Interesting article. I think part of the issue is education. We get lots of education and resources to help us not have children. But the logistics of finding a partner, maybe marrying, maybe buying property, and then starting to have children is ignored. You very suddenly reach an age as a man where you realise these things are all going to take time and that might be time you don't have. Or time your partner doesn't have. At a certain age, if you're still dating, you might need to start to date women slightly younger than yourself too, and before long you've aged out - you're too old to date a women still of child-bearing age. I've noticed in friends once they hit their thirties, things start to move quickly. New relationships no longer last 4 years before ending - they're engaged after 12 months and married within 24 months. The 'deadline' and pressure can be a good thing for some people. Others will make mistakes. So I think it's a mix of not understanding how early you need to start on the road to having children, mixed with the paradox of choice where people don't want to 'give up' all of their options and then leave it too late. I definitely think the number of childless men who regret it will grow massively with Millennials and Gen Z.
It's similar to how people are now fatter and sicker despite access to more information and options vs prior generations. The limited choices before "happened to" line up to what is for many a healthier diet and exercise pattern.
Similar with kids - there's less pressure to have kids now and easier excuses not to - but that road takes you to not a good place in the long run.
I agree with your last statement and with my close friends, I do try to broach this subject occasionally.
I think there are many people who genuinely don’t want with kid. But there are many other people who just don’t really seem to have a good perspective on the timeline for these things. This is especially true with men. The idea that you can simply date younger strikes me as a bit foolish- I’ve got a ten year age split with my husband, I’m by no means against it, but I think these age differences come with issues of their own. I think 27 -33, both people around the same age. Is going the sweet spot for most people even it comes to children.
The reality is: the decision to start a family it isn’t just about you. It’s also about your future grand kids. And while 40 might seem like it’s the right time for some…it’s rarely ideal in the grand scheme of things- that puts you at a strong chance of having health issues while your kids start families of their own. But meeting your grandkids if your kids make that same choice. It’s best I think to be at that phase in life when your kids are a bit more settled.
On the other hand I think normalising most men marrying 30 year olds at 45 opens society up for a variety of problems. And that seems obvious to me even if I don’t think it’s true for everyone- or my relationship. That on a larger scale…it would cause problems. And perhaps aggravate things for the younger generation of men quite considerably.
Both genders let themselves get lulled into "I still have time, nowadays it's different" WAY too much. They're not just completely ignoring the normal decline of fertility ratios with age just because they see some other people getting their first children in their 30s or even 40s. They're also ignoring fertility ratios declining even stronger due to environmental factors.
Just because so many people are successfully postponing children doesn't mean it gets any easier after the age of 30 or your children are going to be as healthy as others. Statistically the probability of chromosome defects roughly increases by one factor for every year parents are older than 25. ~7 times higher at 35, 15 times at 40.
If you are generally open to having children, the best time is in your mid-20s. You still have much more options, support and energy and your children will be healthier. By the time you're out of the education system and your career takes off, your children are already in school and mostly taken care of. That also makes you much more attractive to employers. Nobody likes a 30-something who's been a reliable employee for the last years and might even be up for a promotion to a higher role, but now suddenly has kids and will be tired and unreliable for the next ten years.
[*If not in the USA, read "Old geezer". Credit: Aachen]
Many varieties of "I really regret that I [did|didn't] do X when I was younger" occur in older humans.
The stereotype of young men wanting to avoid all the work and commitment of setting down, marrying, and raising children is older than the pyramids. It is obviously not true of all young men, but there's very seldom been a shortage. Sure, their feelings may change as they grow older - but a young man whose main motive for marriage is "so I don't regret not having kids when I'm old" strikes me as a young man who the young women should avoid.
In some cases, I get the sense that "I really regret not having children" is mostly a way of articulating "I am old and socially disconnected and feel lonely and depressed". In the modern world - where kids generally grow up and move far away for jobs - having had children would probably not help much with that.
I feel like most young men have always wanted to extend their youth and avoid the responsibility that family life would bring. However, until recently (with easy access to birth control, abortion, and proper education) this wasn't really possible. You would accidentally have a child and be forced into the lifestyle you were trying to avoid. And most of the time things worked out and you were forced into a situation that's probably better for you rather than delaying it until it's too late. Now that we have 'choice' things are more difficult because you need to actually commit to something life changing. For most people it's impossible to know the 'right time' to do that or for them to have the courage necessary to take the change.
Wow yeah you really hit the nail on the head for me. My wife and I weren't trying to have kids but we weren't trying not to have kids either, if you get my drift. Looking back on it, if we had been "smart" about deciding when the right time would happen, we might never have had kids.
Having kids is hands-down the best thing I've ever done but also the hardest. Not because of the amount of work, because it's really not that much work. It's more of the dramatically uncomfortable shift in perspective: Realizing I'm not the main character in this story. It still hits me sometimes.
The thing that struck me about having kids is that no individual task is all that hard, but there are a lot of them and you have to be available at all times. It can wear you down like any other on-call situation.
Something that still hits me (hard) is how you suddenly have to be a model, or at least try. You can't take the easy road anymore, little eyes are watching your every move.
I started thinking over my generous way of giving ethical and generally grandiloquent advice when I started being held up to it by ever watchful little eyes... I find this being the hardest, either way: admitting I'm not so great in some respects, or bettering myself. Both are incredibly hard.
> It's more of the dramatically uncomfortable shift in perspective: Realizing I'm not the main character in this story
This! I was the first of our group to have kids, and I'd "the camera isn't on me anymore". I thought of Smallville where the Duke boy was just a background father-person.
On the contrary, "trying for kids" was accompanied by an elaborate ceremony to kick off the process. This big ceremony was often so successful that the kids would arrive 5 months after the ceremony!
Trying for kids means making sure you have sex at the right times of the month, something humanity has known about for millennia. Equally people not 'trying for kids' made sure to only have sex at the 'wrong' time of the month, again something humans have been doing for millennia.
Up until very recently, there was very little knowledge that pregnancy lasted nine months... even among the 'learned'. Old pregnancy manuals talk about pregnancies taking anywhere from a few months to many many months. Without ultrasound and HcG tests, there is very little indication a woman is pregant until she starts showing or feeling the baby (and even then, a new mother may not even notice until she's showing anyway).
As for fertility awareness, I don't believe the methods used prior to the modern day were super effective. Regardless, the knowledge was not present.
So I'll restate my claim. Up until the modern day, there was no such thing as trying for children. There were married couples engaging in socially sanctioned sex, which obviously leads to children. Or there were fornicators that we knew could have children, but was socially unacceptable, and few fornicators actually wanted children from their unions.
If a woman's periods are regular and she experiences no bleeding in pregnancy. Many women's periods are not regularly, especially so if many woman are malnourished. Moreover, bleeding in pregnancy (esp early pregnancy) is fairly common. Thus, if you read older gynecological manuals, they clearly claim that pregnancy lasts some range of months. Most people realized that it was centered around 10 months, but there were many doctors claiming that the ranges were much higher than we'd accept today, because they had no reliable method to test for conception.
If you bleed like some women do during pregnancy, then you may have no indication you're pregnant until you obviously show. It's unlikely, but not impossible, and the doctors had no objective measure by which to say otherwise unless they could feel or hear the baby.
My experience was that you will never feel "ready" to have kids, you just close your eyes and go for it.
I think it is a good idea to look at finances and relationship health; but beyond that I'm not sure much else matters.
It's almost the same as marriage - and your comment is insightful in that when given the choice humans will almost never choose to change, being "selfish" feels great while you are doing it.
I don't understand why selfishness comes in this context. I'm considering if and when have children because not doing it would be reckless and egoistical playing with somebody else's life
That’s exactly my experience (typing with an eight week old sleeping on my chest. I can’t imagine feeling 100% ready before, but the 9 months leading up to the delivery is time to mentally shift and prepare for the enormous change.
i think the smart thing to do is to have kids when you are 20 and then enjoy life when you are 40. at that time you are much better off financially (unless you live in a country where you have to pay for your kids education maybe) which gives you a lot more freedom to explore your interests.
There's trades offs either way. Personally, I would rather have had the experiences I had in my 20's. Anything you can do in your 40's, you can do in your 50's or 60's. Some of the crazy (good and bad) you can experience in your 20's you don't get a chance to experience again. But, it's a trade off still.
i suppose that comes down to specific activities. pretty much everything that i did in my 20s i am still able to and am doing now.
on the other hand there are some activities that i wanted to do in my 20s but i could not because i could not afford them, and now i can't do them because i have kids.
the expectation to need to be able to afford a house before you can have kids is something that is very wrong with society today. (but at the same time the difficulties today to afford a house is also something that has gone wrong. and i suppose the expectation to have a house made more sense when it was still possible to afford one. either way something here needs to change.)
