You don't know who you are until you've experienced the stress of a family and little kids.
Even if I didn't have to, I decided to get a job while having kids to maintain sanity and use the paid paternity leave. Now that the kids are older and I feel like I have a brain again, I'm back at doing what I like: building online businesses.
I highly recommend pursuing family, but you need to be careful in your situation.
Getting in a relationship on a lavish lifestyle is a good recipe for a divorce later on. Once I started looking (~at 25), I was extremely blunt in what I was looking for and that helped screen things considerably.
I personally decided to start a family without marrying because marriage laws are pretty unfair towards men where I am and create an incentive towards a divorce and lies just to extract money from the other part. You don't know how your partner will turn out in 10 years, so better safe than sorry.
We're still buying a house together and splitting 50/50 irrespective of income / savings.
That should make sure there won't be a wife maintenance for me to pay in case we split up and that I won't lose 50% of the house. We also have wills to make sure we have guardianship of kids and access to money in case someone dies.
So what would your advice be? Delay having children? Not have children? Only have children if the mother is prepared to do most of the work raising them? Something else?
It seems like having children is something you may enjoy in 30-40 years - or rather will potentially prevent feeling miserable and alone in 30-40 years. But in the short term - at least 2-3 years, but likely much longer - it can be quite miserable.
Now, given that we don't know how long we get to live and what sort of health we will be in, time when you are younger seems more valuable than time when you are older. That would suggest that having children is often a bad idea, unless you strongly believe that you will enjoy the whole experience. But then, imagining what my own parents' and grandparents' life would be like today had they not had children, it seems like it would be far worse. But their circumstances were very different, too.
Even if I didn't have to, I decided to get a job while having kids to maintain sanity and use the paid paternity leave. Now that the kids are older and I feel like I have a brain again, I'm back at doing what I like: building online businesses.
I highly recommend pursuing family, but you need to be careful in your situation. Getting in a relationship on a lavish lifestyle is a good recipe for a divorce later on. Once I started looking (~at 25), I was extremely blunt in what I was looking for and that helped screen things considerably.
I personally decided to start a family without marrying because marriage laws are pretty unfair towards men where I am and create an incentive towards a divorce and lies just to extract money from the other part. You don't know how your partner will turn out in 10 years, so better safe than sorry. We're still buying a house together and splitting 50/50 irrespective of income / savings. That should make sure there won't be a wife maintenance for me to pay in case we split up and that I won't lose 50% of the house. We also have wills to make sure we have guardianship of kids and access to money in case someone dies.