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The New Work-Life Balance: Don't Have Kids
191–200 of 201 posts
Re: The New Work-Life Balance: Don't Have Kids
#192View from a US-expat in the Netherlands: It doesn't have to be as bad as it is. Subsidize daycare, fund schools (from pre-school to university) and focus on learning at-school and not at-home, and pass laws forcing employers to allow parents to reduce their working hours, should they wish to. You can rebuild your cities to be bike able, change gender norms, or change work culture, but honestly the most change will co…
> That 4 year study results in a masters if the student is able
fwiw 4 year study ends with a bachelors degree
Re: The New Work-Life Balance: Don't Have Kids
#193View from a US-expat in the Netherlands: It doesn't have to be as bad as it is. Subsidize daycare, fund schools (from pre-school to university) and focus on learning at-school and not at-home, and pass laws forcing employers to allow parents to reduce their working hours, should they wish to. You can rebuild your cities to be bike able, change gender norms, or change work culture, but honestly the most change will co…
Yeah, expect the Dutch do not make any more children than other countries, now you have a give a lot bigger part of your income to the government whether you want kids or not and this money is going to be use for increasingly inefficient and uncompetitive institution that somehow always needs more money for inexistant results.
Oh, and suddenly your whole population tends to think and act alike for many important subjects because of the built-in propaganda at school. The effects of this can clearly be seen in the current active generation.
As a French that until recently had better fertility than most European countries because of heavy subsidy for having kids I find it funny that you think it even works long-term because it clearly doesn't, even France has dropped fertility and not only you get all the help in the world to have kids, mother are actually paid to have them, yet it doesn't work...
The reality is that it's all about division of labor/responsibility between the sexes but because of previously mentioned "universal education" this is something that cannot be said, because not politically correct (in pretty much any political side which is hilarious in itself).
It's very easy to idealize this coercive system when you were able to choose it but realistically if you would ask many past a certain age, they would definitely choose some other arrangements than to rely on the government for their kids, considering the ongoing cost via taxation (you get to pay forever, how cool) and low quality results...
Re: The New Work-Life Balance: Don't Have Kids
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s also not meaningful if that career coerces you to give up your outside family life (by imposing a huge penalty for having kids) so you can keep working your desk job, report to a boss, and have your 3 weeks of vacation a year.
> imposing a huge penalty for having kids It shocked me to find quite how devious and aggressive workplaces can be towards women that get pregnant (or who they simply suspect of being in a potentially "fertile" relationship). Shouldn't it be illegal for employers to monitor communications that might indicate impending motherhood? What about measuring their body temperature covertly? Spying on eating habits. Or making…
It can only be shocking if you see things in you own selfish point of view.
You define business as souless corporation but most of them are actually small organization that have real people depending on them and that just get by. Hiring someone who can be unreliable and just leave its position is really a bad deal for the business (and indirectly all the coworker if the postion was actually useful).
The problem is mostly women who wants to have it all either you want to suffer through the sacrifice that are asked to a man for work or you want kids, you choose; but complaining about this just show the unreal level of entitlement the women of todays have imposed on society.
Its particularly insane to have peoples complaining about this in the current society, when women have received an insane level of positive discrimination and the major problem is actually how bad most of the men have it.
Re: The New Work-Life Balance: Don't Have Kids
#195I have 4 kids. Running my own business helps because of the flexibility. But the costs of living is something i did not expected to be so high. 3k per month for daycare/afterschool. Memberships, food, clothing, electronics etc. expensive housing, insurances. We easily spend 8,10k per month without saving anything. Nevertheless I love to have kids. Best investment ever.
We traded one parent working and multi generational housing for this (which had other issues of course). Instead of having someone staying at home and raising their kid(s) now you have to work to pay someone else to raise your kid(s), and very often that entire new pay check gets siphoned. If your couple is composed of two min wage worker you can't eve match the previous system in any way (quality of life, education,…
Yep, that's pretty much it. This new system pushed by bourgeois feminist for their own benefit is strictly worse than what we had before for 90% of the population.
Funniest thing is that if you give them enough time most women would tell you that they would rather just had kids if they could have found the husband with the means for it.
But the current propaganda is very strong and you cannot say anything at the risk of passing for the biggest asshole. Yet I'm pretty sure that if you offered the previous women deal to men, many would take it in a heartbeat.
Instead, we have to listen to insufferable people lecture us on the "meaning" of work, wich hilariously for many women, literally translate into taking care of other people's kids, just for much longer (for example in France they represent up to 80% of the teachers).
This double working parent nonsense is really big bullshit, there is very little benefit for anyone but very few ultra privileged...
Re: The New Work-Life Balance: Don't Have Kids
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
10k is not on the cheap side. lentils and potatos, my friend. lentils and potatos.
Okay, now I'm curious. How would you go about raising four kids in the Bay? Not super detailed, but you know, just a sketch. Daycare? Food costs? Housing? Health Insurance? Those kinds of big ticket items. I'd love to know how to get my costs down more.
