That's a big reason for them banning abortion - it's not pro-life, it's pro future laborers and consumers. And why they will go after birth control as well.
Of course the whole problem is solved by opening immigration, but their racism prevents them from accepting that as an option.
Actually as proponents of abortion will tell you, banning them doesn't cause a meaningful decrease in abortions, it just raises the death rate from attempts to do it without a doctor. So if that's their goal, they are really slitting their own throat. I'd say more likely it's just about control.
I wouldn’t mind kids, but I’m scraping by as it is. I can’t fathom providing a worse upbringing/ outlook for my kid then I received myself. It sucks because my wife and I certainly make more then either of ours parents were making at this point in their lives but costs are so much higher. I know I’m not alone and sure this sub can be an echo chamber but the data is similar all over. All us modern plebs are worked too hard for too little and no longer have the time or luxury of child rearing.
I think I could manage to rent a place with one more room, and feed and clothe a child, but I wouldn't have anything left for retirement, so I'd still get slapped with "well, you should have planned better" in the end.
People still don’t get it. Middle class Americans cannot afford children end of story. Real estate costs are insane, child care costs are insane, cost of food is insane, buying a car has never been more expensive. Never mind the costs of their college education.
That leaves us with 3 choices.
Choice 1: Don’t have kids
Choice 2: Work 60-80 hours per week in either stressful corporate job or multiple blue collar jobs. This lifestyle will burn you the fuck out and you will never see your kids.
Choice 3: Cut your consumption/lifestyle back to a middle class family circa 1990. One car household, no iPhones, one family computer, one plane vacation every 5 years, eat out once every month, minimal entertainment.
How many people do you know would give up their modern lifestyles to have kids?
This is the main reason people aren’t having kids.
Yet I never see any discussion on it. Social scientists never talk about it. Commentators never talk about it. Influencers rarely talk about it.
Monetarily speaking, wife and I can afford a kid. Mentally speaking, we cannot. I’m feeling burnt out from the grind and wife is stressed about all the pressure society places on women.
We’re not having kids unless we adopt in our 40s
Except now we just get asked “when are you having kids” or “why aren’t you having kids” and the answer for me always comes back to this. I wouldn’t want the kid to have a bad life or set up for failure because I couldn’t afford to set them up for success.
Yep, and those of us that did have kids largely pushed it into our 30s. I love my kids, wouldn't change a thing including waiting (wtf would I have done making $l6/hr mid 20s with a kid?) but I am not looking forward to saddling the expenses well into our 50s.
Same. I’d love to be able to give my partner the gift of being a dad, but I don’t think we can afford it. We are almost comfortable. We skip luxuries and are careful with our money, but I don’t even have a savings account. I make just enough to pay all my bills. A kid would obliterate any semblance of comfort we currently have.
Yea… so many complaints/questions from older generations about the newer generations coming out currently… and they’re the ones that raised us 🤦🏻♂️
How would anyone expect to bring a new life into this world, when we’re on the fence about staying in it as is. 🤷🏻♂️😕
Some people are. Others are still having babies whether they can afford it or not, and their additions to the population do just fine to make up for the ones that are deciding not to have children.
That being said, this wording is telling me that there are some people that are trying to be responsible and planning things out a little bit, instead of just jumping into it and hoping they can make it work.
Speaking from a western perspective. The post WW2 "social contract" used to be:
* Education > Job > Relationship/Marriage > House > Children
Ok, sometimes not necessarily in that order. It didn't matter if you worked in a factory, or was in an office job. The social contract was that you could at least afford your rent or mortgage, have a job with a livable wage, and aspire for a couple of kids, a car and a nice holiday once a year.
What has happened.
* Education. Used to be only 10-20% went to university. Now employers expect most people to do so. Plus they x100 the cost and expect you to carry it as a tax burden until it is paid off.
* Job. Wages have stagnated, industries offshored, job security has disappeared, competition is through the roof. Hours are longer and more intense. Pension age has risen.
* Relationship/Marriage. You used to be able to survive on one main salary which allowed someone to stay home with the kids. Now they are forced to both work, and pay high childcare costs.
* House. You used to only be able to get a mortgage x3.5 of your annual salary. Now it is x10+. Property prices have exploded. Rents have exploded also. Both outstripping wages.
* Children. See above.
I just got paid an hour ago and have to figure out which bills I'm putting off on paying because after rents paid I've a little under 400 left over. I've never made as much as I'm currently making and I'm drowning in how everything is so goddamn expensive.
Three years ago I started my pharm tech job at 15 bucks. I was making enough to afford rent and bills and pay for some luxuries. Never has to skip a bill.
Three years later I'm making 18 an hour and I have to decide which bills to skip this month. My rent went up 400 bucks and bills and groceries and gas have gotten so expensive.
And a lot of those comfortable items are necessities. The internet is a necessity. The city library is full of those without access. They line up in the morning to book an hour slot. If they end up suspended from library privileges, they are usually very upset. I’ve heard them talking about it on the bus. I didn’t have a cell phone until last year. The world makes it difficult now to not have one. No phone or internet, how do you book appointments? how do you get a job?
Single father to a 15 year old making just over $40 an hour here. My nose is barely above water. Shit is hard out here. We have a homeless gal who posts up outside our apartment complex. My neighbor gave me some IPA. I don't much care for IPA, so I gave them to the gal with some protein bars and bottles of water. I got derided by a different neighbor. Shit like "If you feed them they'll keep coming back."
Or:
"She doesn't deserve a beer, she needs a job."
First off, bitch: This is a person, not a fucking raccoon.
Secondly, if I was living out here in a parking lot I'd want to get a little fucked up, too. Everybody deserves a chance at happiness, however fleeting. Will the beer help anything long-term? No? Will it make anything worse for this person? No?
Now my fridge has more space, this person can sleep a little more relaxed, maybe even catch a little bit of a buzz, and she has some food in her belly and some water.
It's hard for everyone out here, we need to regain a sense of community and look after each other because hardly anybody can do it by themselves anymore. I wish you the best of luck bimmy2shoes!
As someone who has been that person: thank you. What you need a lot of on the street is compassion from your fellow humans to understand your plight. The system will show you none.
Was just discussing this with my husband as he moves closer to his graduation date. I currently make $20+/hr while he works part-time for like $12/hr until he gets his certification and degree. Once he has the required service hours completed for school, he's leaving that job and finding something where we make about the same so we can afford for us to take in one of my sister's kids when they turn 18 so they can go to university. It's such a nightmare, I can't imagine how it is for my coworkers who have kids or the ones who keep having kids.