Eh it's rational to expect stable housing before having kids. Even during medevial time, while you don't have much freedom, you have at least the certainty and stability of a place to live and a role to play. I don't think modern society does that anymore.
well, over here, renting is considered stable housing because we have sufficient protection for renters. i keep forgetting that this is not the case everywhere.
That's an opinion an algorithm could come up with based on raw data, but in real life you will not enjoy life the same way when you are 20, especially given at what life stage other 40s are at in most societies.
i had kids late. but i wasn't really any more ready to have kids in my 30s than i was in my 20s. and on the other hand i don't feel any different as far as life stage goes in my 40s than in my 20s. yes, i am and feel more mature, but my interests haven't changed and i am just as willing to explore the world now as i was then.
but now i have the financial means to do that, which i didn't have then.
and i am from a country where parenting is financially supported by the government, so there is absolutely no need to have saved money to be a parent.
in countries where this isn't the case the situation is perhaps a bit different, but then, lacking financial resources doesn't stop people from having kids, and even those will be better off in their 40s and still be able to explore their interests more than they were in their 20s.
the only thing that gets in the way is the expectation from others, to have a house, to have a career, to stop being impulsive when you are older, lack of support from their own parents, etc.
i see it happening in china. people get married and have children much earlier. most have very supportive grandparents (because the grandparents want kids) and when these couples are in their 40s and 50s they are still full of energy and are able to enjoy their life.
no worries, i just wanted to avoid being insensitive.
where i come from and in most other countries that i have seen, the idea of a student being homeless is almost unthinkable. being a student alone grants enough support that this simply won't happen, especially if they have kids. it would have to be something really unusual like the student refusing the accommodation they are offered or being mentally ill in some way that prevents them to make the right choice.
so to me it appears that homeless students are a distinctly american problem. one that the communities and government there need to work on to fix.
the very picture of a single parent with children being homeless is so out of place that i have a hard time imagining that this could happen even in the US.
that you can even come up with such an idea says a lot about how bad support for people in poverty in the US really is.
that said, obviously, if you are homeless, choosing to have kids is probably not a good idea.
but if you decide to have kids and become homeless later, then i would say, shame on the government and community for not providing the needed support.
if you live in a country where this is even possible, you should really try to do what you can to contribute to a change. not an easy task, but one that is absolutely necessary.
it appears you are coming from an area/culture where this idea is ridiculous or unheard of.
i can assure you i meant what i said. there is absolutely nothing wrong with having children at 20, or even earlier. however it requires a community and a society that is supportive of that. it works very well in china, because the culture there does support it.
traditionally, the young couple lives together with the husbands family and can rely on their guidance and support raising the children. this way there is no problem with the young parents continuing their studies or working, because the household is managed by the grandparents. where i used to live every morning i would see lots of grandparents who themselves where in their 40s or 50s playing with babies while the young parents were off to work.
i understand that in western culture of independence where every couple lives on their own away from the grandparents, and with jokes about in-laws, this is hard to imagine. but really this is a different way to look at life and i believe it has many advantages.
> but a young man whose main motive for marriage is "so I don't regret not having kids when I'm old"
I had a spit take here. When people say they regret not doing something, they are talking about regretting not everything that came along with doing that thing, not just avoiding the emotion of regret later in life.
You could rephrase that into "a young man whose main motive for marriage is to have a loving, fulfilling family which they would prefer much more than staying single, esp later in life" and it's a pretty anodyne take on why anyone gets married and starts a family.
When someone says they regret not quitting smoking 30 years ago or starting to exercise daily, are they just talking about avoiding the emotion of regret in 30 years?
> When people say they regret not doing something, they are talking about regretting not everything that came along with doing that thing, not just avoiding the emotion of regret later in life.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding but isn’t that what regret it? The not having everything (or most things) that come along with having done the thing?
> When someone says they regret not quitting smoking 30 years ago or starting to exercise daily, are they just talking about avoiding the emotion of regret in 30 years?
I think this is exactly right. They regret not having all the benefits of having made these choices thirty years prior, and so the feeling of regret is the umbrella term for what they are trying to avoid.
In short I think you and OP are saying the same thing but you are arguing that the term regret is narrower. I don’t think that’s right.
> You could rephrase that into "a young man whose main motive for marriage is to have a loving, fulfilling family which they would prefer much more than staying single, esp later in life"
There is zero guarantee that a family will turn out right, let alone "loving, fulfilling" so this is just a loaded perspective of an issue that has nothing to do with your own world view.
On the one side, it feels like people stay "immature" for longer; instead of starting their careers in their teens and a family not long after, people stay in school until their mid-twenties.
Then, what does it take to start a family? Stability. People need a stable income, a living wage, and a place they can call home.
If people complain about birth rates, pay people a living wage when they enter the workforce, and make it so people can afford to own a house (that they can live in for the rest of their life if they want to) from their mid twenties onwards on a single income.
People can't build a future now, because they worry about the next paycheck.
Not really. Starting a family is a leap in the dark. Always was, always will be. The only difference today is that people (may) have a lower risk tolerance, and a tendency to plan everything in advance. I had my first son with no house and no income. I just did the best I could, and things fell into place as I needed them.
I'm not trying to diminish your hardships, but the fact that everything worked out for you in the end is either the result of luck or (mild) privilege. Imagine that everytime somebody helped you out, that didn't happen?. how much worse off would you be right now? There are loads of people who are in your situation who don't have any family, or have a mental or physical handicap, or who happened to get twins instead of just one kid?
The start of a family will always be a leap of faith, but difference is if you start on solid ground or not.
Agreed. However, I also think that help does tend to "materialize" if you end up needing it. I've noticed that couples who make a lot of "wrong" decisions (e.g., financially, timing wise) end up getting help while couples who make the "right" decisions seem to get less help. And both types of couples end up with almost the same outcome.
Perhaps risk tolerance has remained the same, it's just that risk has gone high enough that it is outside of that risk tolerance. Taking on the task of raising a child when you can barely keep yourself fed is simply impossible from a risk assessment perspective. You are either not disclosing your full set of circumstances and they weren't as risky as you make them sound, or raised your child on the streets which most people would consider to be wildly irresponsible and bad for the child (I am assuming it is the former).
> where kids generally grow up and move far away for jobs - having had children would probably not help much with that.
Companionship was never a part of why I fathered children. And in hindsight, raising my daughters was the most meaningful thing I did in this life.
I'm just suggesting that there may be other motives for parenting.
Big Brothers and Sisters of America is an organization that pairs men up with boys who are in single-mother families (and I guess now women with single-father girls). (I was a "little brother" when I was young.)
I am not sure about whether a single male is eligible (I don't see why not?) but AFS and other "foreign exchange student" organizations might be another avenue to "parenting" of a sort. I also found the 10 months or so I spent being a host parent to be very rewarding.
As the title says, it's not about not wanting kids, it's about thinking it will happen automatically.
Some guys think that relationships magically start in a romantic setting, like shown in Hollywood movies. Reality is: if you want something, you should actively purchase it.
So if you don't want kids: fine, enjoy the freedoms it will offer.
If you want a relationship and/or family, don't sit on your ass until it will magically appear to you. Go get it!
The reality is that for an average guy, earning a stable long-term relationship in the Tinder era is an enormous amount of work, to the point that many find this challenge insurmountable (at least 5% more men, than women, as we can see from the article).
There are many men that I know that simply are consumed by the necessity to make ends meet that they barely have any time to go out and meet new people (women specifically).
Also, on top of that, women are far less approachable these days, which increases the effort even further.
The elites don’t want you to know this but the regrets at old age are free you can take them home I have 458 regrets.
Much of it can be "path not taken" but you have to work hard to distinguish actual real regret (which will involve understanding why the choices were made, and what about the choices was wrong (e.g., "I underestimated the work vs reward") vs the "nobody wants to talk to me now, if I had kids I could force them to."
Why is wanting to do X now so you don’t regret not doing X later not a valid reason for wanting to do X? I want to eat lunch now so I’m not hungry later. I want to study hard now so I don’t regret not studying later. Aren’t most motivations essentially based on the possibility of future regret?
