I wish society didn't encourage people to put off having kids.
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Anonymous
Having kids at 20 and then going to college or starting career at 30 is actually a well-trodden path by a lot of women who became very successful ... who are now in their 70s-80s. The judge I clerked for did exactly that -- 3 kids close together by late 20s, then started practicing law in her mid-30s. (She had actually finished law school prior to kids.) Alternatively, sometimes pregnant/parenting young women back then were fired from their jobs because of it, so their only option was to enroll in college or graduate school (that's what Ruth Bader Ginsburg did). All told, it doesn't seem like a terrible way to organize one's life, back then. But these days, I think we've well established that getting married in your very early 20s and having kids right away is not generally something that MEN want to do, or have the money to support given wages, housing costs, and student loan debt. Also, student loan debt means that most families won't be able to send a parent to college or graduate school once they've entered the thick of childrearing. |
Anonymous
| I had my kids at 22 and 25. I’m so glad I did. |
Anonymous
| How many threads can DCUM have on this topic? Young moms vs. old moms, breastfeed vs. bottle feed, SAHM vs. working moms... Let it go, live your life, have children when you are ready, raise your children as you wish. Why are so many women so worried about what the next woman is doing? Men are not having these types of competitions just to put another group down. Just stop. |
Anonymous
I have an Ivy League PhD and 3 kids. You sound clueless. |
Anonymous
Disagree; First Worlders consume, per capita, far more than Third Worlders do, even if the latter have more children. The woman with nine children in rural Niger is not buying an SUV or a mini mansion or cases of plastic-bottled water. She's not flying across continents for vacation. She's not commuting, by herself, in a car for forty-five minutes twice a day. Economic growth predicated upon population growth will crash at some point. I honestly feel it's completely irresponsible to have more than two children at this point, given what we've learned in just the past year about what we've done to the planet. Before you yell "LOOK AT CHINA!," I'm not suggesting that population control from above is anything but monstrous. But we need to take a much harder look at our child-bearing choices beyond saying, e.g., "Well, I want five children!" That's not an ethical choice anymore. |
Anonymous
Why does PP sound clueless? Women having control over their reproductive choices is a very recent development, even in the West. It's good that women can choose for themselves if and when they want children. |
Anonymous
NP. I think calling women who want to have children 'broodmares' is about as offensive as thinking every woman should have a child. I think both PPs are kind of right. PP's grandmother did not have a lot of choices and probably did have a difficult life, but it wasn't the summation of her existence and the way PP talks about her seems cold and inhumane. The ability to bear children is part of what it means to be a woman, no matter where you end up on your decision scale. We should be lifting up all women's choices, not tearing them down. |
Anonymous
The problem is not that people have choices. It's people like OP who believe that their choices are better than other people's choices and want to dictate what other choices people make. OP is just a step toward the conservative wave of controlling other people's choices that is rampant nowadays. I agree with you that it's wonderful that people have choices. Let controlling or judging other people for their choices go, live YOUR life as you want and let others live their lives as they want, have children when you are ready and let others do the same. If more people followed this philosophy, we'd have so much less contention and division than we do now. |
Anonymous
she sounds clueless because she is only 30 and “has long decided to be childless. how long can that be? also she is clueless for using her grandma as relevant alternative to pursing a PhD. plenty of women have kids, careers and advanced degrees. |
Anonymous
This is my lifestyle and I still had to wait until my 30s to have kids. It’s also not a coincidence that I was able to get good health care, save up for my family, and finally buy a home once I got a job with a union contract in my late 20s, something that is increasingly rare. |
Anonymous
I’m happy that this path has worked out well for you, but as someone from a military family, you and I both know that what’s incredibly common among military spouses is the distance strains the marriage and can lead to divorce. For military wives who have followed their partner and raised kids for a decade only to have that marriage end in divorce, they’re disadvantaged twice: their resume is stale/non-existent, and then again with respect to retirement that they won’t be able to access because it belongs to the ex but they effectively paid into by providing free childcare and household labor. The military really needs to offer spouses more options for career-building work, but regardless — it’s a difficult path that is by no means a recipe for success. |
Anonymous
| Society isn’t doing anything. Everyone wants to blame for everything. |
Anonymous
You seem to think that I am saying that OECD countries aren't problematic, which I'm not (see bold above). Instead, I am staying that the specific problem caused by OECD countries is not having too many children, because the current fertility rate is not replacement level. In other words, without immigration, the population of OECD countries would be shrinking. Of course, immigration does exist and that is a part of why we are seeing demographic shift across OECD nations. In terms of harmful impact to the planet, you are absolutely correct that the woman with nine children in rural Niger is not a major source of carbon emissions. But the answer isn't that we need to have fewer children, it is that we need to do a better job of consuming less and using more sustainable methods for what we do use. In short, people already took a look at child-bearing choices (for reasons that probably have little to do with the environment) and decided not (by in large) to not have 5 children. Of course, some families do have several children, but large swaths of the population choose not to have children at all. The net result is a fertility rate below replacement level. |
Anonymous
| I didn't feel pressure to "put of" having kids but its just how life seems to work now. Its much harder to get financially secure at 21 than it was in 1970. My dad supported my SAHM and three kids and owned a house and two cars. He had no student loans either. now you need grad degree in most cased to get a good job. My mom had all three of her kids by 26. Im 45 now with a Kindergartener. When I my mom was 45 all three of her kids were out of college. Its sad to think I probably want live to see my own grandkids grow up. |
Anonymous
DP Good for you but, not everyone wants kids. Also, she wasn't comparing herself to you but, her grandmother who didn't have any choice. Personally I wouldn't have been ready to have kids at 20. |