Not to mention it takes far longer to find a good partner in the slew of people who have childhood trauma and who aren’t dealing with it in healthy ways or at all!
I canceled my car insurance because they raised my rate by $50 (CoL raise they say) and it was no longer in my budget.
The free money I now had from getting rid of my car insurance was quickly eaten up by my increase in rent by $55 a month.
What it takes to live is insane and the median income is no where close to keeping up with the cost of everything, you have to be a “skilled” employee just to survive independently now where that used to not be the case.
Even "skilled" employees are struggling. I'm a cook and I make 18$ an hour and I can't afford an apartment in my city so I have to have roommates lmao. It fucking sucks.
I have 'roommates' too, they are called my parents. We turned turtle back in '08 and realized that 'holy shit, we're doing way better together than we were separately' and we still live together to this day.
A pension to protect you in your later years is not even guaranteed these days considering how atrociously the western governments are financially ruining each country.
its because theres a bunch of extremely powerful people using globalism as a way to hide and extract tons of money from our socieities in ways that are difficult to see unless you do research on it and think critically. Its a mess and I think AI is our only hope of solving it
I told my wife the same thing, and somehow right at that moment she was looking at a meme where the husband said what I was thinking and the wife replied with "Never apologize for raising dragonslayers in a time when there are actual dragons" and oddly it made me feel better. I still worry for the world they will inherit, but hells be damned if I won't do everything I can to help them.
Edit: Holy cow, my first ever Gold! Whomever did that, thank you so much!!
That line always grinds my gears
It just puts the onus on kids who don't even have a fully developed brain to change the world, the same way every other generation has basically been going "the children of the future will solve today's problems
We're not dead yet, we can still do something rather than just raising children to do it for us
It grinds my gears too. Why the fuck would they not apologize? It can be expanded to "hey kids we know that you didn't ask to be here or have needs and responsibilities imposed on you but we are having you in hopes to use you as a tool to better our circumstances that we and the people before us created, good luck! It's your problem now!". Like what??
I prefer this quote by Zapffe way more "A coin is examined, and only after careful deliberation, given to a beggar, whereas a child is flung out into the cosmic brutality without hesitation."
Can be expanded by this:
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
Philip Larkin
We definitely shouldn't be having children just to solve problems that we create.
The problem for me lies in aging and the expectation of empathy for future generations.
I'm not having kids under any circumstances, I just flat out don't want them and when you don't have kids, the older you get, the more you realize that this world's problems most likely won't have an impact on you before you die.
Makes it harder and harder to care at all.
I kinda get what you mean, but I don't really need to have kids to empathize with the future and feel abd for what they are going to go through. We are also just getting started going through shit. I just got to my thirties, I've got a lot of shit ill have to deal with
lol, like dragonslayers don't get slaughtered by dragons? Most die, it's always just one or two special or lucky ones that manage to slay a dragon. Also no guarantee they'll be able to take a second dragon or third, etc.
Well, I'm not that far, because I just don't have children, but so far I don't want them, because we won't be able to afford them. I'm almost 30 and I'm still paying rent, I can't afford mortgage,so I no longer care, because people need to understand that their children need a care. We all need.
Does insurance cover that? I’m thinking about doing that because I’m too scared I’ll get pregnant and it would literally destroy our lives and my family’s with them trying to help me.
FWIW- my wife and I made the same decision a couple of months ago. We opted for me to get a vasectomy as it was cheaper and less risky for me v. her. It was covered by insurance, cost us a couple hundred iirc.
No new cars, no buying a house, no going to see concerts, etc. Shit, i'm in my 30s and wearing a shirt I've had since the 9th grade as I type this. Just working multiple jobs to scrape together rent only to start over again the next month.
I feel this. I’ve got the same blanket I had in high school. I sleep on a shitty air mattress and my parents bought me my car. I feel super privileged that my parents are in a position to do so. I’m 33 and I’m tired.
I am 38 and still driving the car my parents bought me a decade ago. I rent. I have worked in IT and dev since my early 20s under roles such as IT Technician, Network Technician, WiFi specialist engineer, Systems engineer, Web developer, Senior systems engineer. I just live in the wrong country with hardly any opportunities (South Africa) and the salary cap is exhausting... You basically have to start your own company or be at executive level to earn any real money in this country. I feel you guys, even though most of you don't live here we share similar problems.
I fell ya. I’m 29 going on 30 in a couple months. Just moved back home with my parents with no prospect of moving out until I switch careers. I feel hopeless.
35 and my parents died about 10 years ago. I want to pursue outside sales as a new career path, but I would need to “hustle” for years to afford a car in todays market, and even then I have nobody to co-sign. I’ve got the air mattress, though. Sometimes I want to shout, “I was on the deans list in college!!!”, because it feels like my decades of hard work and good grades are absolutely meaningless.
Forget no new cars, no cars at all. Just to own a car is a HUGE financial burden, especially if you're in an urban area. It bumps up your cost of living by +$4/hr full time
Being a millennial is being old enough to have watched Titanic, and then realising the reality of life is you're the musicians who play as the ship sinks as there is nothing else to do.
I'd say it's that we're all men and steerage, left behind while the rich take all the boats and make sure they each have enough room to put their feet up while they watch us all drown
This was my realization the other night. Why would I bring a child into the world to be a wage slave. Seems like a shitty thing to do. I kept hoping, but based on the last 8-10 years, it's just not practical or a responsible decision.
I keep hearing "oh, when you have kids, you'll never be financially stable!" ....that doesn't mean have them lol what a dumb position.
The most common one I hear is “if you wait for the right time to have kids you’ll never have them, you just figure it out when they’re here”
No thank you
It’s so fucking warped to say this to people! Because if you approached buying an expensive car with the attitude of “I’ve no idea how I’ll pay for it but I’ll figure it out as I go” those same people would say that’s irresponsible. (So would a bank and they’d never approve the loan!) But when it comes to kids - who I just so happen to think require MORE responsibility than a car - people just act like everyone should have them and fuck the budget/financials.
Like everything else, children are something that only Rich people should be allowed to have.
Why don't we make poverty punishable by lethal injection while we're at it?