THIS. People vary greatly in how strongly they weight the present vs. the future when they are making decisions. (And they're often darn inconsistent - being (say) very-long-term in planning their career, yet reckless about their health and safety.)
(For anyone else not in the know: Geezer being USA slang for an old man apparently, or in Brittain just any man... I assume it's supposed to be the former)
// I get the sense that "I really regret not having children" is mostly a way of articulating "I am old and socially disconnected and feel lonely and depressed"
This seems like a superficial take. Placating your sadness is a benefit, not the goal, of having kids. You can pop a Prozac and alleviate your sorrows, that's not the same as the deep satisfaction of looking back on a lifetime of meaningful time with your kids and hopefully seeing them grow into good adults and parents themselves.
> a young man whose main motive for marriage is "so I don't regret not having kids when I'm old"
I was having dinner with my wife's parents, along with some folks from our common church. A congregant asked how I came to join up. I nodded to my in-laws and said 'I knocked up their daughter'.*
Which is how a lot of young men got into the parenting racket (and church).
The large majority of Americans live within 50 miles of where they grew up. And this number has been steadily ticking up. Geographic mobility is the lowest it’s ever been in the post war period.
> When that is not by choice, regret can grow into pain.
This thinking is flawed. Here's the solution and your road to happiness. Foster the ability to accept, be grateful and by that weaken tendencies to regret. Because _this_ is the only difference between people who regret when they are old (or pretty much any other time in their life) and those who don't. That's all. What you practice is what you become. You practice regretting and you don't have children => you'll regret that. You practice regretting and you do have children => you'll either regret that or something else.
It's that simple.
> he tries to stay indoors and ignore the family celebrations outside.
there you have it - that's the attitude which has you likely end up lonely. he just keeps up the old pattern without reflecting. why not participate in one way or another. he doesn't have a son or daughter but he can have positive interactions. instead - he stays indoors to protect himself emotionally.
> So many ambushes and triggers for my anguish.
it's ambushes and triggers. looking for reasons of your pain outside of yourself is human and normal - we all do it - but it's often not going to make positive difference.
...
won't bother reading on - this article is lacking any deeper reflection and almost reads like a government ordered attempt to disseminate FUD in men to manipulate the birth rate positively.
> But a single man adopting is considered as pervert
Is this evidence or assumption? Not challenging too hard just wondering if you've actually been called or treated like a perv or if it's something you assume will occur
It is theoretically possible as a single male, but there are many more restrictions - in practice its very very rare. For example, see these requirements for a very large international adoption agency: [1]. In my experience there is, as OP describes, a strong stigma against single males, not just that they are considered perverts, but also that they are considered incapable of taking on this responsibility alone, not nurturing enough, too career-focused, etc.
I don't have the problem OP has, I just know something about the system. A better way to phrase this for a useful discussion (rather than unsolicited, assumed advice) would be to say "do you know if volunteer work with children would help alter this perception?".
Not sure by bt4u's comment is dead, but I've had that exact situation happen to me. Been accused of trying to steal a child while taking my son to the playground. It is an actual thing and it sucks.
I was at an amusement park recently. Took my daughter to go to the bathroom. I used a family stall. Someone knocked on the door and I said, "Occupied, we won't be much longer!" I heard a hushed whisper. A minute later, we're finishing up, washing our hands. A more aggressive knock, a man's voice, "Security. Open the door!"
This older woman with her 10-ish year old daughter had assumed that I, as a man, had no business being in a family stall. She went to get security to sort me out. Security asked me why I was using the family stall. I opened the door all of the way and pointed at my daughter (we have twin girls who are 4) who was drying her hands. The mom is aghast, "Where's her mother?" I scooped up my daughter and said, "I helped make her, too. Mom's busy. Mind your own business." and went back to my wife.
This is the most egregious example that I have but it's not at all an isolated event. Something in this direction has happened to me well over a dozen times in the last 4 years.
Another strong signal you can find: Many, maybe most, men's restrooms don't have a changing table. I've changed countless diapers while sitting on a toilet with one of my kids in my lap.
Yes, this is completely an American thing. I experienced it first hand and it's hilarious. Hilarious in that it's so pathetically predicable that I can predict there's going to be a "situation" before it unfolds and am able to avoid it. But it's absolutely batshit crazy how easily it happens.
No way this happens in europe. Helicopter americans probably claim there is more child trafficking and kidnapping in europe or something. Yeah, ok. These people watch so many child kidnapping movies and documentaries they don't know which way is up anymore.
Yeah we're kinda over the traditional family thing here in Europe. I would bet two fathers taking their son to the playground would raise some eyebrows in the US too, depending on the area of course. Whereas here it wouldn't.
I think it depends on where you are in Europe. I had far more reaction doing childcare in Poland than I did in the US and Canada. Almost completely positive, though. "Your wife is so lucky, a Polish man would never change a diaper".
Did you ever feel people were moments away from calling security/police on you? Your last sentence doesn't give that feeling. If not, I'm not sure we're talking about comparable reactions.
Whenever I see a comment like that I always wonder how it's possible that someone might actually challenge what we all know well and experienced multiple times throughout our adult lives.
Trolling or genuine question from a person that never witnessed what everyone else did?
I'm not a parent, I live in a small town in the UK, I've literally never seen this happen.
I've never even heard of it happening outside of Reddit. I figured maybe it might just be redditors coming off as creepy in general, but seeing the sentiment here too I figured I'd ask.
A solo dad out with their kid would probably go home with a pocket full of phone numbers here haha
Different people have different information mate. If I start trolling on HN I promise I'll make the comments more interesting than a pretty mild question :)
It will absolutely occur. Men who take their kids to the playground by themselves are often confronted (by moms of other kids).
At some point things are so obvious that not many people are going to bother finding a peer reviewed study to cite. Maybe they should but they won't.
Everyone's experience is different, but my understanding (and experience) has always been the opposite: People see a dad taking his kid out to the playground and think "dad of the year" before they think of a pervert, because the bar for what it takes to be a good dad is so low. There are so many uninvolved dads out there that the smallest token gesture like taking your kids to the playground is seen as some huge accomplishment.
But it's also insulting when someone makes off-hand remarks about "giving mom a break," etc. I have 4 year old twins and a nearly 2 year old singleton. We're all busy as fuck here, but no one ever diminishes my wife's ability to be a parent.
I've never seen that happen myself, but I have heard of it. My only theory is that it happens in places which are heavily socially/politically conservative and "backwards", where women can't imagine men being an actual real parent.
I live in a flyover state and have never had that sort of thing happen...I actually assumed the opposite, that socially/politically liberal areas would be less accustomed to seeing two-parent households and would be wealthy enough to have busybodies with too much time on their hands.
in new zealand men are not able to work as teachers or caregivers. which essentially means, men are not trusted with children. i don't think of new zealand as conservative or backwards, even though that attitude certainly is backwards, but that makes it tautological.
Not sure where you are but here in the UK I have been taking my children to the playground on my own for 10 years now and I have never seen this happen either to myself or another Dad. At the weekends I'd say it's mostly Dads in fact.
i actually think fostering should have a higher barrier because foster kids usually come from difficult situations and eventually go back to their parents and they need to be raised and taken care of in a way that enables that. for adoption it should be more like: you are capable to be parents, here is your kid. off you go.
I hear what you're saying, but the legal aspects of being a parent likely outweigh that. With foster children the state retains legal custody. Adoption is not just finding suitable parent(s) for a child, it is transferring both legal rights and obligations.
I'm saying this through a US centric lens, of course.
i understand why things are that way, but it is exactly the legal situation that makes me think it should be otherwise. when adopting you are giving parents the full responsibility to raise the children as they see fit. so obviously they should be capable, but that is all that is needed, just as if they had kids of their own.
for foster children the state retains a continuous responsibility for these children, and foster parents need to be able to go along with that.
i think part of the reason why it is otherwise is because it is easier to take foster children away, so if a mistake was made, it can be undone, or so the thinking goes, but i actually think that is wrong.
the most suffering foster children experience comes from changing families all to frequently. it hurts their ability to form trusting relationships. the adopted kids will be fine even if the parents make a mistake here or there, but the foster kids who are moved to another family because the foster parents made that same mistake have their world shattered.
Right, but the foster children can be taken away at any time the state sees fit to do so. The hurdles to do that with adopted children are much higher.
One action can easily be undone, but the other can not.
Edit: one other thing to consider is that there are a huge number of children in the foster system and they are desperate for foster parents.
