yeah, there are times when I've felt like that, but they're pretty fleeting
at what age did you start a family? I think one of the reasons people should start a family a bit later (early thirties maybe) is so that they have the opportunity to experience/enjoy those things without kids (and not have to wait until the kids are all grown up and then they're in their 50s and it's just not the same as the stuff you can do in your 20s).
They will never forget.
They have 2 or 3 kids. They love their kids and love spending time with them. Yet, they still have time for hobbies and side projects. I don't know how they do it
1 friend, 2 kids (8-12), FAANG job, 2nd company on the side with a partner, plays horror games and writes about them.
1 friend, 2 kids (7-11), FANNG job, plays video games with this brother remotely, takes his kids out often and they hang out with this friends (we all love the kids). He's also the cook in the house and has people over often. Goes snowboarding in the window.
1 friend, 3 kids (6-8-10), plays videos games (hobby 1), plays guitar (hobby 2), does photograph (hobby 3), see his picts on facebook all the time of the latest thing he's doing
1 friend, 3 kids (8, 10, 12), makes video games for a job and makes his own at home for hobby. One of this kids is also into making video games which they share.
1 friend, 2 kids, tech job, loves VR, plays VR with kids, writes tech tutorials for blogs as hobby.
I'm not saying "you can do it too", I'm just saying I see example of people that somehow *seem* like they're enjoying visiting friends, playing music, having time for hobbies, and they have kids
Would love to know if they just lucked out. If there's specific things they do. Or if it's just an attitude. Or something else.
https://www.axios.com/2024/07/25/adults-no-children-why-pew-... ("64% of young women say they just don't want children, compared to 50% of men.")
My friends who are parents are very much trapped at home, it's actually great for me because if I'm bored I know they're not doing anything are are starving for social contact with another adult. It's hard for parents to not inadvertently isolate themselves.
- The cost (financial, time, stress/health) is incredibly high. When cost of living as one person increases somewhere between notably and substantially faster than wages, it’s hard to justify paying for another person while likely also taking an income cut. You end up with entire classes of people whose careers will struggle to pay for their own life, let alone that of a kid. This is playing out in real time - I personally know people who commute 30-45 minutes by car to make $23/hour (in Canada, in a moderately high CoL city - that’s $16USD). When I was in university, some of my classmates who worked at the Starbucks near campus had coworkers (there were at least two instances of this that I know of) in their 40s with kids who commuted over an hour to make however much money Starbucks managers make, and one had a second job on weekends. It’s not hard to look at that and think, “how is that something you’d want to do to yourself?” - The feeling (perceived or real) that the world is becoming a worse place. 24 hour news and social media don’t help, with either the perception or the actual situation. Why would I want to raise a kid who could be a victim of one of the weekly school shootings? Or who’s going to be left dealing with an even harder life financially/etc? Or who’s going to resent older generations for selfishly wasting the earth’s resources?
It’s generally quite easy when you work in tech with a partner who works in tech to just assume that having kids is an easy choice (I work with people who are like that, who apparently only see the world through rose-tinted glasses, and are shocked someone could even possibly not want to pop out as many babies as possible). But when you look at the level of struggle a significant portion of the population endures, as they become generally more educated and more capable of critical thinking over time, it’s pretty clear why large swaths of people will start thinking “maybe we shouldn’t have kids just for the sake of having kids, especially if we don’t actually want to.”
That’s ignoring of course the general overpopulation and lack of sustainability of the western lifestyle (and the associated impact of having a kid on climate change - pretty much the single worst thing you could do, if you can about that at all). People who are tuned in to those sorts of issues are also more likely to not want kids, either because they don’t want to contribute to the problem, or raise kids who will have to deal with the fallout.
If you’re driven crazy by people having a different viewpoint from your own, you may want to consider reflecting on why you are so deeply entrenched in your beliefs. It is rarely productive.
But I get it, and the idea of kids was scary at one time, but it turns out they're pretty easy all things considered. Lots of talk of "sacrifice" between friends back then but as it turns out you're trading something of little value for something of immense value. But to each their own!