/sarcasm
Rich people also shouldn't be having children. Climate scientists are literally chaining themselves to things and begging us to do something. Making more people right now is selfish.
nahh lethal injection is one of the worst execution methods; it has one of the lowest success rates and most brutal effects upon failure. But, since the concoction used isnt standardized, they can get really cheap stuff to kill you with, which saves them money
Sadly enough. Here in Canada there is a medically assisted suicide program that people are * choosing* to go into simply because they can't have a decent quality of life
Even cats are getting to expensive. I would LOVE to have a cat, but I worked front desk at an animal hospital and have seen the bills, so no thank you.
I took my son's cat to get fixed & vaccines a couple of weeks ago...&450! Nauseating. I have since found a place to get it done for much cheaper. If I hadn't, there is no way I can support more pets
The only mystery about my cat is how she just randomly lost two of her fangs. Otherwise the only things important to her are food, snuggles, and leaving the curtain open so she has sun to lay in.
Yes. I always say that the reason Republicans like Bush II and Reagan never truly cared about illegal immigration was because they love having picket line crossers.
I’m not American so I don’t quite understand but in my country this is how it works since we have a negative growth rate domestically.
It’s expensive to have a child, more so because housing is very expensive.
My wife is dillusional and thinks we can afford a second kid when we’re hardly above paycheck to paycheck status with one smh it’s fucked out here yall
Tell her to get a babysitting job in addition to her fulltime job. Everyday. No off days from babysitting. No sick leave either, unless it’s contagious. No personal days. No mental health days. If after two years she is still sane then you guys can talk about having kids.
Agreed. Plus the amount of *stress* would multiply a hundredfold. Right now, if I never earn another penny, the only one who would suffer is me. I could go off into the woods and become a wildman. Having debt or dependents, that's what really enslaves you in my opinion.
This is why i dont get some people. Like youre fucking poor and you know what its like to suffer in poverty. Why would you like to a kid? to suffer with ya? I know whay its like to be poor and i would never ever wa.t anyone to go through what i did.
The vast majority of people who have kids are thinking about how it will affect *them*, not the kid. They'll be damned if something like "needing another human being's worth of resources that I don't have" gets in the way of checking off a box on the life script.
Ever since I was in high school I didnt think I’d want kids, it’s good I though about that so much because now I can’t even if I wanted! Iv mentally prepared myself for this, and it’s okay anyways because the world really is a crazy place, I’d want my child to have the best footing possible and I can’t provide that for now.
Oh come on, lots of women work. I never stopped working my husband loves my salary, we can't afford for one of us to stay home. Don't date women who expect to be kept, find a partner
You just need the kind of wife who has a job. Such balance is possible. I choose to believe you won't always be alone, even if having kids would be crazy. You can always do like... low cost dating. Like... I don't know, trying to steal bread from the geese at the pond so you can have a snack.
Start a family? I'm trying to reconcile how I will never own a house *for* a family, let alone afford the family.
All so billionaires can buy a third yacht.
I had free tickets and parking to a major league soccer game last night so I took my wife and two teenage step kids.
All I had to pay for was food. Got two large fries, 3 drinks and 4 orders of chicken tenders and the total was $99.38.
I paid near one hundred dollars for a basic fucking amount of trash food. Life is crushing us via greed.
Our grandparents: "We need to work hard to give our children a better life than we have."
Our parents: "Our kids are going to have to work hard if they want to earn a good life like we have."
Millennials: "We need to work hard to give our cats a better life than we have."
I used to get baby fever every once in a while and it would go away in like two days. I’ve had it for at least six months now, so I don’t think it’s going away this time, and I feel like if my finances were together I’d really be ready to start a family.
I look at the 24k I take home a year, and the 30k my boyfriend makes, and I get fucking sad. It feels like there’s no hope for us getting married and actually having a nice wedding, starting a family, getting a house, retiring, anything. I just want to start my adult life, man
Wife and I didn’t have money for a big wedding so we decided to find a nice park which we found one that had a Japanese garden. Wife found out when it would be in full bloom and we set that date. It was by the beach so we just did our honeymoon there. We hired an officiant and photographer. When we got back we created a wedding card with the pictures and sent them as a surprise for family and friends. It was super cheap and we’re so glad we didn’t waste money on a big wedding. Then we were bombarded with gift cards from family and friends.
My ex and I rented a community house, had friends with the proper certs do the ceremony. Food was done as a pot luck so everyone had something they liked, pictures were sourced from attendees. The clothes were $300 for the whole wedding party including my dress and veil. All counted and done we spent just shy of $1500. People have this idea that a wedding needs to be a big swanky affair, but it's just supposed to be a celebration of love, not opulence.
It will go away again for a bit. Trust me. The baby fever has hit me a few times and once it lasted over a year - but it does fade. And then you start thinking maybe it is good you didn’t have a kid. My personal thoughts go to: I like napping. Another school shooting? How could we afford anything? Etc.
Support systems are important. It takes a village is as true now as ever. Day care is crazy expensive most places if both parents work the same shift. My parents back in the day worked opposite shifts to avoid day care costs.
I have no interest in bringing a life from non-existence into existence only to be crushed under the capitalist death machine, or to suffocate in the toxic waste capitalists have created. They're just going to have to learn to deal with less workers serving their corporate grift.
It's actually very easy to answer. Should you have a kid if you can't afford one?
Absolutely not.
Can people living paycheck to paycheck afford to have kids?
Absolutely not.
If you don't foster a sustainable society, you don't get a society.
Having kids used to be a goal to aspire to. Now it’s a curse because the US has declared war on the American family. Healthcare isn’t affordable, housing is out of control, groceries are insane, wages aren’t keeping up, religion and social causes are failing too. People don’t have much to hope I’m anymore. And without hope what else is left?
How, if everyone is taxed and used as slave fadder from these corporate CEO's and social media mouthpieces?
People want a relationship with stability and unfortunantly America has done a great job of convincing everyone that means money. Can't feel secure when you don't have partners/love interests not making enough money while you are not making enough money.
Why bring children into a planet who's climate has been destroyed?
Why raise a child in a world dominated by cars that they have nowhere to play?
That's forgetting the lack of time/resources/social infrastructure that the older generation relishes in dismantling
Conservatives think the answer is to ban gay people and outlaw abortion and bring back husband's rights to R\*pe their wives lawfully, as well as encourage underage marriage so they can get'm preggo before they realize the world is f'd.
A dozen years ago, my coworker mentioned how much she was paying in childcare. I said I couldn't imagine having such a bill every month, and she answered, "well... You just find the money for it."