(i added more to my previous comment so you may have missed that)
the fact that foster kids can be taken away easily is the problem, because that should not happen. and that can only be avoided if foster parents are vetted more strongly.
Right, I do agree with what you are saying but it's also an example of perfect being the enemy of good enough.
It's an unfortunate situation, but if the barriers are high enough there will be fewer people willing to foster. How many good-enough homes are out there, even if they are not perfect? At what point is the risk of being placed in a less than perfect home worth it?
I have just a few more years until all of my kids are out of the house and living on their own, and fostering children is definitely on my mind. We have already started by hosting foreign exchange students.
i don't know what the best solution is, for one i think the same is true for adoption, although i hear that in the US (and maybe in most western countries) there are not so many kids needing adoption for that to be a problem.
How many good-enough homes are out there, even if they are not perfect?
that's actually not what i am concerned about but foster parents that are outright abusive. so basically, i think that even foster kids should only be taken away if they are neglected or abused in such a way that you would even charge native parents with that.
the goal should not be to find perfect parents, but to find parents where the kids actually can stay as long as they need to. the barrier to take them away again is to low because it doesn't consider the hurt caused by being "taken away" itself.
HN is a global forum spanning multiple countries and even more societal mores.
To your point though, "we" already failed as a society by not sufficienty scrutinising the bulk of adoptions to ostensibly stable 'ideal' families in decades past.
A number of these adoptions turned out fine, many did not.
I wonder if we could have adoption process, where two random person can adopt the same person without being in a relationship? Heck maybe the adoption services can act as pairing services between two potential singles who are willing to act as a parent.
Sure .. just as long as crazy assumptons aren't made such as automatically flagging single men, single women or homosexual couples.
The social history I'm most familiar with had a wide systemic issue with wealthy elite pillar of the community power couples adopting in "unwanted children" trained for menial servant roles as nannies and living breathing sex dolls .. not that you can accuse chief justices and their scaly mates down the yacht club of that kind of thing, of course.
that sounds like something from movies. was that really that widespread?
screening is really a challenge. i mean the only thing you can really do is to analyze the motivation of why someone wants to adopt. but most people that you would not want to allow to adopt can go and have their own children anyways. when does preventing adoption turn into preventing to have children? or why should anyone who could have their own children be prevented from adopting?
short of a clear misaligned motivation or mental (and other serious) health issues anyone should be able to adopt.
Fairly sustained practiced from ~(1900 - 1965) and it's less common to met a girl (and yes, boys also) from that system that didn't experience some form of sexual abuse as a result.
with typical stories and it'd take a few years to convey why those fall well short of reality and to go through stories of many who never made it to witness stands.
> why should anyone who could have their own children be prevented from adopting?
I don't understand this at all. People with a history of abuse or neglect can have their own children—and often they do—but why on earth would you use that as an excuse to give them more children to abuse? Like, what is your thinking here?
that's not what i meant. if the abuse is so bad that their children will have to be taken away (even if only temporarily), then obviously if they have children again, and the abuse continues, those children will also be taken away. which means in practical terms, they can't really have children.
what i did mean was: if whatever failures these parents have is mild enough that they are allowed to keep their children, because noone is perfect and the children are never in any danger then why should they not be allowed to adopt as well?
in short, why should adoptive parents have to submit to higher standards?
but, as someone else stated, there are not enough children up for adoption in the US anyways, so that argument becomes moot, because obviously you'll pick the most suitable parents first.
and you do have a point. after rereading what i said: "most people that you would not want to allow to adopt can go and have their own children anyways", this is really a claim that needs further scrutiny. it was supposed to imply that the tests are to harsh, but that is based only on anecdotal evidence so i am not really prepared to defend it. in hindsight, your reading of it makes sense too, so you are right to question it. thank you.
I'm in the same boat. Just a shy kid who never got over it.
My grandfather died when I was three and I think it hit Dad hard. I was determined to find a woman and have children even if it meant doing so if not married. My Catholic parents were very against that it was unspoken but very obvious in their attitude.
My Dad died a few years ago so my plan fell apart. Now Mom is old so she is not long for this world either. But even so I am early 50s so unless I win a lot of money, get famous fast, find a foreign wife (who won't murder me), or somehow father a child I'm SOL.
It is depressing especially seeing in later life how family support is great to have. When I'm old I'll have nobody. And I mean just regular stuff having someone to drive you to appointments, help with home repairs, finances. There are a lot of scammers and bad people ready to pounce on elderly.
We need old time forced dances where a lot of us shy folks are forced to interact.
Spending a lot more time with my aging father, I see a certain joy and pride in him whenever we are doing things together, a feeling that I will myself never know.
Instead I chose career, travel and education early in life, and while I do not regret it.. Later in life I noticed that for me such accomplishments feel worth about 5 minutes of cold talk in social events, even more among those who warmly talk about their grandchildren and even great grandchildren.
Each of us have a limited time here, and we make choices that (hopefully) makes it worthwhile. Though perhaps, the choices I made left a feeling of emptiness..
// while I do not regret it... feel worth about 5 minutes of cold talk... the choices I made left a feeling of emptiness..
I appreciate your candor and vulnerability with us here. But I can't help but read a good amount of regret in your post, in line with the article.
As middle aged / older guys, there's significance to the message we send out. Perhaps someone reading your post will be inspired to pause and re evaluate their choice based on what you wrote. Thank yku.
I love teaching/interacting with the occasional good-natured, learning-sponge kids, but the stars haven't yet aligned to have kids of my own.
Now that I'm 50-ish, although I'm energetic and not yet noticeably graying, when I think about kids of my own, I have to consider:
* A dear friend adored her father, and when he died while she was in college, she was devastated. I could nurture a kid to be resilient in that possibility, but I don't like the idea of setting them up for that possibility to be not-unlikely.
* I'd want the other parent to be a life partner, and that probably means in a close age bracket. So biological clocks are a factor, at least for building from scratch. Or, if partner is significantly younger, that means we'd have to consider how much time we could have before the woman likely outlives the man, and where that would leave her.
That said, I haven't written off the idea of a family, and I'm paying every month to keep a life insurance policy, just in case there's someday a family who might need it.
I feel bad for the people that now want to have had children but didn't but as a father of two, if you didn't directly plan to have kids it might have been better that you didn't, kids take a lot of work, you have to be in the right place to do it.
I used to be the person that said "yeah, go have kids" and now I'm "only do it if you're completely sure its what you want" because if you're not it's the children suffering through it.
>> kids take a lot of work, you have to be in the right place to do it.
I think it's a certain type of personality that believes this. I know somebody who gets worried for certain friends/family having children because they don't own their house or have high paid jobs. They have a laundry list of todo's (mostly financial) before they will even consider having children. It's almost condescending but I choose to see it as more of an unnecessary fear/anxiety. People make do. People get knocked up, they get unemployed, they get help from friends and family where possible, and they love their kids just as much as the people who planned it on a Jira board.
I grew up poor and financial anxiety was real, I just couldn't fathom how people were living with it. I could barely tolerate it for myself, let alone bring kids into the world while being uncertain. It didn't feel like anything condescending, just a lack of understanding.
Now I'm very well off and could retire (fat fire equivalent) at 34 and I do want kids.
I grew up similarly and am also well off financially now too at 33. Yet, I can’t find a woman who would want to have kids with me.
The market has changed. Looks is paramount - I worked so hard to be financially stable and didn’t realize that it wasn’t my parents financial situation that had fucked me over so badly in life - it was their dogshit genetics that made me ugly.
Sorry to hear that. The comment below does give good advice, presuming you're not an actual goblin and that you're somewhere around average height, you can put odds in your favor by staying fit, well dressed and well groomed. Lack of hair, get hair implants, etc. Get braces or dental work if needed.
The result is superficial but the confidence gains will be real and you'll feel better either way.
After that I would advise signing up to a rock climbing gym or something and getting out to meet girls in real life, in case your dating app profile still doesn't help by then.
I think most of all, let go of your hate towards yourself/your parents/your appearance. This kind of bitterness consumes you after a while and it will show in your personality.
// Looks is paramount - I worked so hard to be financially stable and didn’t realize that it wasn’t my parents financial situation that had fucked me over so badly in life - it was their dogshit genetics that made me ugly.
A guy with a job and a gym membership is more attractive than 90% of men by default. Do you really have a "looks problem" that wouldn't be resolved in 12 months by actively working out, eating well, a good haircut and a great wardrobe?
