"The trouble is with men's sperm" - NYTimes headline

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you want people to have babies in their twenties, make college and daycare free and get the housing market sorted out so that most young people can spend less than 50% of their income just on shelter within commuting distance. Until then, having a baby while young is something for the very poor and very wealthy outside of very conservative religious backgrounds.

+1, right now only three groups of people have kids early:

1) Poor people who don't know better or don't feel like they have anything better to look forward to so they have kids as teens or in their early 20s, and then those kids are also poor because they have poor parents who lack education and therefore can't get out of poverty. We should be actively discouraging this to give these folks a chance to at least finish high school and enter job training programs so that when they have kids, they can create stable homes and offer those kids something other than a repeat of their own childhoods.

2) People with a lot of family support and financial resources. I wouldn't say all of these people are wealthy, and not all wealthy people offer this to their kids. But basically having a kid in your early or mid 20s is a lot more feasible if you feel like you have a community around you who can help, and you feel that community is supportive of you marrying and having kids. But a lot of MC and UMC families actually discourage early marriage or kids, and can withhold support if it happens because they think it's a mistake. It's also common for people in the MC and above to move far from parents and childhood communities for college or work, which makes it harder to create this kind of community support. Once someone has moved hundreds of miles from their support system, it immediately becomes more sensible to wait to have kids until you can afford to create your own support system where you are. And yes, that takes a lot of money. Childcare is expensive, housing is expensive, the services that can take the place of community support (therapists, doulas, paid sitters, cleaners to help during pregnancy or just after childbirth) all cost money. Can you have kids without all that? Sure. But it's more stressful and less pleasant, can be hard on marriages, and can be hard on mental health. Parents of all ages do better with support networks. Sensible people will delay parenthood until they have that support network, which often means waiting until they can buy it.

3) Really religious people, who are a combination of #1 and #2 -- they often don't value education, especially for women, and do value having kids, so they make the same choice a lot of poor people do in opting for early parenthood ever setting themselves up for careers. But also they tend to have strong support networks through their religious groups, so that obstacle to parenthood doesn't exist for them. Even if they move to new cities, if they are active in their church, temple, or mosque, and the community is very conservative and pro-procreation, they will have a lot of community support when they have kids.

This is just how it is. If you don't like it, you have to change the circumstances. You can't just yell at people to have kids earlier, it doesn't make sense within the parameters of our culture most of the time.

4.) Non-reglious or not very religious people who just happen to meet and marry their spouse early and want kids before 30. DH and I moved to an exurb (Loudoun back in 2007) bought a townhouse and got on with it. Our families are kind and caring but don't live locally and don't help financially.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Daycare is optional if one parent makes a good (enough) salary and has health insurance. The other parent can stay home.

Buying a house is optional. Rent an apartment (we lived in a one-bedroom until our first was one) instead of buying a house. Only have one car. Don't buy all the fancy baby stuff.

If you don't want to do this, don't. Roll the dice and wait until you are older.

But don't complain that you can't afford to have a child. You just don't want to live cheaply or slightly uncomfortably.

So many of us are waiting until we are older and not having any issues at all though. Plus we have a spouse we adore and money to farm out the boring time killers like housecleaning and laundry services.

I had my first at 33 and my last at 43. Many of my close friends and family were similar ages and socio economic status.

If I had rushed to have kids in my 20s I would have ended up divorced and single parenting bc my BF at the time was not a good match for me. Would not have been a good route.

[Anonymous]

People also need to get married younger. Post college mid 20s, so like the 22-27 age range. Combining households is very financially efficient especially when neither is a high income earner. A 2 bedroom 1.5 bath apartment in the low to medium COL city where I used to live is now renting for about $1400/month. A 1 bedroom 1 bath rents for $1100/month. Get off the apps, get married, get those financial/tax benefits that come with marriage, combine households, and everyone comes out ahead and you end up on better financial footing earlier in life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Daycare is optional if one parent makes a good (enough) salary and has health insurance. The other parent can stay home.

Buying a house is optional. Rent an apartment (we lived in a one-bedroom until our first was one) instead of buying a house. Only have one car. Don't buy all the fancy baby stuff.

If you don't want to do this, don't. Roll the dice and wait until you are older.

But don't complain that you can't afford to have a child. You just don't want to live cheaply or slightly uncomfortably.

