On the off chance that someone reading this has a kid they can't support, My Wife and I would love to adopt. We have not been able to have kids of our own.
No one wants to have kids anymore
401–410 of 457 posts
Re: No one wants to have kids anymore
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
>That's not true. Our families may be away most of the time, but we have a constant rotation of our parents (and my wife's Giagia) coming to stay with us. When our second kid was born, I don't think we were by ourselves for the first six months. Even today, we get someone visiting us at least every other month. That is not possible for many others.
Then the question is why ? What is dysfunctional about their lives that makes it impossible?
- The grandparents have jobs of their own with limited vacation time (maybe a US-specific problem, you say you are from Brazil)
- Does either side of the family have enough money to fund cross-country travel more than once a year for a week at a time?
Re: No one wants to have kids anymore
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then the question is why ? What is dysfunctional about their lives that makes it impossible?
- The grandparents have jobs of their own with limited vacation time (maybe a US-specific problem, you say you are from Brazil) - Does either side of the family have enough money to fund cross-country travel more than once a year for a week at a time?
You can fly from Greece to Germany for less than 50€ (Ryanair, Easyjet)
My parents are retired/semi-retired. When they come, it's usually during the summer (here)
Re: No one wants to have kids anymore
#404Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love wrastling toddlers, too. I wanted to say—these two lifestyles you describe (raves and toddlers) are not incompatible. I’ve had to get better at scheduling and communication, that’s all. For me, it was really helpful to develop concrete agreements with my partner. (E.g., I get to travel 8 weeks a year, I have to schedule 1 month in advance, and it can be for any reason). I don’t like the view that having kids m…
> I don’t like the view that having kids means giving up on what you love to do in life. Is there anyone other than you and your spouse helping raise the children? Does your spouse work? Lots of people do not have support from friends or family. Being able to take off while spouse is pregnant and taking care of 3 other kids is surely an abnormal situation.
A parent being able to travel for a few days while one parent manages the kids is not abnormal.
She took a weekend recently and left me with the 3 kids. It was fun and honestly more relaxed than most weekends. Maybe importantly is our spacing — 13, 10 and 3. Not saying 3 toddlers.
Re: No one wants to have kids anymore
#405I have started to find it a bit odd that people can take such a strong position to have or not to have kids. It's a personal choice, that's it that's all.
Re: No one wants to have kids anymore
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then the question is why ? What is dysfunctional about their lives that makes it impossible?
I would guess money is a frequent issue, plus visa and other family obligations such as other siblings great grandparents. Health issues too since grandparents are older than in previous times. None of those qualify as dysfunction in my book.
Apologies in advance for the (slight) moving of the goal posts, but to me the problems you mention do point to very dysfunctional aspects of modern life and common family structures:
- "Older grandparents" is a sign that people are waiting too much to have their own kids.
- "Other family obligations", like what... Work? Perhaps we should rethink our globalized, modern economy that makes dual-income families a necessity. I really hope that by the time my kids get to have their kids, my wife and I are in condition to dedicate ourselves to help them as much as our own parents helped us.
- "Visa issues" is mostly an American thing, which unfortunately I also I am very familiar with (lived in the US before coming to Germany). The US is only going to sort this out after it solves the Milton Friedman dilemma: it can be either a country of Open Borders, or it can be a Welfare State. Until it tries to be both, it is doomed to these catastrophic policies.
Re: No one wants to have kids anymore
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
It just means what it means, I guess. You do the best you can to provide a good life for your child by whatever means are available to you. Sometimes you have to make compromises - even painful compromises. Maybe you are living paycheck to paycheck so you don't buy the new game this week. You play an old game that you already had. Maybe some mornings you have to give them a bowl of cereal instead of making eggs, beca…
> But there are many degrees of happiness between "pure utopian bliss" and "mere survival." And so many potential parents these days seem to think that if they can't do it absolutely perfectly then it's not worth doing. Where does being able to afford routine healthcare land? And I do not mean waiting in the few overcrowded clinics that take Medicaid because Medicaid reimbursed very poorly so providers do not accept…
> I think it is perfectly reasonable for people to say, for example, I am not likely to be able to pay for a child’s healthcare, and so it is not worth it for me to have children (yet). Or a home in a decent school, where the other kids are not likely to be in gangs. And so on and so forth.
I agree.
What I'm arguing against is what seems to be a fairly modern conception: "oh, we can't possibly consider children until we own a home with 4 bedrooms and a pool and we've gone on a backpacking trip through Europe and we've unpacked all our own childhood trauma and come to terms with it and gone to therapy and etc, etc etc".
I'm not saying "yeah, fuck it, you live in a box, get all your money from hooking, and nurse a heroin addiction, but you should still have kids, it'll work out."
I'm just saying that nearly every human in history has been born into a situation that was non-optimal in some way. It's OK to have a kid when the house is too small. It's OK to not have a fully baked plan to finance every activity the child might ever want to do. A fulfilling and happy life can be found in less-than-ideal circumstances.
My parents didn't have much money. We were fortunate in many other ways. Some folks were born with more money and less parental kindness. Some sadly lacked in both.
As an adult, I can say that I am happy to have been born in spite of the many challenges that I faced growing up. I believe (hope) that most people on Earth can honestly say the same.
Re: No one wants to have kids anymore
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wasn't worried. Research assumes a lot of things, like how the future will go. Humanity tends to do things to affect the course of the future. It may be that we use less, run out of stuff, or find alternatives. We have wars, famines, acts of god, or even plain old cultural shifts. Not having kids because you're worried about something like climate change that won't happen anytime soon feels kind of silly. The human…
> Research assumes a lot of things, like how the future will go. The current expectations are based on many decades of data, when humanity did nothing to stop the climate change. Even starting to act right now will not have quick consequences, and even this is not really happening. Act of God could indeed change that, but I would not rely on it for my plans. > climate change that won't happen anytime soon For you it…
Humanity isn't measured with decades of data. Should I not have kids?
Re: No one wants to have kids anymore
#409Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would guess money is a frequent issue, plus visa and other family obligations such as other siblings great grandparents. Health issues too since grandparents are older than in previous times. None of those qualify as dysfunction in my book.
Apologies in advance for the (slight) moving of the goal posts, but to me the problems you mention do point to very dysfunctional aspects of modern life and common family structures: - "Older grandparents" is a sign that people are waiting too much to have their own kids. - "Other family obligations", like what... Work? Perhaps we should rethink our globalized, modern economy that makes dual-income families a necessi…
Yeah Brazil at least has Mercosur. It's pretty crazy North America doesn't have something similar considering capital can mostly freely flow between NAFTA countries. (although we do have something similar with compact free association i.e. micronesia / palau / marshall islands)
Re: No one wants to have kids anymore
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don’t like the view that having kids means giving up on what you love to do in life. Is there anyone other than you and your spouse helping raise the children? Does your spouse work? Lots of people do not have support from friends or family. Being able to take off while spouse is pregnant and taking care of 3 other kids is surely an abnormal situation.
A parent being able to travel for a few days while one parent manages the kids is not abnormal. She took a weekend recently and left me with the 3 kids. It was fun and honestly more relaxed than most weekends. Maybe importantly is our spacing — 13, 10 and 3. Not saying 3 toddlers.
Oh, the ages change everything, since the 13 and 10 year old are basically capable of handling themselves and helping.