271–280 of 328 posts
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Do you have to be married? Is it for anyone whose partner has had a child or only for your own child? Like, could you, in theory, have a baby making rotation of 3 "girlfriends" with 4 months of paternal leave each per year for an eternal vacation?
Looking after an under-one year old baby is not a vacation.
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So you're suggesting a sort of eradication of the poor over a generation due to the lack of ability to bear and support a child?
So you're suggesting that being poor is a genetic condition (and one that apparently should be perpetuated)? Because that sounds even more dehumanizing than suggesting that the poor consider their resources before choosing to have children.
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Nice, if you have enough savings to do it. Please don't forget that not everyone is fortunate enough to have enough savings to be able to miss three months worth of paychecks. I did, until I bought a house, sold it, and bought another in the course of a year due to escaping from a horrible job. I'm getting savings built back up again, and I can afford to miss a few paychecks now, but not at the 6 month level I had a…
> not everyone is fortunate enough to have enough savings to be able to miss three months worth of paychecks. Then, sorry to be a bearer of bad news, if they could not afford or save up in advance for three months , how in the world are they going to pay for a child for 18 years? Children in modern western nations are incredibly expensive. Often more expensive than a house. They are not a decision to be made lightly,…
For the record I also agree with your last paragraph in full.
As for myself...
With my current resources, I could pay all household expenses for three months without being paid. And yes, I have the resources necessary to support my family. In short, I can afford to have this child. However, I choose not to take unpaid leave because, with a child, I have no way of knowing what unforseen expenses may arise (will he have a chronic condition that requires treatment that my insurance will only partially cover? Will my wife have a harder time than expected healing from her surgery and require me to take more time off from work?) I am trying, in my particular case, to protect that cushion of money and grow it as much as I possibly can.
I also know, far more than most people, just how serious of a decision having children is. Because of medical issues for both me and my wife, we had to have IVF to even conceive, and our first IVF baby died at 21 weeks gestation.
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I am astounded by the arrogance of you thinking you know his life and situation better than he himself does. And so well that you feel entitled to lecture him in public.
I am astounded that you're astounded. Seems like common sense advice to me: put your family ahead of everything else. That's what I do, anyway. Once "everything else" starts to interfere, I make sure to change my circumstances to make sure that my family gets the attention it so richly deserves.
As I've said earlier, I have more leave to take than this because I have banked overtime that I can draw upon, and I have a fantastic boss who helped me make a plan to take the (paid) leave I need.
All that does not mean that I can't comment on a relevant experience I have that most likely reflects the experiences of many in corporate America.
With everything else set well, why would I disrupt my family again? I already moved in 2014 to escape an employer that was pretty much pure evil and really would have damaged my family and marriage. Don't you think, that having gone through that, I have learned how to protect my family?
In short, your public lecture, as the other commenter pointed out, does seem a bit arrogant to me.
Very surprised by the reactionary thinking I'm seeing about this.
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I suppose it depends on what kind of society you want to live in. Is a family something that should only be available to those who can afford it? Should we compare having children with buying a new pair of shoes or having a car? Or is it something that we want everyone in society to have available to them: for example like quality healthcare or legal assistance? I'm not trying to pose a rhetorical question. I think t…
You would be a bad role model to your kids. They'll grow up thinking that having no retirement, no savings, possibly carrying debt and living paycheck to paycheck is normal. They too might have kids right out of high school and skip going to college - because that's what their parents did. This is how you get generational poverty.
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In a complete aside, I've also moved 4 times since 2011. I am tired of moving. "Just move" is not the most useful advice ever.
I've moved cross country almost every time I've moved and I've moved on average about every 18 months since 2005. Add in the sheer amount of stuff that tends to accumulate when you're married to someone obsessed with physical comforts like furniture, heirlooms, and kitsch and it's pretty much constant mental torture. It becomes extremely bothersome to move over time and constantly job-hopping looks pretty poor on one…
"Just move" isn't usually bad advice for a single person, but when you have a family, that's a whole different thing.
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This is probably going to get me voted down, but maybe...just maybe ...you shouldn't be having kids if the only job you can get is McDonalds or Yum! Brands (i.e., Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, etc.). If you choose to have a child when your resources are that limited, your non-paternity leave is going to be among the least of the child's problems.
Ha ha! You probably should have been voted down, but OK, let's take a look at your idea. You are saying 1 out of 4 American workers shouldn't have kids[1]. If everybody followed your advice, a lot of pretty influential people wouldn't have been born: Steve Jobs, J.K. Rowling, Larry Ellison (OK maybe that works in your argument's favor). Jay Z. Abraham Lincoln. Barack Obama. I wouldn't be here, either; my dad was a sh…
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Summary: maybe they should try not being poor. If I am to take this to its logical conclusion, I guess there are entire nations, indeed probably most of the human population, who you think should just not reproduce.
There will always be poor people unless you make the concept of property disappear completely. In this world someone else has to become poor in your place so you can be rich.
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I suppose it depends on what kind of society you want to live in. Is a family something that should only be available to those who can afford it? Should we compare having children with buying a new pair of shoes or having a car? Or is it something that we want everyone in society to have available to them: for example like quality healthcare or legal assistance? I'm not trying to pose a rhetorical question. I think t…
>I'm not trying to pose a rhetorical question. I think this is literally a choice that societies have to make. It would be nice if we could actually make that choice. Better still, it would be nice if we had a whole lot of societies which made different choices and people were free to move between them, so we could individually make a choice. Instead though we've got a lowest-common-denominator society.
The internet is a lot like that. Maybe someday this can be a model for the world at large.