Yeah, it's a great idea to bring a child into the world that you can't afford. Make the child suffer, that sounds like a great idea

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Eh, I think it is a combo of people delaying having kids until older and people being overweight. So many women have pcos now, which makes having children a lot more challenging. Pcos is correlated with being overweight. It is a bit of a which came first, chicken or the egg- but never the less, most women are not at a heathy weight which impacts fertility.

Except theres a whole contingency of PCOS that is underweight or at a normal weight. Its a metabolic disorder. Me and all my fat friends have had absolutely no problems getting pregnant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you want people to have babies in their twenties, make college and daycare free and get the housing market sorted out so that most young people can spend less than 50% of their income just on shelter within commuting distance. Until then, having a baby while young is something for the very poor and very wealthy outside of very conservative religious backgrounds.

+1, right now only three groups of people have kids early:

1) Poor people who don't know better or don't feel like they have anything better to look forward to so they have kids as teens or in their early 20s, and then those kids are also poor because they have poor parents who lack education and therefore can't get out of poverty. We should be actively discouraging this to give these folks a chance to at least finish high school and enter job training programs so that when they have kids, they can create stable homes and offer those kids something other than a repeat of their own childhoods.

2) People with a lot of family support and financial resources. I wouldn't say all of these people are wealthy, and not all wealthy people offer this to their kids. But basically having a kid in your early or mid 20s is a lot more feasible if you feel like you have a community around you who can help, and you feel that community is supportive of you marrying and having kids. But a lot of MC and UMC families actually discourage early marriage or kids, and can withhold support if it happens because they think it's a mistake. It's also common for people in the MC and above to move far from parents and childhood communities for college or work, which makes it harder to create this kind of community support. Once someone has moved hundreds of miles from their support system, it immediately becomes more sensible to wait to have kids until you can afford to create your own support system where you are. And yes, that takes a lot of money. Childcare is expensive, housing is expensive, the services that can take the place of community support (therapists, doulas, paid sitters, cleaners to help during pregnancy or just after childbirth) all cost money. Can you have kids without all that? Sure. But it's more stressful and less pleasant, can be hard on marriages, and can be hard on mental health. Parents of all ages do better with support networks. Sensible people will delay parenthood until they have that support network, which often means waiting until they can buy it.

3) Really religious people, who are a combination of #1 and #2 -- they often don't value education, especially for women, and do value having kids, so they make the same choice a lot of poor people do in opting for early parenthood ever setting themselves up for careers. But also they tend to have strong support networks through their religious groups, so that obstacle to parenthood doesn't exist for them. Even if they move to new cities, if they are active in their church, temple, or mosque, and the community is very conservative and pro-procreation, they will have a lot of community support when they have kids.

This is just how it is. If you don't like it, you have to change the circumstances. You can't just yell at people to have kids earlier, it doesn't make sense within the parameters of our culture most of the time.

4.) Non-reglious or not very religious people who just happen to meet and marry their spouse early and want kids before 30. DH and I moved to an exurb (Loudoun back in 2007) bought a townhouse and got on with it. Our families are kind and caring but don't live locally and don't help financially.

Small group, you need to sell that better because being in your 20s and saddled with kids living in some far flung exurb sounds like it sucks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you want people to have babies in their twenties, make college and daycare free and get the housing market sorted out so that most young people can spend less than 50% of their income just on shelter within commuting distance. Until then, having a baby while young is something for the very poor and very wealthy outside of very conservative religious backgrounds.

Most people are done with undergrad by 22 and by 25, at least one of the spouse is working in a professional full time job with health insurance etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you want people to have babies in their twenties, make college and daycare free and get the housing market sorted out so that most young people can spend less than 50% of their income just on shelter within commuting distance. Until then, having a baby while young is something for the very poor and very wealthy outside of very conservative religious backgrounds.

Social media isn’t helping this. 28 year olds think they are owed a farm kitchen and a pool, not a 30 year old townhouse.

If both are earning $100k each, they can get it in a lot of towns.

[Anonymous]

Kids are a joint responsibility of parents, grandparents, community and government. It used to take a village to raise a kid, now nuclear couples are forced to do it all on their own and women get 75% of the burden.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you want people to have babies in their twenties, make college and daycare free and get the housing market sorted out so that most young people can spend less than 50% of their income just on shelter within commuting distance. Until then, having a baby while young is something for the very poor and very wealthy outside of very conservative religious backgrounds.

