parents.

Agreed about better support for families and housing.

Housing affordability has little to do with an oligarchic economy and everything to do with policy decisions we made to make housing expensive.

> A lot of this assumes so many things that I think people who were born and raised in stable UMC (like most on HN) take for granted.

You don’t have to be “UMC” to take those things for granted. All those things are normal in the third world village where my dad grew up.

Right, it’s less about economic class, more about cultural values.

I am so glad I waited until my late 30s to have a kid. It sucks not being as physically capable as I would've been, but being calmer and more understanding I think is a big help in child rearing.

Interesting how until recently people in their early 20s were perfectly capable of raising children, but today they’re not.

They just didn't know any better. The whole idea that everyone has to have children is frankly asinine. I want people to have fewer children. I want fewer people to have children. I want nobody to have more than two children.

The whole idea that population must grow and keep growing is silly. It is ok for the population to shrink a little.

> I want nobody to have more than two children.

> It is ok for the population to shrink a little.

The first idea is way more extreme than the second idea.

They didn't say "Nobody should be allowed to have more than two children". They simply have an opinion that people shouldn't, purposefully, have more than two children. Seems reasonable to me.

Yes, thank you. I'm not Mao. People should choose to have either no children Or ideally one or two children And not no children.

Ideally, we as a society should support people who choose to have one or two children, prioritizing these families over people who have half a dozen or more children. But that's because in my opinion people who have dozens of children have something wrong in their heads. If you choose to have a dozen children, you better be able to afford to raise them all on your own dime.

That being said, I really dislike means testing of any kind so I'd be ok with a social safety net for the wackos and their unfortunate children.

The way the trend is going, the population is going to shrink. South Korea is already down to 0.84 (2.1 means population stays the same).

That is good and I'm all for it but a problem is now is that fundamentalists still have a lot of children and at some point, they will have too much political power.

A high school education doesn't go as far as it used to, women have more life paths that don't involve being a stay-at-home mom, houses are harder to come by, average age at first marriage is almost a decade higher than it was in the 50s ... notable, sure, but interesting, I dunno.

It used to be that the average person at 25 already had worked a full-time job for 5-7 years. Now a college education is much more important and at 25 many haven't had a full-time job at all yet and in a way haven't been exposed to the real world. I sometimes think about Robert M. Pirsig's point that young people should work and then get further education to see better where the value comes from. I do wonder if that would push children even further back though.

I don’t think anyone really thinks that. The vast majority of people in their 20s are perfectly capable of raising children, it’s just not desirable.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing (why not spend your 20s exploring?) but it’s also easily explained by financial burdens that didn’t used to exist. Housing is now very expensive, can you blame people waiting until they have the right size home before they have kids?

There were a lot of incompetent parents, but they pushed ahead blindly.

Today can recognize when they'd bee a pie parent and choose not to do it anyway.

True. Though until recently, children were usually allowed some adult-level duties and responsibilities before their early 20s, so they could actually grow up. My mother did all the cooking for a family of 6, on a wood stove, before she was 12 years old. In an era (and economic circumstances) when "we need more bread" meant "check that there is enough flour in the bin, and get some water from the well...".

The standards of what's "acceptable parenting" shot up greatly in the past decades. In the 60s, you were a great father if you passed out drunk only sometimes, didn't beat your kids too much and brought enough income to feed/house the family.

My childhood was all about spending the whole day outside roaming the streets with very little involvement from my parents. I didn't have any after-school (organized) activities, and I don't remember a single time that my father would drive me anywhere just because I needed it. That was all just normal, but today might get social services called on you.

> The upside is that I was a total basket case in my 20s, completely incompetent to be able to raise a child.

How common is it that people are incompetent to raise kids in their 20s, versus people who may not presently have everything together because nobody expects anything from or depends on them?

Great point. Most people are perfectly capable of raising to the occasion, but while there's no occasion they just stay in the comfort of their responsibility-free lives... I say, enjoy it while it lasts!

I'm sure you could handle nights with little sleep fine in your early twenties. Being up all night. Dealing with childish drama. Vomit.

Few are really prepared to have kids, until they have their second kid. Everyone I know who had kids shortly after college (which skews the parents a bit economically, I know, but not necessarily emotionally or in maturity) had great family lives and outcomes.

>The upside is that I was a total basket case in my 20s, completely incompetent to be able to raise a child. ... Generally I'd expect older adults to have done a lot more maturing and increased ability to emotionally regulate,...

This is exactly why I don't think anyone should have children until they're at least 50 years old, and better yet 75-100. We just need to solve this "aging" disease problem first. 20-somethings just aren't emotionally mature enough to be good parents.

And somehow we've done it through hundreds of generations.

> just need to solve this "aging" disease.

Oh, please stop. This is the rhetoric of stunted men with Peter Pan syndrome. If you are too scared to face this type of responsibility, plenty of other men rose to the occasion just fine.

>If you are too scared to face this type of responsibility, plenty of other men rose to the occasion just fine.

According to the most recent fertility statistics, they're not.

You are trying to make a point against old values using "most recent statistics". Do you realize how illogical this is?

You seem to not be living in the real world, instead pining for "old values" which obviously not many people still live by.

Your "solution" to the problem that adults now are claiming to be unable to become parents is, literally, "cure aging".

Mine is "accept that you can not do it on your own and have them at a age where your parents can still help you."

The fact that people are forgetting these "old values" is what is bringing to this unsustainable state, and instead of accepting the reality of our limited lifespans and that people have managed to start having kids in the early 20's (or before that) for centuries just fine, you want to double down on the idea that "no one should have kids before their 50s"?

Who is "not living in the real world"?

>Mine is "accept that you can not do it on your own and have them at a age where your parents can still help you."

If people wanted to do that, they would. They obviously don't want to do that, for various reasons. What's your solution now, genius?

>Who is "not living in the real world"?

You, because you're the one telling people to go back to the "good old days" and then shaking his fist because they aren't.

If people had listened to people like you throughout human history, we'd still be living in caves.

Is this sarcasm or a joke? I honestly can't tell, but I hope it is.

Suggesting people to have child in their 20ties, to avoid health problems, is sexist and not based in reality. This is just extrapolation of this trend.

People can totally freeze relevant body parts, and have child in their 70ties. Saying anything else would be sexist! Natural selection in action...

I think the optimal strategy depends partly on your genes. Challenging kids seem to run in families, and it’s probably easier to succeed as a very young parent if your kids are naturally the quiet & obedient sort.

It’s not politically correct, but we all know a few little hellions, and they are obviously difficult to parent.

I think a lot of these “20s” lessons and better emotional regulation you learn before the child is old enough to remember, i.e. by your late twenties.

Although, I think going through that learning process + raising a baby + recently newly wed is a contributing factor to divorce.

It is arguable that the increased emotional regulation of older parents is responsible for the higher incidence of adhd as the kids have to fill the emotional void

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