roykent

This is going to be a core memory that she will hold on to forever

This is good advise. And if you don’t have this, just be the one to initiate.

About 7 years ago one of my college friends drunkenly made a slack group for us all. At the time we were about a decade out of college and have been friends since freshman year. The slack group has been going strong since.

There are times where it goes quiet for a while, then one message will fire it back up. And it’s cool to see it evolve where now we talk about house projects, family things, etc.

We also use it to coordinate times to hang out which e great since we live in different cities.

I also have some WhatsApp groups from other periods of life, but just mentioning the Slack group because it’s something I wouldn’t have thought of and has really helped maintain our connection 20 years after we all met.

That's a pretty wild interpretation of the child-free life. From the other side, that description of a weekend with kids sounds incredibly boring, but I know from my friends and family that do have children that they genuinely get a lot of depth from those experiences. And even I enjoy that occasionally.

It sounds like you project a lot onto what you think the other side experiences. And you also seem upset that there are people that don't make the same choices as you about how to live their lives.

I can assure you that, for many, it's not about fear, over-consumption, leisure and gluttony. And I encourage you to learn more about that, especially in the event that one of your own children decides to be child-free themselves.

One book that I found helpful is called The Baby Decision: How to Make the Most Important Choice of Your Life. Some of it is obvious, but it really goes over both sides really well. It helped me come to terms with my decision to not have kids, and also helped me really understand why some people do have that drive.

Now I have a healthy circle of friends that include both child-free and people with children. And for a lot of us, we don't dislike kids, we just don't want to raise them.

This is the closest description of what my brain is like that I’ve ever read. I always attributed it to being alone most of my childhood.

My HP LaserJet 1012 that I bought refurbished for $90 in 2004. I think I’m on my third toner cartridge. And through college it served as the house printer for half a dozen people.

I recently connected it to an old AirPort Express in bridge mode so that I can use it wirelessly. My partner got tired of plugging into it and wanted to upgrade it, but I refuse to part way with this simple and reliable beast.

I honestly think it's the opposite. It wasn't long ago that child-free wasn't something that was socially acceptable (at least in the US). The path was graduate high school (and maybe college) and then get married and have kids. And a there are parts of the world that the pressure is still there to an insane level.

Now we have books like "The Baby Decision" that really helps people think about this and envision what it looks like on both sides of the fence. Even the decision to have more than one kid wasn't really thought about. Because you have one, of course you're having at least another one.

None of this was the norm. Go ask some people older than 50 or 60 why they chose to have kids. I would bet a lot of them didn't really consider another option.

I read a while back that Thailand is huge for dental tourism. There was also some town in Mexico that had a ton of high quality dentists. So people that need a ton of expensive work would sometimes fly to these places and cost of treatment + flights and housing would be significantly less than a place like the USA where it's normalized to drain your savings or go into debt for care.