I wish society didn't encourage people to put off having kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think this is one of the consequences of having widely available birth control and legal abortion. There is no societal obligation to help families with young children. If you chose to conceive this child, and you chose not to have an abortion, then it is completely up to you to be able to care for that child on your own.
Before these things were widely available, children were just a part of life rather than a lifestyle choice.

You are kidding yourself if you think "societal obligation to help families" kept abortion rates low, or made people think kids were something other than the woman's choice and problem.

If anything, widely used birth control is a response to the lack of societal support. The poster immediately downthread from you has it right: if you want people to choose kids, then make it a socially supported choice instead of something viewed as a "lifestyle choice," as you put it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because you have young kids now and feel you are old and busted, you want all of society to avoid your mistake? There is something seriously wrong with your thinking. I definitely don’t want my DD having kids until she gets to enjoy her own life first.

Yeah but if everyone does this, then no one gets to know their grandkids and vice versa. And lots of adults in their 40s-50's end up losing their parents - my own parents were in their 60's when their parents started dying. You have to wonder whether it's worth the trade off. Isn't it really family and relationships that life is all about?

My life is not about my relationship with my grandparents.

+1

People who have kids so that the kids will have living grandparents are incredibly myopic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It was a different time back then.

Yes, the way nature intended. Men did the bulk of the labor and women raised children. Society has changed these roles, but we haven’t evolved past them yet, and as PP mentioned, women are birthing children well past their child-bearing prime.

[Anonymous]

If you have kids too young you are less likely to be able to give your kid what they need because you cant afford good schools, childcare, etc do you might mess them up for life. Then they might repeat your mistakes and have kids while too young and broke. It's a cycle of poverty and dysfunction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's not "less possible" to live on one income these days than when our grandparents had kids. People just have higher desires and expectations now. Head over to the "travel forum" on DCUM and see the kind of trips people are talking about. And these aren't "once in a life time" kind of trips--people are going on "big trips" like African safaris, Caribbean cruises, jaunts to Europe as a family multiple times each year! My grandparents (who had their kids in their early 20's) could have never dreamed of that! "Vacation" back then was a week or two camping at lake or something.

People aren't delaying kids because they HAVE TO to survive, they are doing it so they can afford kids AND extravagant lifestyle. That's their choice.

Thanks for the voice of sanity this is all about choices

and again DCUM bubble most millenials are still having kids in their 20s outside of upper middle class and upper class trajectory folks in major metro areas. Tons of people in the US that aren't DCUM type people

[Anonymous]

Just pointing out that having women start having children in their 30s in not uncharted territory. My mom, like OP's, was in her early 20s when she had her first, but my Grandmother was 31, because she was too busy working through the Depression and defeating Hitler and all that to settle down. There were a lot of women who didn't have kids until after the war, and if that meant they were older, then they were older. I'm not sure what my point is, other than that we shouldn't think all the women of the past had babies young.

Also, if you wanted to settle down in your 20s and have kids, you could have probably accomplished that. You got to choose to wait for the right partner, the right career/educational path, etc. Don't forget the stifling effect that pressure to settle down and have kids can have on society.

[Anonymous]

I mean, I had my kids at 23 and 25. I spent nights or weekends working as a PA. DH worked in tech and we were stressed, exhausted, overwhelmed, had no support and just got by. I thought I was going to fall apart regularly until my youngest hit K and things seemed to get easier. So, I just think the combo of working, parenting, and lack of community/family support is a shitty one.

I do think it's strange being done with kids now. I'm 43 and my good friend just had her first at 41. I look at her life and am like whew...glad it's not me.

I do have to say we are still in the thick of supporting college kids and building our retirement, so it's not like we are chilling in the old folks home. We work the same as we always have before. DH travels more now, I join him when I can if it's a decent city he's working in, but I still work in the same ER I worked in when I was 24 and out of PA school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In the past, none of these things existed because they women generally stayed home or took lesser-paying/lower hours/more flexible jobs than their male counterparts. They are absolutely essential if women want equal pay and equal employment opportunities.

I think I'd rather know my grandkids.

DP Well, I would rather have my kids be ready for kids. If that happens before I am dead, great. But, you can't miss something that you don't know so it is ok if they wait or not have any.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just pointing out that having women start having children in their 30s in not uncharted territory. My mom, like OP's, was in her early 20s when she had her first, but my Grandmother was 31, because she was too busy working through the Depression and defeating Hitler and all that to settle down. There were a lot of women who didn't have kids until after the war, and if that meant they were older, then they were older. I'm not sure what my point is, other than that we shouldn't think all the women of the past had babies young.

Also, if you wanted to settle down in your 20s and have kids, you could have probably accomplished that. You got to choose to wait for the right partner, the right career/educational path, etc. Don't forget the stifling effect that pressure to settle down and have kids can have on society.