> Do you really have a "looks problem" that wouldn't be resolved in 12 months by actively working out, eating well, a good haircut and a great wardrobe?
A gym only takes you so far. There are things out of one's control - height, hair pattern, face shape, etc.
Although I do believe that you're right in the sense that not being overweight and having a stable job already places you in the top 10-15% of men. It's just that sometimes it's not enough and looks are pretty important for women (even though it's not often said out loud)
//It's just that sometimes it's not enough and looks are pretty important for women
An obvious counter-point to that are the millions of short/bald/ugly/whatever guys who are married and have kids.
FWIW, women are turned off by guys who are gross and don't take care of themselves. A guy who intentionally makes the best of what he's got is already ahead.
Getting married isn't a random event like a coin landing on heads... You can bias the outcome pretty much 100% through variables under your control like fitness, neatness, personality, sanity, earning power.
Looks are important, but you're lucky you're a man because status is just as important, especially if you're older and want to meet younger women. Lean into it: dress sharp, a little dressy and look sophisticated. There is a certain percentage of women who prefer the experienced, financially-set older guy who can show them things the younger guys can't. And to those women, looks are secondary because they don't go for older guys for their looks.
> but you're lucky you're a man because status is just as important
Am I lucky? I work in tech. I'd say about half of the women I talk to at bars in NYC end up turning away as soon as we shift to the discussion of what I do for work. I dress much better than most men but I am short, ugly, and not blessed with the high T that is required to gain lots of muscle mass even if I am in the gym obsessively.
Hate to break it to you but the market has changed.
> surprised that he only interacts with shallow hoes
Never, not once, had a random woman interested in my IT shit unless they're also in STEM themselves. "Boring IT guy shit" is the correct answer, and then change the subject. If they know anything about it or care, they'll ask.
The way you carry yourself and the energy you give off matters more than your looks.
You sound bitter. That’s an unattractive trait. Your emotions are genuine and shouldn’t be ignored, but you need to process them in a healthy way, let go, and move on.
A good therapist is priceless for this. Easier said than done, though. It took me 4 attempts over a few years to find the right one.
As someone who just had a kid, I agree. You don’t have to overthink it. At the end of the day all they need is a calorie surplus and shelter. That’s it. Everything else is a bonus. As a parent you can put as much or as little work into it as you like. Time is going to pass and they’ll grow older regardless. It’s not like a tech startup where you have to put work in or it’ll crash and burn.
I'm not disagreeing with what you've linked said but it's pretty well documented that there are negative events that can lead to long term impacts on children. The letter you linked seems to glance over parents who are abusive, whether that is verbal, physical, or neglectful.
For those that want to dive in a little bit these are Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE). It's not an end all be all chance that you'll develop something with a long term impact but the more you experience the more likely you are to do so.
You can do everything right and your kid will still have an ACE.
Lil Timmy falls down a well, or has a really handsy neighbour, or has to see someone get hit by a car.
Like, obviously, don't beat your kids, but you don't need to be superlative parent, esp. since a great deal of their education and raising will happen, essentially, in someone elses workplace (i.e. school).
Surely for such a counterintuitive idea, we can do better for evidence than a rambling blog post about a letter to a TV show host. The evidence for such a strong claim should be pretty strong, and given the state of the replication crisis in the relevant fields, linking to a bunch of studies doesn't mean much anymore.
Bad outcome in what way? Even if you’re a so-called bad parent, they’ll still have a similar life expectancy, and a similar chance of creating grandchildren.
Maybe they won’t be an A student when they reach school but does it actually matter?
There’s kids who literally survived the Holocaust in Nazi Germany and lived very successful lives after.
That said there is a natural instinct to be a decent parent. You don’t really have to try or be ready to. Just need to be around. In my opinion it’s similar to the instinct to turn off a burning stove - a bunch of common sense stuff that requires zero planning.
Success as a parent is much more than just "my child is alive and getting older"
Are they becoming a happy person? good, moral person? Do they contribute to society or are they a drain on society? Do you, the parent, have to bail them out of jail every other weekend?
A child's peer group has more influence over those questions than parents do. It's no excuse to neglect your children, but society places far more blame on parents than is warranted IMO.
While the child's peer group does have the strong influence on a few of those questions, it's probably worth noting that as the parent you build the tools that allows the child to develop the peer group that allows for them to be happy.
The unfortunate reality is that this groundwork is laid from around 0-10. After that it's a lot harder to correct the mistakes and the influence then definitely falls much more under peers than the parents.
exactly. i didn't have a peer group as a child. and my parents are the only ones responsible for that. i am not blaming them, because they couldn't do better, but most definitely their influence and making sure that i am in an environment where i can make friends is something they were responsible for.
Completely disagree. You do whatever with your own life. But kid is a 3rd person that you bring. If the life they are coming to is already bad, financially, legged behind from others in many ways, or any other, that's selfish. Forcing someone to terrible start without their consent.
Parent should first make sure they are good to bring someone else and not to give a disadvantage start, playing gamble with life who did not ask.
So to preface this, my spouse and I are trying for our first kid so I'm not a parent yet, but I've been reading a lot and talking to friends who are parents.
> If the life they are coming to is already bad, financially, legged behind from others in many ways, or any other, that's selfish. Forcing someone to terrible start without their consent.
>
> Parent should first make sure they are good to bring someone else and not to give a disadvantage start, playing gamble with life who did not ask.
Literally every aspect of raising a kid is a gamble, but there are degrees to these things. What counts as a "disadvantage" isn't always clear, let alone the degree to which it is actually harmful. Making a few mistakes or not doing things perfectly is probably fine. There is a huge problem with pregnancy and parenthood where controlled studies can't be done for ethical reasons, the number of confounding variables is about as extreme as it can get, and the outcomes you're measuring often aren't even well defined (what does it mean to have succeeded as a parent? What does it mean for someone to have a happy life?).
It's important to try to make your kids have a happy life, but there's a lot of disagreement on how exactly to do that. One factor that seems to have a huge effect is having parents who express their love for their kids and spend time with them. It's important for parents to take care of themselves and their relationship with their partner. One part of that is not burning yourself out trying to hyper-optimize things.
How callous can you be to bring a life into the world and think "i'm just gonna wing it" in this day and age. The kid didn't ask to be brought here, it is 100% under the responsibility and care of whoever decided to have it.
I'm not saying people shouldn't wing it, but some people clearly think they (or other parents) can control more things than are practical or healthy. You should try to be a responsible parent, but knowing how much you need to worry about individual things isn't easy. It's not practical to do everything various people say you should do. One expert will advise the opposite of what another does, and over times people flip flop back and forth. In the end I don't see how it couldn't involve some level of winging things.
Well, I have 2 sons. 25 and 15. I am 45. If you want to have kids, just have them. Or if they happen, let them
happen.
Yes, they are a lot of work. Yes, they are a lot of commitment. Lots of sleepless nights, lots of extra work as you want to be a father and a provider. But so what? Its not very complicated work, just lots of it. And life is too beautiful to slack around, so you can just as well spend them with your kids.
// I used to be the person that said "yeah, go have kids" and now I'm "only do it if you're completely sure its what you want" because if you're not it's the children suffering through it.
I think more people are ready to be good parents despite doubts that your post implies. If you are completely broke, drug addicted, violent, etc - then yes you should work on those things first. Otherwise, if you're anything like a mainstream member of society you're probably ready and capable.
I found that my "ability" to be a dad switched the moment the kids arrived. Most of us do our best when the occasion demands it and being a dad elevates what is asked of you in the best of ways. Even things that would seem like nigh mares to a single version of myself (eg: changing diapers), feel totally fine - like I am doing exactly what I should be doing right now.
I don't think people should have kids very young, but if you're 25+ and you think you want kids some day, just let it happen.
Don't worry about being ready, because nothing can truly prepare you for it. You will never be ready for your first child because there's nothing you can do to train for it.
One thing that definitely skews the reporting of this is that it's socially acceptable to admit you regret not having kids, but it's absolutely not socially acceptable to admit you regret having kids.
Do you expect that this skew would meaningfully alter the conclusion? That there are many men on their deathbed who wish they had more time for brunch in their life vs the hard work of parenting?
Yeah, as a matter of fact I do. Even the snideness of this comment is revealing for how extreme the bias is :)
The spectrum goes from, I've talked to quite a few people who only talk about negatives of having kids as long as they are talking about anything specific (health, hobbies, friends, work, even their spouse), but as soon as they start talking in abstract they reiterate how having kids / their kid is great. Usually 5 minutes after an endless stream of complaining. It's either Stokholm syndrome or social desirability bias...