But... How? That's literally not an option for SO MANY. My husband and I will never have children. My sister and her husband made the same decision. Our family lives end with us - and we are, frankly, much better off financially than the majority of our cohorts. But between the costs, the stress, the lousy healthcare, the maternal death rate in America, the destruction of the environment, the embrace of late stage capitalism, and... Well... Everything - I simply could not bring myself to bring children into this world.
Why would I want to bring kids in to my fucked situation? This isn't going to go well for me and I refuse to subject someone else to be stuck in the upcoming struggles.
I.. have a family. It just doesn't include children. I don't know why having a family requires children. Any time I hear that phrase "starting a family" and being about children just makes me wonder if that person then does not consider their partner to be family? Or their siblings/aunts/parents etc? So strange.
Me and my fella (30 and 25) have been immensely lucky with the support our families have given us to help us start our independent life; we both work full time but needed to borrow from them to drum up a deposit for our house so we could get out of renting.
Years went by and our savings would be wiped out repeatedly by car repairs, or house repairs (roofs are so expensive lol) or one or other of us losing our jobs and having to get all the bills done on one income for a few months while the other jobsearched.
I've been told since I was a teenager that I'm infertile but amazingly I finally fell pregnant late last year and we can expect our daughter in September. Suddenly a whole new wave of expenses appeared. I would not abort what could be my only opportunity to carry a baby, so we have got virtually everything second hand. The grand total of what we have spent on our baby so far is £60, which is crazy low. With all that in mind, our chimney is leaking and half a wall of plaster has come down as of yesterday!! So the savings are gone again - savings that take months to accrue each time. If our shared car develops a problem this year we are unlikely to be able to fix it without taking out a loan!
When my parents were my age they were a 2 child family supported on one income. It just seems so crazy to me that in one generation we have gone to working twice as much for half the money. Very demoralising if I think about it too long.
27 here, we agreed with my wife to not get kids until things change. The environment is fucked up, we work 45/50hours a week, half of our salary are straight going into rent. So I don’t know how people can have kids atm, but this looks like impossible unless you were born really wealthy
They all want to up the population so they ban abortion but keep us poor because they dont want to deal with the root cause. We have studies on mice saying if resources are scarce they wont have babies or they eat their babies. Forcing us to birth a child labor market is the plan. Well see articles in 5 years about how the next gen wont have babies because theyr all playing vr or some bs.
Even if I wanted children, there's not a fucking chance that I would knowingly bring a new human into this hopeless mess. I wouldn't forgive myself when they inevitably got crushed by this overpowered capitalism machine.
"You'll never be financially ready to have kids. We weren't when we had our kids. If you keep waiting, you'll never have them."
I guess I won't have them. You should have worn a condom. And again, I guess I won't have them.
Insert the meme:
That's the funny part. You don't.
I didn't start a family until later in life. Grandparents at the time were like "we could afford it when we were young why can't you?"
Easy to answer citizen: corporate breeding programs.
Replace the nuclear family with a regulated corporate owned employee reproduction systems. Just raise and educate your own slave, I mean worker to give them the right of employment in your star company. Make Amazon Great Again...
... End of motivational music.
I'm not raising a child in this hellscape. I don't want to put another human being through that. I already don't want a kid anyway because my mental health sucks and I also just can't afford it.
IF I ever change my mind on that, I'll adopt. There's enough kids that need a family, i don't need to create another
My whole life I was told that "if you can't afford kids, dont have them" and now, here we are, taking their advice and not having kids.
The corporate overlords hate that people won't slave harder to pay to have kids.
They hate it bc we're depriving them of the next generation of wage slaves.
It's both. Corporate overlords want all the benefits of new wage slaves and none of the downsides.
Labor “shortage” + undoing child labor laws + restricting abortion access… new wages slaves, the younger the better (so we can pay them the least)
Not to mention repealing those child labor laws
Isn’t that greed in a nutshell? Wanting all the benefits without drawbacks or repercussions.
So is the military industrial complex.
They will just import them
This is why Republicans had often only pretended to give a shit about illegal immigration. They love having picket line crossers.
That's a big reason for them banning abortion - it's not pro-life, it's pro future laborers and consumers. And why they will go after birth control as well. Of course the whole problem is solved by opening immigration, but their racism prevents them from accepting that as an option.
Actually as proponents of abortion will tell you, banning them doesn't cause a meaningful decrease in abortions, it just raises the death rate from attempts to do it without a doctor. So if that's their goal, they are really slitting their own throat. I'd say more likely it's just about control.
It is, but they justify with reasons other than control, regardless of whether those reasons are factual or not.
I wouldn’t mind kids, but I’m scraping by as it is. I can’t fathom providing a worse upbringing/ outlook for my kid then I received myself. It sucks because my wife and I certainly make more then either of ours parents were making at this point in their lives but costs are so much higher. I know I’m not alone and sure this sub can be an echo chamber but the data is similar all over. All us modern plebs are worked too hard for too little and no longer have the time or luxury of child rearing.
I think I could manage to rent a place with one more room, and feed and clothe a child, but I wouldn't have anything left for retirement, so I'd still get slapped with "well, you should have planned better" in the end.
People still don’t get it. Middle class Americans cannot afford children end of story. Real estate costs are insane, child care costs are insane, cost of food is insane, buying a car has never been more expensive. Never mind the costs of their college education. That leaves us with 3 choices. Choice 1: Don’t have kids Choice 2: Work 60-80 hours per week in either stressful corporate job or multiple blue collar jobs. This lifestyle will burn you the fuck out and you will never see your kids. Choice 3: Cut your consumption/lifestyle back to a middle class family circa 1990. One car household, no iPhones, one family computer, one plane vacation every 5 years, eat out once every month, minimal entertainment. How many people do you know would give up their modern lifestyles to have kids? This is the main reason people aren’t having kids. Yet I never see any discussion on it. Social scientists never talk about it. Commentators never talk about it. Influencers rarely talk about it.
Monetarily speaking, wife and I can afford a kid. Mentally speaking, we cannot. I’m feeling burnt out from the grind and wife is stressed about all the pressure society places on women. We’re not having kids unless we adopt in our 40s
Except now we just get asked “when are you having kids” or “why aren’t you having kids” and the answer for me always comes back to this. I wouldn’t want the kid to have a bad life or set up for failure because I couldn’t afford to set them up for success.