From his previous post, this guy is clearly a young know-it-all that comes from either a poor or stingy family.
The reality is that he truly has no clue, he just thinks he knows better and he clearly has pretty low standards. I would say he is the kind that shouldn't have kids because they would probably suffer but he will have them nonetheless and he will rationalise all the corner cutting as something normal even though there is a price paid, he just doesn't know it yet or prefer to deny it.
Re: The New Work-Life Balance: Don't Have Kids
#197For those of you who decided not to have kids in your 20s-30s, and are now in your 40s+, when changing that decision now becomes increasingly more difficult: did you regret it? Did your position of “I want to live my life, I don’t want the hassle or the cost, or there are too many humans already, or something else”, did that position change or weaken? Asking for a friend :)
I've just turned 40, and I'm currently childless, but not because that was my goal. Twice wanted to settle down with a woman, but I wasn't her Mr Right. I'm still friends with the second, but she's (metaphorically) married to her activism; she and I split just as I moved to Germany which was itself just before the pandemic. Then I ended up with a boyfriend, but medical tech isn't quite there yet for Mpreg :P
It's funny because I am trending in the same direction.
You can't say it because of political correctness but I believe many of our fertility problem lies in the behavior of today's women.
But women can't do no wrong so...
If you can't/won't have kids, men make better partners anyway. Everything else can be solved one way or another...
Re: The New Work-Life Balance: Don't Have Kids
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Life with kids has always been problematic.
Less so when you could afford a house, a car, 2 kids and a stay at home wife on a single salary. It was also much easier when people didn't move to foreign countries and/or far away cities for their jobs, losing their family network &c. I'm in my mid 20s, in tech and couldn't afford that at all, I could barely afford my gf being unemployed. I don't have a car and live in a small flat. If I can barely afford a comfort…
Yeah, I don't get how they don't see that but to be honest boomer culture is insanely omnipresent and they had it so good they must be thinking that it cannot be that bad.
The reality is that if you are a couple both working an average job you won't have a whole lot of extra time depending on living situation (commute and access to transport) but on top of that you have very little extra cash that could be helpful to solve logistical pains kids make.
All the people of my age that had kids now have unenviable lifestyles, it feels like they can have what the poor boomers had and not much more and nowadays the expectation is that it will last up to a quarter century because of how much we came to overvalue diplomas (even though they do not sort the good from the bad, at all...).
Because of the insanely collectivist system around the world, it makes no difference to have kids or not for the end of your life, so it becomes more of a decision of accepting to be poorer for the privilège of reproduction.
This pretty stupid all things considered, it seems like a feature to have parents dependent on their kids for the end of their life, this way they would have a lot more motivation to do the job right and those who would do a bad job would have it coming...
In the end, collectivism has a way to always destroy the foundation it relies on, which is hilarious. We just are in the destructive phase, what will come out after is bound to be better I think (hard to do worse).
Re: The New Work-Life Balance: Don't Have Kids
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Having kids is the hardest thing anyone can ever do Ok I'll bite. It's not anywhere near the hardest thing anyone can ever do. It's very easy to get started, most people just do it day by day, it's integrated with life, and throwing in the towel is kinda frowned upon. I'm sorry your kid had colic, my first had the same although not for as long and my second would just scream in bed when she was a little older so I'…
> and throwing in the towel is kinda frowned upon. For me this was the hardest part. You don't get to get out. Maybe it's a mindset thing. Starting a book, an app, a diet. You all can just throw the towel and be done. Kids, not an option.
You are foolish, it is very much an option, one that many choose to exerce.
Having kids is not strictly synonymous with raising kids well and while you may not just kill the kid you can also do the strict minimum and let it be as much as possible (or transfer the responsibility to someone else). It is extremely current and something many parents do, just as much as soft quitting any of the other activities you mentioned... The bar is rather low, it needs to have foods to not starve, clothing to not be naked and a place to sleep; if you do those things for yourself, you are more than a third of the way done; all the rest is completely optional and many parents definitely chose to leave the option on the table.
Re: The New Work-Life Balance: Don't Have Kids
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course we can. Even with a lot less. We can automate the hell out of everything :) In fact there's a big concern that there won't be enough work. Even hypercapitalist countries like the US are thinking about UBI now. Food will be a bigger problem but less people also means less food needed.
> We can automate the hell out of everything :) That's what they told us in the 60s/70s/80s and we're still working as much while our standards are lowering but ok, we'll automagically fix things, we're just waiting for the right time
Standards are lowering precisely because there are too many people chasing the same ressources... You can't share everything beyond a certain point.
The boomerism view of infinite growth is incredibly stupid especially if you start evaluating material requirement for a standard rich boomer lifestyle.
The only reason we could have so many people on the planet at once is because almost half of them live in poverty, close to animal standard with some human technology sprinkled in some place...
It's just shortsighted to believe that having so many people was sustainable in the first place.