To, I know / knew lots of people who are either terrible to their children or whose parents were reportedly terrible to them, anywhere from emotional distance and clearly not wanting them around, to outright physical abuse or extremely controlling behavior, or basically abandoning them to their own devices. I fully expect people like that to regret having kids, but I've never heard or read anyone admit it.
I think having kids is a boring chore that (pretty much by definition) nearly anyone can learn to do. Sure, it might be necessary, but that combination makes it about as special, fulfilling and exciting as farming rice. Most would rather have brunch, so perhaps we should pay people to do it. Except that with kids, you cannot admit that you'd rather have done something else...
Of course comparing to "brunch" is done in the same snide spirit, but even disregarding pastimes that are actually fulfilling, I'd also much rather have more brunch :)
Do you think what people long for on their deathbed should dictate their life decisions, as opposed to how they felt and viewed their life for the thousands of days that came before?
The deathbed is shorthand for retrospecting on your life from the perspective of maximum information and no time left to alter course. It's proxy for the question of whether you've lived a life that deeply resonated with your values, instincts, desire for meaning, etc. Or did you just pass time.
To answer your literal question -imagine someone dying from lung cancer in their 40s. If they regret smoking and wish they never started, should that have, in retrospect, dictate their life decisions? Or do the "thousands of days" they happily smoked matter more?
I find that most success in life comes from this ability to mentally associate with your ultimate self and do things today that will make that person most satisfied. Which happens to also be way more satisfying in the moment.
I'm surprised there's so many men that genuinely want kids. I've never had that desire, I know it's more commonplace in women. Most of my friends who have them were basically doing it for the wife even though they loved their kids when they appeared on the scene. But it was not something they would have chosen.
But anyway good for them. I'm glad I never had any and I have no regrets.
// doing it for the wife even though they loved their kids when they appeared on the scene
Are you sure? People aren't stupid and then they marry a woman who wants kids and then agree to have kids with her, they are not doing it against their will.
The fact that they are happy and love the kids once they arrive suggests they had room inside them for that happiness and love to begin with and they just allowed the wife to be the impetus to it.
There are plenty of women who are perfectly happy without kids, too.
And that doesn't mean those men and women don't like kids or don't have kids in their lives. It's nice to get some kid time. And it's nice to go home later and not have to deal with them. Or the inevitable ex spouses.
> There are plenty of women who are perfectly happy without kids, too.
I wish I'd find some :) For me it has generally been a breaking point in relations or at least a very contentious point.
However at this point I'm so old that with a partner of the same age it's simply not really relevant anymore. Either they have never had them, have had them and they grew up, or they just can't get them anymore.
I wanted to get married and have kids. Being rather effeminate, I don't attract the women who do want to have kids. I was about 40 when I finally realized that if she said she didn't want kids, she really meant it and it was not negotiable. I swore a vow: no more childless relationships. Being in no relationship is far better than being in the wrong relationship.
When I tried to adopt, Florida's child welfare agency decided - after doing a background check - decided to declare me "legally gay" since I was heavily involved in LGBT rights (all my friends were lesbians and I was mad at how badly they were treated). And back then, it was illegal in FL for gays/lesbians to adopt. Not that I was/am one.
The attitude was that "no hetero would do that sort of thing." A similar attitude for race relations would be to use the "one drop rule" [0] against white-looking [1] supporters of civil rights for blacks (back in the 1950s & 1960s), that since no white would do that, I must have some black blood in my ancestry and therefore I'd be legally black.
> In the United States, the “one-drop rule” — also known as hypodescent — dates to a 1662 Virginia law on the treatment of mixed-race individuals. The legal notion of hypodescent has been upheld as recently as 1985, when a Louisiana court ruled that a woman with a black great-great-great-great-grandmother could not identify herself as “white” on her passport. [2]
> Not only does the one-drop rule apply to no other group than American blacks, but apparently the rule is unique in that it is found only in the United States and not in any other nation in the world. In fact, definitions of who is black vary quite sharply from country to country, and for this reason people in other countries often express consternation about our definition.
> The phenomenon known as "passing as white" is difficult to explain in other countries or to foreign students. [3]
This happened back in the 1990s. In 2007, Florida repealed the ban on homosexuals adopting, but I had left the state years before.
Well, that is one action people could take. Agree that you should stop waiting and start a plan and start taking steps to make something happen. If it doesn't work, at least you tried.
I’m can say that, for our family at least, adoption was an alternate route. There are many, many children here in the US who’s parents have died or who whose parents have had their parental rights terminated for cause. 8 years ago we adopted a 3 year old and a 7 year old, and the lack of biological link barely matters (it only comes up due to racial differences).
If you are a basically decent human and can support yourself and a child, give a look at adoption rather than having this regret for your lifetime.
> 25% of men over 42 do not have children – 5% more than women of the same age group
In another generation, I believe this number will jump. That's mostly because of current economics. Two people making the most commonly earned wages can not afford housing (then add sharply increased costs of insurances and transportation).
Stated otherwise, most couples can't afford to be an independent couple.
I was born around a decade before my country's fertility rate went below replacement and the social change this shift brought is staggering.
As a child I assumed most of my peers would go the usual route, so eventually start a family.
Being in my mid 30s now I'm the only one out of three siblings who is a parent and in my immediate social circle there are just two others - that's three out of at least twelve people.
The rest are either single, divorced or just childless, with no plan for starting a family in the foreseeable future(or ever) with maybe one exception, but if you asked me two years ago about that person's prospects I would have to say the were looking bleak.
I don't go around asking people why aren't they having children, but those who did tell me cite either finances or unwillingness to give up their current lives - sometimes both.
Tough topic. I have some personal experience with it. The thing I struggle most with is the fact that I am often looked down upon (either consciously or subconsciously) by those that have "achieved" parenthood. Having children is an odd status symbol in Western society.
// The thing I struggle most with is the fact that I am often looked down upon
Much more likely, parents (and anyone else) don't think about you nearly as much as you think they do. Probably don't think of you at all. And they probably look at their kids as something they love and makes their live much richer, not a "status symbol."
"La familia es todo (family is all)." -- Salamanca motto.
I find it funny how in popular fiction it's the villains who seem to care the most about family. Otherwise, family seems to be portrayed in a negative light these days.
Everything from genetic onwards makes sense, but “Game of Thrones”? I’m coming up with nothing too. I can think of familial incest, strife, dysfunction, etc. but no examples of a guy wanting to have kids comes to mind.
How does that relate to Game of Thrones? I’ve only seen the show and can’t think of any examples of that. Is there a character in the books who waits too long to have kids?
Having a bloodline vs not having one. There’s people out there today who think adopting a kid is equivalent to a biological one. Versus the Game of Thrones thinking that bloodline matters a lot.
I'm 38, and I'm socially unable to meet women outside of online dating, I've had enough girlfriend and a long, 8 years relationship (she did not want kids).
I don't really understand that social norm of having kids. I can understand sexual desire, but is there really a "desire to have kids"?
Is having kids really some kind of moral imperative to "continue the human species"?
Anyway, women have high standards, which is normal, so it's normal that a lot of men will be left on the side.
And women also suffer for not having kids if they wanted to.
I can understand sexual desire, but is there really a "desire to have kids"?
there is even a desire for kids without desire for sex. which can be filled with adoption.
the desire that i don't understand or feel is the need to have kids to be my biological descendants
i see my kids as given to me as a responsibility to raise and care for. regardless of our biological relationship. for me "i want kids" means "i want that responsibility"
Yes, people recognize that you get to have a lot of fun times with your kids and that even the "hard" parts make sense when you are in it. Your daily life has structure and purpose which is beneficial. People have an obvious instinct for this and are able to recognize this in others. If you met many parents who weren't happy they had kids, you'd know.
Also, for those of us who value hard work and long-term impact, kids provide an amazing opportunity for that. I get to influence how these people turn out, and in turn that prolongs my impact on the world beyond my lifetime. I want that.
There is an analogous grief for those dealing with a broken adoption system. I know someone who cared for a newborn for 9 months, before it was forcibly taken away at the request of the biological grandparents. This is in Canada, so you can guess why. They loved and cared for it as any parent would.