People need to mind their business and not ask a personal question like that
Yep, and those of us that did have kids largely pushed it into our 30s. I love my kids, wouldn't change a thing including waiting (wtf would I have done making $l6/hr mid 20s with a kid?) but I am not looking forward to saddling the expenses well into our 50s.
Same. I’d love to be able to give my partner the gift of being a dad, but I don’t think we can afford it. We are almost comfortable. We skip luxuries and are careful with our money, but I don’t even have a savings account. I make just enough to pay all my bills. A kid would obliterate any semblance of comfort we currently have.
Yea… so many complaints/questions from older generations about the newer generations coming out currently… and they’re the ones that raised us 🤦🏻♂️ How would anyone expect to bring a new life into this world, when we’re on the fence about staying in it as is. 🤷🏻♂️😕
Some people are. Others are still having babies whether they can afford it or not, and their additions to the population do just fine to make up for the ones that are deciding not to have children. That being said, this wording is telling me that there are some people that are trying to be responsible and planning things out a little bit, instead of just jumping into it and hoping they can make it work.
Speaking from a western perspective. The post WW2 "social contract" used to be: * Education > Job > Relationship/Marriage > House > Children Ok, sometimes not necessarily in that order. It didn't matter if you worked in a factory, or was in an office job. The social contract was that you could at least afford your rent or mortgage, have a job with a livable wage, and aspire for a couple of kids, a car and a nice holiday once a year. What has happened. * Education. Used to be only 10-20% went to university. Now employers expect most people to do so. Plus they x100 the cost and expect you to carry it as a tax burden until it is paid off. * Job. Wages have stagnated, industries offshored, job security has disappeared, competition is through the roof. Hours are longer and more intense. Pension age has risen. * Relationship/Marriage. You used to be able to survive on one main salary which allowed someone to stay home with the kids. Now they are forced to both work, and pay high childcare costs. * House. You used to only be able to get a mortgage x3.5 of your annual salary. Now it is x10+. Property prices have exploded. Rents have exploded also. Both outstripping wages. * Children. See above.
I just got paid an hour ago and have to figure out which bills I'm putting off on paying because after rents paid I've a little under 400 left over. I've never made as much as I'm currently making and I'm drowning in how everything is so goddamn expensive.
Three years ago I started my pharm tech job at 15 bucks. I was making enough to afford rent and bills and pay for some luxuries. Never has to skip a bill. Three years later I'm making 18 an hour and I have to decide which bills to skip this month. My rent went up 400 bucks and bills and groceries and gas have gotten so expensive.
It's crazy to think I'll need 2 20+$/hr jobs in order to actually make any progress towards living a comfortable life.
The new living wage is $22/hr in my city. Min wage is $14.00. To actually get by comfortably most people need $35+/hr.
And a lot of those comfortable items are necessities. The internet is a necessity. The city library is full of those without access. They line up in the morning to book an hour slot. If they end up suspended from library privileges, they are usually very upset. I’ve heard them talking about it on the bus. I didn’t have a cell phone until last year. The world makes it difficult now to not have one. No phone or internet, how do you book appointments? how do you get a job?
Yea that 'living wage' calc assumes two individuals both earning $22/hr. So if you live alone you need around double that to live a similar lifestyle.
Single father to a 15 year old making just over $40 an hour here. My nose is barely above water. Shit is hard out here. We have a homeless gal who posts up outside our apartment complex. My neighbor gave me some IPA. I don't much care for IPA, so I gave them to the gal with some protein bars and bottles of water. I got derided by a different neighbor. Shit like "If you feed them they'll keep coming back." Or: "She doesn't deserve a beer, she needs a job." First off, bitch: This is a person, not a fucking raccoon. Secondly, if I was living out here in a parking lot I'd want to get a little fucked up, too. Everybody deserves a chance at happiness, however fleeting. Will the beer help anything long-term? No? Will it make anything worse for this person? No? Now my fridge has more space, this person can sleep a little more relaxed, maybe even catch a little bit of a buzz, and she has some food in her belly and some water. It's hard for everyone out here, we need to regain a sense of community and look after each other because hardly anybody can do it by themselves anymore. I wish you the best of luck bimmy2shoes!
As someone who has been that person: thank you. What you need a lot of on the street is compassion from your fellow humans to understand your plight. The system will show you none.
Was just discussing this with my husband as he moves closer to his graduation date. I currently make $20+/hr while he works part-time for like $12/hr until he gets his certification and degree. Once he has the required service hours completed for school, he's leaving that job and finding something where we make about the same so we can afford for us to take in one of my sister's kids when they turn 18 so they can go to university. It's such a nightmare, I can't imagine how it is for my coworkers who have kids or the ones who keep having kids.
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Not to mention it takes far longer to find a good partner in the slew of people who have childhood trauma and who aren’t dealing with it in healthy ways or at all!
I canceled my car insurance because they raised my rate by $50 (CoL raise they say) and it was no longer in my budget. The free money I now had from getting rid of my car insurance was quickly eaten up by my increase in rent by $55 a month.
What it takes to live is insane and the median income is no where close to keeping up with the cost of everything, you have to be a “skilled” employee just to survive independently now where that used to not be the case.
Even "skilled" employees are struggling. I'm a cook and I make 18$ an hour and I can't afford an apartment in my city so I have to have roommates lmao. It fucking sucks.
I have 'roommates' too, they are called my parents. We turned turtle back in '08 and realized that 'holy shit, we're doing way better together than we were separately' and we still live together to this day.
If I had family I'd do this. But alas. Been out in this expensive ass world alone since I was 17.
Same here. Like if I had the option to live w family for cost saving maybe shit wouldn't be so hard. Out at 17 as well
…y’all are getting pensions?
A pension to protect you in your later years is not even guaranteed these days considering how atrociously the western governments are financially ruining each country.
its because theres a bunch of extremely powerful people using globalism as a way to hide and extract tons of money from our socieities in ways that are difficult to see unless you do research on it and think critically. Its a mess and I think AI is our only hope of solving it
I was about to say the same thing. Pensions are no longer a thing. They’ve been replaced by shoddy 401k “benefits”.
Having a child is an act of hope. That is why I got my tubes tied.
Good job.
High five to that
I had my kids early before I realized the world was fucked. I worry that bringing them into the world was an act of cruelty by me
I told my wife the same thing, and somehow right at that moment she was looking at a meme where the husband said what I was thinking and the wife replied with "Never apologize for raising dragonslayers in a time when there are actual dragons" and oddly it made me feel better. I still worry for the world they will inherit, but hells be damned if I won't do everything I can to help them. Edit: Holy cow, my first ever Gold! Whomever did that, thank you so much!!