Very true, plus before birth control women had babies up until ... they couldn't anymore, basically. So they might have started young but they were still having kids in their late 30s. My dad is one of six kids and there is more than a decade between the oldest and the youngest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The statistics for the longevity of early marriages are not good. I saw lots of classmates and family members marry young, have kids young, divorce and struggle to have the careers that they hoped for. Having kids outside of marriage is no better. Some people make it work, and that’s great, but not the norm.

As a woman, I chose to take my chances with future fertility in exchange for a solid, mature marriage/child raising partnership and and well established careers with good, reliable incomes.

When I think about what my life would be like if I had kids early I feel like I dodged a bullet.

+1000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I mean, I had my kids at 23 and 25. I spent nights or weekends working as a PA. DH worked in tech and we were stressed, exhausted, overwhelmed, had no support and just got by. I thought I was going to fall apart regularly until my youngest hit K and things seemed to get easier. So, I just think the combo of working, parenting, and lack of community/family support is a shitty one.

I do think it's strange being done with kids now. I'm 43 and my good friend just had her first at 41. I look at her life and am like whew...glad it's not me.

I do have to say we are still in the thick of supporting college kids and building our retirement, so it's not like we are chilling in the old folks home. We work the same as we always have before. DH travels more now, I join him when I can if it's a decent city he's working in, but I still work in the same ER I worked in when I was 24 and out of PA school.

Yeah I think this is pretty standard. I first met my now-DH when we were 22 and 23 respectively. Had we hit it off then and dated/married/had a kid in quick succession, that kid wouldn't have seen DH much during its first 3-5 years thanks to back-to-back deployments. I would've had to work whatever job I could find in the areas where DH was stationed, so probably not building either a stable career trajectory or a decent saving/retirement account (and obviously not likely to be near family support). Instead, we started dating at 26/27, married at 29/30, first kid at 31/32, and we're stable and comfortable. Our parents are all roughly the same age, but health-wise, only one set is likely to see our kid grow up beyond elementary school.

[Anonymous]

I had my kids in my mid thirties. I feel so lucky and happy to have the family I do. I wouldn’t change a thing. Because if I had rushed into it in my 20s I wouldn’t have this husband or these kids. And this is the family I want.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think this is one of the consequences of having widely available birth control and legal abortion. There is no societal obligation to help families with young children. If you chose to conceive this child, and you chose not to have an abortion, then it is completely up to you to be able to care for that child on your own.
Before these things were widely available, children were just a part of life rather than a lifestyle choice.

You are kidding yourself if you think "societal obligation to help families" kept abortion rates low, or made people think kids were something other than the woman's choice and problem.

If anything, widely used birth control is a response to the lack of societal support. The poster immediately downthread from you has it right: if you want people to choose kids, then make it a socially supported choice instead of something viewed as a "lifestyle choice," as you put it.

exactly. The previous poster wrote out a classic case of the logical fallacy confusing cause and effect

[Anonymous]

"I am 42. My daughter is 16 and was an accident. I was absolutely NOT mature enough to have her when I did. I wish I could have waited until around 38 or so. That's when I felt like I really had a handle on being an adult I felt good about, not just faking it by doing adult things. Never mind that I was on welfare and food stamps and DD has food insecurity."

Sorry, I don't intend to pick on you, just want to clarify something that occurred to me.

If you didn't have your daughter at 26, I don't think you would have felt like you had a handle on being an adult at 38.

It took 12 years of life experience with your daughter to figure things out and get your handle. It may never have happened without her.

To generalize, kids change everything and so seeing the other side is almost impossible. That is one of the problems with this type of debate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The statistics for the longevity of early marriages are not good. I saw lots of classmates and family members marry young, have kids young, divorce and struggle to have the careers that they hoped for. Having kids outside of marriage is no better. Some people make it work, and that’s great, but not the norm.

As a woman, I chose to take my chances with future fertility in exchange for a solid, mature marriage/child raising partnership and and well established careers with good, reliable incomes.

When I think about what my life would be like if I had kids early I feel like I dodged a bullet.

+1 to all of this. I wouldn't trade my childless 20s for the world, and I don't think I would be a great parent at that age because I would have been dealing with serious FOMO about everything. Not just things like travel and late nights at the bar, but big things like building a solid career that allows me to have the kind of expertise and rank that provides some flexibility and stability in my 30s. Not to mention the maturity to pick a great relationship and have solid financial footing.

The statistics for early marriages are not good. There are exceptions to every rule and if that's you, fantastic! But the divorce rate is high and my anecdotal experience watching friends from college marry early shows the same. The lucky ones had "mulligan marriages" and divorced with no kids by 25. The ones who had 3 kids and a divorce under their belts by 30...I don't envy them.