A relevant documentary, although slightly more about women and the world in general, is Birthgap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6s8QlIGanA, where they talk about "unplanned childlessness"
Over {mumble} decades, I've been stereotyped as good uncle / father / grandfather / etc. material pretty often, based on how I reacted to or interacted with various kids.
I've also seen quite a few men react less well to young children, and had less-favorable stereotypes quickly applied to them.
I wonder how the men featured in the article were stereotyped when younger. Back when couples mostly got together in larger/richer social contexts (churches, tighter-knit communities, etc.) - having the young women hearing unflattering whispers (about a young man's parenting aptitude) could certainly dim his prospects for having children.
Evolution. It's programmed into you, the drive to reproduce. And that's a good thing. You won't understand how important and amazing it is until you have your own kid. NOTHING is more important.
I really hate this attitude. It's a condescending and patronising attitude - that men who don't (or can't) have children are less. Are you really saying that absolutely nothing is more important than reproducing? For everyone, in every situation? I sincerely hope not.
> I really hate this attitude. It's a condescending and patronising attitude - that men who don't (or can't) have children are less. Are you really saying that absolutely nothing is more important than reproducing? For everyone, in every situation? I sincerely hope not.
Of course not. Humans (including men) show parental care to increase their young's fitness as well. Human males are not solely obsessed with the mechanics of reproduction (as many animals are). Instead, most men also want to pass something on to their children that will set them up for success, and if you look at it, throughout history, most men were striving for this and most social structures evolved to make this possible.
If you look at things objectively, then yes, it is the most important for the species. If you look at things relatively, then no, there's a lot of factors at play and everyone does not need to have kids (overpopulation concerns, cost of living, personal preferences, etc).
That being said, having kids brings so much perspective to a life already lived. You almost live a second (or third, forth, fifth, etc) life vicariously though them, so it's up there in "experiences to have".
Looking at things from the perspective of the species is not equivalent to looking at things objectively. Hell, there is no such thing as an objective measure of life. How can I objectively measure that a life is worth living? What if my child only lives for a few years, in agony due to getting cancer? Was such a short life worth the pain? It's impossible to say.
Is it? I don't see anything patronising in there. It is just a statement. I don't think that people who cannot have children are seen as something less. This is just you wanting to be offended.
And yes, in general there is almost nothing more important other than reproduction from the perspective of species. Nothing controversial about that either.
I'm not offended, thanks. I'm just saying that there is a life for everyone, and reproducing is not the most important thing for many. We're not talking objectively about the biology of the human species, really. We're talking about anthropology and what being a human means.
It seemed like that when you were saying how you hate "that attitude".
Nevertheless, that statement does not say that there is not a life for everyone. It merely states that there is an inner drive to have children, see them grow and ultimately take care of you and the world. And this inner drive exists despite many people trying to say otherwise.
I mean it might be cool to work for $BIGCORP and build your career. You get cool things like nice car, nice suit... But the $BIGCORP will not hold your hand when you are scared before surgery, it will not help you move something when you are old and most certainly will not wipe your butt when you are too old to get up on your own.
the offending part is that there should some kind of drive to have your own children or more specifically that the desire to have children is reduced to the need to reproduce.
i have children because i love them and want to care for them. i would adopt children for the same reason. i felt no drive to have children be my own. i could not care less if it is me who reproduced instead of someone else.
of course if humanity as a whole were in danger because there are not enough kids then i would want to contribute that however i can. but even then that could mean helping someone take care of their kids so they can have more kids.
Why is that offending? There is some kind of drive to have kids/to reproduce. That drive makes biological sense. I'd say that majority of living things acts on it.
If you personally don't feel that drive, there is nothing inherently bad with you and you certainly can have full and happy life. Maybe even happier because you can separate your decision and weigh pros/cons of having kids wihtout emotional involvement. But you are still probably a statistical anomaly. :)
thank you. this may be true. obviously i can't emphasize what others feel for something that i don't feel. whether that is an anomaly is something i am rather curious about. but i can most certainly say that all my kids were a choice, one that i would make again, regardless of any troubles having them may have caused.
as for offending, i guess i am generally bothered when people make assumptions about other peoples motivations
If you are happy with your choices, it does not really matter what others (especially random people on the internet) think so I'd say just ignore what others think :)
Plus I'd say that to have kids (in a family sense) does not necessarily mean they have to be your biological kids as I think that the bonding/family aspect of it is much more important than simple reproduction. Atleast for the mental well being of a person that is.
Read what I said, not what you imagine due to your fear of whatever. I said it is programmed into us. I did not say anyone is less or more. Although reality is that different people are less or more in various ways.
Nah, I've seen the lives of my friends who have kids. I'm happy for them, but my wife and I don't want that life. Sounds like having kids was the right choice for you, that's great, but don't preach at us.
We looked at the choices, and made ours. Don't tell me it was the wrong choice, without knowing literally anything about me or my wife. That's pretty patronizing.
I know a few couples that don't have children by choice. In small talk, they are constantly being asked how their children are doing, do they have any children, are they planning on having kids, etc.
Even when it's not meant to be judgmental, those kinds of questions can get old after a while. Then, add in the fact that the line of questioning often is judgmental and you'll frustrate even the most patient person.
It doesn't take an overly sensitive person to get frustrated by that. Hell, I got frustrated by the attitudes and questions, and I actually wanted (and now have) kids.
Well that tends to happen. People usually talk the most about things that are a big part of their life. So if someone wants to connect with you, they will inevitably try in certain point of life to ask if you have kids.
I really genuinely don't see the point. Yeah, it gets old when people talk about kids and ask you about it (especially when you made a desicssion to not have them), but that does not hurt my feelings. Not in a way that I would have to go around telling them to "stop preaching" etc...
Everyone around me at around 28 years of age started having a kids and guess what: our coffee talks started to revolve around parenting quite a lot more...
Makes sense since it is literally the biggest experience/thing in life for them at the time. I don't care that much - I either join in or just wait a while for another topic.
As someone who does not have children I find it at times difficult to interact with parents specifically because of this mentality. Anything that challenges their authority over the kids (correct parenting, behavior, values etc) can be seen as a direct attack and people will get very rude and offensive. Varying levels of aggressiveness... but as someone on the other side of this there seems to be very little warning or notice that even minor transgressions can cause defensive outbursts.
There is NO LIMIT to what people will do for their kids and sometimes in a very corporate way they will use those kids to justify their awful behavior on others.
I'm dealing with some burnout related to bad job experiences, something in the way you punctuated your statement just gave me the heebie jeebies.
I apologize if this is rude just trying to articulate something I can't quite explain. Family members have kids that are awesome, I have friends that are parents that have managed to remain respectful and tolerant.
I think having kids changes your brain in an irrevocable way and sometimes people don't want to admit that.
> Anything that challenges their authority over the kids (correct parenting, behavior, values etc) can be seen as a direct attack and people will get very rude and offensive.
I'll ignore parenting advice, even more from people without children. The thing is that everyone is different, and I don't believe that there is a better way or a miraculous method which will make your kids the greatest.
Secondly, it is a selfish reason: Being parent is a unique opportunity to grow a human to your values, and hopefully leading to success.
I don't see why I should adopt someone else's values.
> I don't see why I should adopt someone else's values.
Sticking to your values is all well and good but being willfully resistant to introspection is the problem. Assuming your values are always good and never without bias is lying to yourself. Nobody is perfect.
My parents tell me VERY convincing stories about how I had a great childhood and they did the best they could. They fucked me up in ways they could have never imagined and at times they just CAN'T understand why what they taught me isn't helpful or useful.
Pass on values to your kids but make sure you're not giving them blind spots too. This requires honesty and self evaluation most people are unwilling to engage in.
Drive is to mate. That' waaayyy distant from the desire to have kids, which no mammal on earth is biologically wired to feel. It's a cultural/rational thing, such as wanting new shoes.
Contrary to popular belief there's, in general, a shortage of children to adopt in the United States. Most of the children open for adoption have several needs that a random single man without any child development experience may have trouble meeting.
This person is 72 years old. Maybe people don't understand what parents mean by "kids take a lot of work". Take everything you do right now and double it. Maybe triple it, because it's harder when they don't know what they're doing at all and you need to teach as you go. All your household chores: double. Work: double (homework). Getting friggin' dressed in the morning: double. Wake up extra early too because school starts at 7:30 and they can't eat their own breakfast in a timely fashion, let alone make it.
That's not to mention that at 72 years old, there's a good chance he's going to keel over and leave that child fatherless pretty soon. Super traumatically too because guess who's going to find his body after he passed in his sleep?