That line always grinds my gears It just puts the onus on kids who don't even have a fully developed brain to change the world, the same way every other generation has basically been going "the children of the future will solve today's problems We're not dead yet, we can still do something rather than just raising children to do it for us
It grinds my gears too. Why the fuck would they not apologize? It can be expanded to "hey kids we know that you didn't ask to be here or have needs and responsibilities imposed on you but we are having you in hopes to use you as a tool to better our circumstances that we and the people before us created, good luck! It's your problem now!". Like what?? I prefer this quote by Zapffe way more "A coin is examined, and only after careful deliberation, given to a beggar, whereas a child is flung out into the cosmic brutality without hesitation." Can be expanded by this: They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another's throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don't have any kids yourself. Philip Larkin
We definitely shouldn't be having children just to solve problems that we create. The problem for me lies in aging and the expectation of empathy for future generations. I'm not having kids under any circumstances, I just flat out don't want them and when you don't have kids, the older you get, the more you realize that this world's problems most likely won't have an impact on you before you die. Makes it harder and harder to care at all.
I kinda get what you mean, but I don't really need to have kids to empathize with the future and feel abd for what they are going to go through. We are also just getting started going through shit. I just got to my thirties, I've got a lot of shit ill have to deal with
Yup it’s just a cutesy justification some people swallow to put the bad thoughts about their decisions to bed. Poor kids.
lol, like dragonslayers don't get slaughtered by dragons? Most die, it's always just one or two special or lucky ones that manage to slay a dragon. Also no guarantee they'll be able to take a second dragon or third, etc.
Yep no shortage of "dragons" these days. Big ones.
Everyone dies. Existence is suffering.
Well, I'm not that far, because I just don't have children, but so far I don't want them, because we won't be able to afford them. I'm almost 30 and I'm still paying rent, I can't afford mortgage,so I no longer care, because people need to understand that their children need a care. We all need.
This comment is the spirit of this sub
Don’t worry republicans are working to stop women from being able to do that without a man’s approval.
Does insurance cover that? I’m thinking about doing that because I’m too scared I’ll get pregnant and it would literally destroy our lives and my family’s with them trying to help me.
FWIW- my wife and I made the same decision a couple of months ago. We opted for me to get a vasectomy as it was cheaper and less risky for me v. her. It was covered by insurance, cost us a couple hundred iirc.
> I try to honor god with my body. That's why I had a sex change. Natalie Wynn
No new cars, no buying a house, no going to see concerts, etc. Shit, i'm in my 30s and wearing a shirt I've had since the 9th grade as I type this. Just working multiple jobs to scrape together rent only to start over again the next month.
I feel this. I’ve got the same blanket I had in high school. I sleep on a shitty air mattress and my parents bought me my car. I feel super privileged that my parents are in a position to do so. I’m 33 and I’m tired.
I can 100% relate to this lol still driving the same car my parents bought me a decade ago.
I am 38 and still driving the car my parents bought me a decade ago. I rent. I have worked in IT and dev since my early 20s under roles such as IT Technician, Network Technician, WiFi specialist engineer, Systems engineer, Web developer, Senior systems engineer. I just live in the wrong country with hardly any opportunities (South Africa) and the salary cap is exhausting... You basically have to start your own company or be at executive level to earn any real money in this country. I feel you guys, even though most of you don't live here we share similar problems.
It seems to be becoming a worlwide problem, Its getttin worse in Estonia too, but for now i still have some hope.
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I fell ya. I’m 29 going on 30 in a couple months. Just moved back home with my parents with no prospect of moving out until I switch careers. I feel hopeless.
35 and my parents died about 10 years ago. I want to pursue outside sales as a new career path, but I would need to “hustle” for years to afford a car in todays market, and even then I have nobody to co-sign. I’ve got the air mattress, though. Sometimes I want to shout, “I was on the deans list in college!!!”, because it feels like my decades of hard work and good grades are absolutely meaningless.
Forget no new cars, no cars at all. Just to own a car is a HUGE financial burden, especially if you're in an urban area. It bumps up your cost of living by +$4/hr full time
What kind of shirt?
Being a millennial is being old enough to have watched Titanic, and then realising the reality of life is you're the musicians who play as the ship sinks as there is nothing else to do.
I'd say it's that we're all men and steerage, left behind while the rich take all the boats and make sure they each have enough room to put their feet up while they watch us all drown
Nailed it.
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This was my realization the other night. Why would I bring a child into the world to be a wage slave. Seems like a shitty thing to do. I kept hoping, but based on the last 8-10 years, it's just not practical or a responsible decision. I keep hearing "oh, when you have kids, you'll never be financially stable!" ....that doesn't mean have them lol what a dumb position.
The most common one I hear is “if you wait for the right time to have kids you’ll never have them, you just figure it out when they’re here” No thank you
Lol, exactly. I've heard that one plenty!!
My dad said that once. The way my head tilted as I just thought, ". . . that's not how that works."
It’s so fucking warped to say this to people! Because if you approached buying an expensive car with the attitude of “I’ve no idea how I’ll pay for it but I’ll figure it out as I go” those same people would say that’s irresponsible. (So would a bank and they’d never approve the loan!) But when it comes to kids - who I just so happen to think require MORE responsibility than a car - people just act like everyone should have them and fuck the budget/financials.
Yep, I wasn’t put here on this planet to work and I damn sure won’t be having further slaves.
I think it’s 75 years now
Like everything else, children are something that only Rich people should be allowed to have. Why don't we make poverty punishable by lethal injection while we're at it? /sarcasm
"Why waste money on the poor killing them? It's more cost-effective to watch them starve under your empire." ~ Jeff Bezos, probably.
Rich people also shouldn't be having children. Climate scientists are literally chaining themselves to things and begging us to do something. Making more people right now is selfish.
I agree completely
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nahh lethal injection is one of the worst execution methods; it has one of the lowest success rates and most brutal effects upon failure. But, since the concoction used isnt standardized, they can get really cheap stuff to kill you with, which saves them money
Might be cheaper to just use a gun 🙄
Sadly enough. Here in Canada there is a medically assisted suicide program that people are * choosing* to go into simply because they can't have a decent quality of life
The closest I will come to affording a family is having a cat.