Social media isn’t helping this. 28 year olds think they are owed a farm kitchen and a pool, not a 30 year old townhouse.

If both are earning $100k each, they can get it in a lot of towns.

Sure, but they’re not each earning $100k in towns where this is affordable on that income.

[Anonymous]

This is what I did - have kids young while poor. Poverty was not a detriment to my children's well-being, since we were grad students/post-docs and educated enough to prioritize our kids and be good parents.

I later become infertile in my mid-30s due to a serious disease, so for me specifically, having kids young was the ONLY option, even though I didn't know it at the time!

But we are not Americans. I think that DCUM is populated by the sort of people who cannot abide being poor for any length of time, even for some nebulous better future, or to avoid the risks of infertility later.

And indeed, lots of older women have paid for successful IVF!

So it's not a one size fits all, and we need compassion and tolerance all around to avoid judging other people's choices.

[Anonymous]

We were both in late 20's when got married and due to his sperm quality, we had to do IUI. Luckily, it was much cheaper than IVF.

[Anonymous]

Good luck finding young men who want to get married at 25. They are few and far between.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Eh, I think it is a combo of people delaying having kids until older and people being overweight. So many women have pcos now, which makes having children a lot more challenging. Pcos is correlated with being overweight. It is a bit of a which came first, chicken or the egg- but never the less, most women are not at a heathy weight which impacts fertility.

Except theres a whole contingency of PCOS that is underweight or at a normal weight. Its a metabolic disorder. Me and all my fat friends have had absolutely no problems getting pregnant.

Some aren’t, but most are. Extra weight creates hormones imbalances in many

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you want people to have babies in their twenties, make college and daycare free and get the housing market sorted out so that most young people can spend less than 50% of their income just on shelter within commuting distance. Until then, having a baby while young is something for the very poor and very wealthy outside of very conservative religious backgrounds.

+1, right now only three groups of people have kids early:

1) Poor people who don't know better or don't feel like they have anything better to look forward to so they have kids as teens or in their early 20s, and then those kids are also poor because they have poor parents who lack education and therefore can't get out of poverty. We should be actively discouraging this to give these folks a chance to at least finish high school and enter job training programs so that when they have kids, they can create stable homes and offer those kids something other than a repeat of their own childhoods.

2) People with a lot of family support and financial resources. I wouldn't say all of these people are wealthy, and not all wealthy people offer this to their kids. But basically having a kid in your early or mid 20s is a lot more feasible if you feel like you have a community around you who can help, and you feel that community is supportive of you marrying and having kids. But a lot of MC and UMC families actually discourage early marriage or kids, and can withhold support if it happens because they think it's a mistake. It's also common for people in the MC and above to move far from parents and childhood communities for college or work, which makes it harder to create this kind of community support. Once someone has moved hundreds of miles from their support system, it immediately becomes more sensible to wait to have kids until you can afford to create your own support system where you are. And yes, that takes a lot of money. Childcare is expensive, housing is expensive, the services that can take the place of community support (therapists, doulas, paid sitters, cleaners to help during pregnancy or just after childbirth) all cost money. Can you have kids without all that? Sure. But it's more stressful and less pleasant, can be hard on marriages, and can be hard on mental health. Parents of all ages do better with support networks. Sensible people will delay parenthood until they have that support network, which often means waiting until they can buy it.

3) Really religious people, who are a combination of #1 and #2 -- they often don't value education, especially for women, and do value having kids, so they make the same choice a lot of poor people do in opting for early parenthood ever setting themselves up for careers. But also they tend to have strong support networks through their religious groups, so that obstacle to parenthood doesn't exist for them. Even if they move to new cities, if they are active in their church, temple, or mosque, and the community is very conservative and pro-procreation, they will have a lot of community support when they have kids.

This is just how it is. If you don't like it, you have to change the circumstances. You can't just yell at people to have kids earlier, it doesn't make sense within the parameters of our culture most of the time.

4.) Non-reglious or not very religious people who just happen to meet and marry their spouse early and want kids before 30. DH and I moved to an exurb (Loudoun back in 2007) bought a townhouse and got on with it. Our families are kind and caring but don't live locally and don't help financially.

Small group, you need to sell that better because being in your 20s and saddled with kids living in some far flung exurb sounds like it sucks.

You do you. We still happily live in the same area (in a much nicer home) and are on track to retire early if we choose. What sounds so terrible about it? Not everyone desires to live in N. Arlington.