And all the warning they get is a random guardian article in the slew of media rain.
This society is completely broken. My craving to return to the 1980s and 1990s is just getting worse and worse.
We replaced so many functioning structures with an ocean of mirages.
I legitmately have not seen an adult man who looks and acts like an authority figure should, in about fifteen years.
I literally cannot take 90% of 'authorities' seriously. Their advice is self-serving and just telling the truth about circumnstances is enough to end the conversation and burn out emotions, never mind getting to the point in the conversation where an informed decision could be made.
Discipline in the management structure used to be the backbone of society, now every level is scheming for themselves, and breaking the structure to get there. Or just low effort incompetence, understandable in the chaos. Or just friends killing time, promoting friends and family.
Everybody's here today, gone tomorrow in commitment and planning and structuring some jobs is a chaotic nightmare.
People keep leaning harder and harder into tech to ASSERT authority. Not a gosh darn soul in this country actually believes or cares what their phones/scheduling system tells them. The apps update every few weeks anyway and we can all sense the impending global lockdown coming, so why bother.
And in this chaos we have to commit to literally any woman, have kids and a house and gamble our lives on the churn.
Society used to be predictable and rational, now the media has gone to the dogs, the 'adults in the room' are not believable and are pushing more tech tyranny.
There's literally nobody to turn to. Grifts and false hope is virulent. Churches just want you to do their thing, with zero practical application in the short term. The media is a total clusterF.
The compassion from the comfortable families is a dismissive band aid, so they can go back to ignoring reality.
If I were younger I'd join the military just for the permenant sense of order.
Now don't mind me, I'm going to waste another 6 months battling C++ without anything to show for it, because solving some small tech problems is my best bet at keeping my sanity and providing a sense of achievement, that I <insert real name here> did something that was believable and good, before I lost it all to government and time.
All people want from a regular joe, is to control him. Literally everyone and their dog gives their condemnation and their gut reaction as 'advice'. Then if you don't immediately comply, it's taken as sufficient reason to ignore you.
Life hurts and then you die. Where is the children in that?
> Impending global lockdown? You might be well served from a lot less time online and more time with your fellow humans or nature.
Please stop trying to gaslight people. I too would have thought such a thing impossible in 2019/early 2020, but we saw that that is not beyond our leaders. Many people in the world have a lot of trauma from the government-imposed lockdowns and subsequent seizing of basic human freedoms. Unfortunately, one is often unable to mention this trauma without being dismissed as a kook, which you are doing to OP.
Please stop. Global lockdowns are now a thing that has happened and -- given the right circumstances -- may happen again. Given how recent it was, people should be cut some slack, even if you perceive them to be hyper-vigilant.
Restrictions of civil liberties in times of crisis aren’t new, see nearly every war.
There’s a very significant difference between “the coming global lockdown” and global lockdowns have happened and might happen again under the right circumstances.
There is no gaslighting, a term massively overused and often wrongly, in questioning and pointing out the paranoia in the former statement.
The person I was replying to seems to have a very dim view of the current and future. They reference the increase in “deaths of despair” and I think that online negativity only provide further fuel.
Based on HN's demographics, i'm guessing the poster is American.
In America, war (as defined by a loss in civil liberties) has not happened for over 80 years (true wars must be actually... declared by Congress). The various military engagements since then have not arisen to the same level of mobilization as an actual war.
Nevertheless, COVID was not a war, and the impositions were not made after a majority vote of Congress. They were just... imposed. That is sufficiently different. Claiming that COVID lockdowns were justified because similar reductions in civil liberties have happened in war, despite COVID sharing no characteristics with a war, is the epitome of gaslighting. A pandemic does not justify the mass removal of civil liberties. Honestly, when it's been done in war, it's always been seen as a necessary evil, whereas most lockdown supporters instead seem to view the lockdowns, as you seem to do, as an unalloyed good.
This won’t be productive. You’re making a strawman argument.
I said there are other circumstances where civil liberties were restricted and war was a common one, not that they were justified or anything else you’ve said. Civil liberties have been restricted in past pandemics as well.
I’m not going to debate the rest of what you said because it’s a response to an argument that I didn’t make, but it’s largely wrong.
There is nothing unprecedented about COVID. It is not the deadliest pandemic by any account. We simply had different attitudes toward civil liberties and the role of government in the past. The Spanish flu saw minimal national level policy and isolated (time and space) restrictions in particular places, along with sensible policies (like outdoor classrooms) meant to ameliorate the worst aspects. The sort of coercion during COVID was unprecedented. It is not something that we should accept.
"The United States lost 675,000 people to the Spanish flu in 1918-more casualties than World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined."
0.5% of the US population died due to the Spanish Flu.
Look, I understand where you're coming from, but I don't know that you would actually prefer 1918 policies if the same scenario were to be replayed in the present day.
Bit of a difference between "global lockdowns can happen" and "we can all sense the impending global lockdown coming". Could a lockdown happen again? Sure, if there were another pandemic. But "we can all sense the impending global lockdown coming" is ridiculous new-world-order conspiracy bullshit.
The only surprising or novel thing about the "global lockdowns" of 2020 was the degree of international cooperation on the matter, and even that - positive though it was - left a lot to be desired. It certainly didn't signify any kind of ominous freedom-hating shadow government. Pandemic-driven quarantines, crisis-driven restrictions on movement etc are hardly unprecedented in the 20th century. "Basic human freedoms" are subject to restriction when lives are at stake, that's just a fact of life. Londoners in 1940 weren't even allowed to turn the light on.
Look, I'm not here to tell you that nothing ever changes, but none of what you're complaining about is new. You talk about an ocean of mirages yet you're clearly looking through rose-colored glasses..
Politicians have always been self-serving liars, that was no different in the 1980s and 1990s. Instead ancient relics pushing "tech tyranny", there were ancient relics pushing state-sanctioned racism openly.
Titans of industry like Jack Welch were given vastly inflated and undue amounts of respect for financial engineering tricks and clever marketing. And half the upper management of any sizeable company was snorting cocaine.
Crime was several times worse than it is today. Yellow journalism has always been a thing albeit perhaps cyclical in prominence.
> Churches just want you to do their thing, with zero practical application in the short term.
You say
> And all the warning they get is a random guardian article in the slew of media rain.
The truth is some decisions take a long time to 'make good'. I can assure you any father having kids will, at times when his newborn is fussy, his toddler annoying, not see the wisdom or 'practical application in the short term' of his decision to have kids.
You clearly realize that there are some things society ought to tell people that they will only understand at a very large picture.
Yet you then criticize churches, the source of many traditions in the West that I'm guessing you like, as having zero practical application in the short term.
I would suggest you change that and give it a real go.
I should apologize. I'm sorry for talking out of my ass. My narrative was opinions formed from observations and whipped into casuistry.
Change to what? Authority is clamping down, my church leaders tell me I have no choice(s). Random adults in society are shooting down the idea of free will. I don't recognize myself when I look in the mirror. I am guilty of despairing.
You guys are going to 'operationalize' psychology and data, (aka men), in favour of maintaining 'planetary boundaries'.
I am conscious of all this, and the huge amount of responsibility I have for my family and their lives.
What is the point of a self, if we are all surrendering to unknowable, electronic control. What's the point of being conscious at all.
There are no ropes/levers/relations to oneself in my heart.
I was an institutional man in the 90s, I used to be myself in relation to a larger structure, built on relations and goals and achievements within it. It was heavenly.
Now my soul dies everyday, as we drift further from the light.
I just cannot get up every morning and answer a text message on a phone from a random boss and pretend I relate to it.
It is difficult having to watch yourself become the villian in relation to yourself, just to survive some unknown global change.
The same adults that describe how lovely airports were before 9/11 security (an older pilot I spoke to), are the ones in favour of stricter and stricter control.
The problem is that I can understand. I was raised to understand, analyze, critically think, interpret, calculate.
Important facts take forever to mine out of public sources, no strategic knowledge is communicated (that I can act on) and we can only observe the changes and interpret, nearly always coming to pointless narratives, but not wanting to forget the past, or the self.
How can one plan their life (or even relate to themselves) when everything changes every 2 years. Order 66 can't come fast enough, so we can have an end to the cycle of betrayals and 'unpromises'.
In conclusion, go away with the preachy suggestions that have no substance that we (or me) could bank on.
I haven't been banned (even though I'm often abrasive-ish), so I'm grateful for that, at least.