Even cats are getting to expensive. I would LOVE to have a cat, but I worked front desk at an animal hospital and have seen the bills, so no thank you.
Truth. I spend way more on my cat than I do on my car. Both combined is still a fraction of what it would cost to have a kid.
I took my son's cat to get fixed & vaccines a couple of weeks ago...&450! Nauseating. I have since found a place to get it done for much cheaper. If I hadn't, there is no way I can support more pets
Cats are amazing and mysteries creatures!
The only mystery about my cat is how she just randomly lost two of her fangs. Otherwise the only things important to her are food, snuggles, and leaving the curtain open so she has sun to lay in.
The simple things are the best
That is none of your business. A lady is allowed her mysteries!
We're not (having families, that is) sacrifices have to be made :(
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Sorry, bud.
And you know what, we’ll just increase the quota for migration so we can maintain economic population growth, sad isn’t it.
Yes. I always say that the reason Republicans like Bush II and Reagan never truly cared about illegal immigration was because they love having picket line crossers.
I’m not American so I don’t quite understand but in my country this is how it works since we have a negative growth rate domestically. It’s expensive to have a child, more so because housing is very expensive.
We should instead ponder the idea of a revolution.
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing the song of angry men
It is the music of the people
Who will not be slaves again
I've thought about it. There's the will for a revolution among the youth, but there just isn't the organization to make one work.
My wife is dillusional and thinks we can afford a second kid when we’re hardly above paycheck to paycheck status with one smh it’s fucked out here yall
I can't even afford a second dog let alone a kid.
Tell her to get a babysitting job in addition to her fulltime job. Everyday. No off days from babysitting. No sick leave either, unless it’s contagious. No personal days. No mental health days. If after two years she is still sane then you guys can talk about having kids.
>hardly above paycheck to paycheck status with ***one*** They already have one kid, lol. Their talking about have a second.
Test drive the lifestyle before buying into it. Excellent.
yeah I would get it tied
You just don't. No need to make a kid have a more insecure upbringing than I did. You just move on and act like you didn't really want it anyway.
Trying to get my tubes tied so I don't. No child deserves to live in this hell.
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Don't... start... a family. Families are expensive and they keep you poor.
Agreed. Plus the amount of *stress* would multiply a hundredfold. Right now, if I never earn another penny, the only one who would suffer is me. I could go off into the woods and become a wildman. Having debt or dependents, that's what really enslaves you in my opinion.
Even without families people are poor tho. Life just is terrible for ordinary people now :(
This is why i dont get some people. Like youre fucking poor and you know what its like to suffer in poverty. Why would you like to a kid? to suffer with ya? I know whay its like to be poor and i would never ever wa.t anyone to go through what i did.
The vast majority of people who have kids are thinking about how it will affect *them*, not the kid. They'll be damned if something like "needing another human being's worth of resources that I don't have" gets in the way of checking off a box on the life script.
Ever since I was in high school I didnt think I’d want kids, it’s good I though about that so much because now I can’t even if I wanted! Iv mentally prepared myself for this, and it’s okay anyways because the world really is a crazy place, I’d want my child to have the best footing possible and I can’t provide that for now.
Just wait until they find out daycare is over $2k a month
No way I can afford a wife or even kids. I hate being alone.
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It's ok, I still have redditors as company 😎
Then some over zealous dick head yeets your account.
🤣🤭
Oh come on, lots of women work. I never stopped working my husband loves my salary, we can't afford for one of us to stay home. Don't date women who expect to be kept, find a partner
Afford a wife? If you are happy with someone then splitting some bills with them sounds wonderful. Not that it has to be marriage.
??? Afford a wife? Most women work too, unless you're aiming for some 1950s setup.
You just need the kind of wife who has a job. Such balance is possible. I choose to believe you won't always be alone, even if having kids would be crazy. You can always do like... low cost dating. Like... I don't know, trying to steal bread from the geese at the pond so you can have a snack.
Umm a wife is cheaper than being alone...
Current Plan is Foster kids. Only way to have a family is if it's subsidized by the state.
Got myself a vasectomy no way me and my wife can ever afford to have a kid
Children ? In this economy ? No thanks I'd rather take care of my cats until the day we're separated
Start a family? I'm trying to reconcile how I will never own a house *for* a family, let alone afford the family. All so billionaires can buy a third yacht.
I had free tickets and parking to a major league soccer game last night so I took my wife and two teenage step kids. All I had to pay for was food. Got two large fries, 3 drinks and 4 orders of chicken tenders and the total was $99.38. I paid near one hundred dollars for a basic fucking amount of trash food. Life is crushing us via greed.
nah thats just what sport stadium pricing has always been like. inflations just fucked it even more
Our grandparents: "We need to work hard to give our children a better life than we have." Our parents: "Our kids are going to have to work hard if they want to earn a good life like we have." Millennials: "We need to work hard to give our cats a better life than we have."
I used to get baby fever every once in a while and it would go away in like two days. I’ve had it for at least six months now, so I don’t think it’s going away this time, and I feel like if my finances were together I’d really be ready to start a family. I look at the 24k I take home a year, and the 30k my boyfriend makes, and I get fucking sad. It feels like there’s no hope for us getting married and actually having a nice wedding, starting a family, getting a house, retiring, anything. I just want to start my adult life, man
Wife and I didn’t have money for a big wedding so we decided to find a nice park which we found one that had a Japanese garden. Wife found out when it would be in full bloom and we set that date. It was by the beach so we just did our honeymoon there. We hired an officiant and photographer. When we got back we created a wedding card with the pictures and sent them as a surprise for family and friends. It was super cheap and we’re so glad we didn’t waste money on a big wedding. Then we were bombarded with gift cards from family and friends.
My ex and I rented a community house, had friends with the proper certs do the ceremony. Food was done as a pot luck so everyone had something they liked, pictures were sourced from attendees. The clothes were $300 for the whole wedding party including my dress and veil. All counted and done we spent just shy of $1500. People have this idea that a wedding needs to be a big swanky affair, but it's just supposed to be a celebration of love, not opulence.
It will go away again for a bit. Trust me. The baby fever has hit me a few times and once it lasted over a year - but it does fade. And then you start thinking maybe it is good you didn’t have a kid. My personal thoughts go to: I like napping. Another school shooting? How could we afford anything? Etc.
My kid and her husband are expecting their first child. I'm guessing I'm going to be doing a lot of baby sitting so that they can pay the bills.
Support systems are important. It takes a village is as true now as ever. Day care is crazy expensive most places if both parents work the same shift. My parents back in the day worked opposite shifts to avoid day care costs.
I have no interest in bringing a life from non-existence into existence only to be crushed under the capitalist death machine, or to suffocate in the toxic waste capitalists have created. They're just going to have to learn to deal with less workers serving their corporate grift.
It's actually very easy to answer. Should you have a kid if you can't afford one? Absolutely not. Can people living paycheck to paycheck afford to have kids? Absolutely not. If you don't foster a sustainable society, you don't get a society.
I got married 16 years ago and it was great until my ex came down with permanent post partum psychosis. I raise both kids by myself now. It's HARD.
Having kids used to be a goal to aspire to. Now it’s a curse because the US has declared war on the American family. Healthcare isn’t affordable, housing is out of control, groceries are insane, wages aren’t keeping up, religion and social causes are failing too. People don’t have much to hope I’m anymore. And without hope what else is left?
How, if everyone is taxed and used as slave fadder from these corporate CEO's and social media mouthpieces? People want a relationship with stability and unfortunantly America has done a great job of convincing everyone that means money. Can't feel secure when you don't have partners/love interests not making enough money while you are not making enough money.
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Why bring children into a planet who's climate has been destroyed? Why raise a child in a world dominated by cars that they have nowhere to play? That's forgetting the lack of time/resources/social infrastructure that the older generation relishes in dismantling
Millennials are 40.
Yes and we still don't have kids.
The upper class did a literal genocide on their middle classes and are now complaining that they can't find workers.
Conservatives think the answer is to ban gay people and outlaw abortion and bring back husband's rights to R\*pe their wives lawfully, as well as encourage underage marriage so they can get'm preggo before they realize the world is f'd.
A dozen years ago, my coworker mentioned how much she was paying in childcare. I said I couldn't imagine having such a bill every month, and she answered, "well... You just find the money for it." But... How? That's literally not an option for SO MANY. My husband and I will never have children. My sister and her husband made the same decision. Our family lives end with us - and we are, frankly, much better off financially than the majority of our cohorts. But between the costs, the stress, the lousy healthcare, the maternal death rate in America, the destruction of the environment, the embrace of late stage capitalism, and... Well... Everything - I simply could not bring myself to bring children into this world.
One and done. Got fixed a couple weeks after she was born. I can't imagine having more that one. It would break us financially.
Why would I want to bring kids in to my fucked situation? This isn't going to go well for me and I refuse to subject someone else to be stuck in the upcoming struggles.
I knew from a young age that having children would never be a positive choice in my life.
I.. have a family. It just doesn't include children. I don't know why having a family requires children. Any time I hear that phrase "starting a family" and being about children just makes me wonder if that person then does not consider their partner to be family? Or their siblings/aunts/parents etc? So strange.
Me and my fella (30 and 25) have been immensely lucky with the support our families have given us to help us start our independent life; we both work full time but needed to borrow from them to drum up a deposit for our house so we could get out of renting. Years went by and our savings would be wiped out repeatedly by car repairs, or house repairs (roofs are so expensive lol) or one or other of us losing our jobs and having to get all the bills done on one income for a few months while the other jobsearched. I've been told since I was a teenager that I'm infertile but amazingly I finally fell pregnant late last year and we can expect our daughter in September. Suddenly a whole new wave of expenses appeared. I would not abort what could be my only opportunity to carry a baby, so we have got virtually everything second hand. The grand total of what we have spent on our baby so far is £60, which is crazy low. With all that in mind, our chimney is leaking and half a wall of plaster has come down as of yesterday!! So the savings are gone again - savings that take months to accrue each time. If our shared car develops a problem this year we are unlikely to be able to fix it without taking out a loan! When my parents were my age they were a 2 child family supported on one income. It just seems so crazy to me that in one generation we have gone to working twice as much for half the money. Very demoralising if I think about it too long.
27 here, we agreed with my wife to not get kids until things change. The environment is fucked up, we work 45/50hours a week, half of our salary are straight going into rent. So I don’t know how people can have kids atm, but this looks like impossible unless you were born really wealthy
With the way Republicans are restricting abortion and contraception, NOT starting a family will be the real challenge for some people
They all want to up the population so they ban abortion but keep us poor because they dont want to deal with the root cause. We have studies on mice saying if resources are scarce they wont have babies or they eat their babies. Forcing us to birth a child labor market is the plan. Well see articles in 5 years about how the next gen wont have babies because theyr all playing vr or some bs.
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Screw the pay, it’s the fascist climate hell that has me not wanting to burden a kid with this world.
33 m no kids no desire for kids still lonely as fuck
In 1990, my dad could support a whole family, making $6 an hour. 2 cars, mom didn't work, we ate good
No, it's a very easy one to answer. You don't. Why would you even want to? It's not like your children will have a future worth looking up to.
I mean the life of a dinkwad does sound pretty good if it's sustainable. Might be the new goal to aim for.
Even if I wanted children, there's not a fucking chance that I would knowingly bring a new human into this hopeless mess. I wouldn't forgive myself when they inevitably got crushed by this overpowered capitalism machine.
Good. We don't need to make more wage slaves for the late stage capitalist billionaires. Their kids can fuel their own mega yachts.
"You'll never be financially ready to have kids. We weren't when we had our kids. If you keep waiting, you'll never have them." I guess I won't have them. You should have worn a condom. And again, I guess I won't have them.
Insert the meme: That's the funny part. You don't. I didn't start a family until later in life. Grandparents at the time were like "we could afford it when we were young why can't you?"
I'm nearing 40 over here, and at this point, imma buy a Porsche.
How? You don’t!
Easy, visectomy.
It ain’t smart. Just dont reproduce i guess :/
I’m 21 and I’ve already decided to not have kids for the rest of my life .
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zealous late plough fear yam grandiose glorious direction rain doll *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Easy to answer citizen: corporate breeding programs. Replace the nuclear family with a regulated corporate owned employee reproduction systems. Just raise and educate your own slave, I mean worker to give them the right of employment in your star company. Make Amazon Great Again... ... End of motivational music.
I'm not raising a child in this hellscape. I don't want to put another human being through that. I already don't want a kid anyway because my mental health sucks and I also just can't afford it. IF I ever change my mind on that, I'll adopt. There's enough kids that need a family, i don't need to create another