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It's a perfectly reasonable and natural expectation. It's only seen as abnormal in the western world where people are spouting opinions based on the predication that they'll be of sound mind and body at an older age when none of that is guaranteed. The fact is that eventually, you will be taken care of for some or most of your necessities by some external force as an elderly person. Whether that is people working in nursing homes, neighbors, home aides, etc. In every other part of the world, they rationally understand it will be your family, aka your children.
That's not true. Are you trying to say that other countries don't have nursing homes? I hope not, because that would be stupid, since it's so easy to verify that it's untrue.
Plenty of people in the USA are taken care of by family, but it's just not always possible. My mother took care of her mother--until my mother herself was 71, had a 78-year-old disabled husband to also care for, and her 92-year-old mother became to much for her to lift and move from a bed to a wheelchair to a recliner. My own mother in turn was able to die in her own home at 91 but only because my brother, himself disabled with a bad spine and unable to work, was in the house to cook meals and do laundry for her.
Financial: You can't take it with you when you die. Money isn't everything. I rather have my family and be poor than wealthy and not have them
Time: Having kids has actually given me the opportunity to have more free time. Sure, when they were babies and toddlers my time went out the window, but because of time I became a SAHM and only work part time even though they are grown. My spouse and I have figured out how to make it work and it works quite well. Wouldn't change it for anything.
Travel: I never liked traveling but I am weird.
Genetics: Life is about risk. You could get run over by a car too. I try not to think too much about the inevitable
Future of the world: I agree there. Actually, that is probably the best reason to not have kids. The world is getting more and more authoritarian and over regulated. The future will be quite grim if we don't change course.
If my kids move: I will be happy for them. I didn't have them to be my caregiver.
Marriage: Yes, kids are "relationship killers" and I have to admit there have been tough times with my spouse and I...but we made it through and it made us stronger together.
Sleep, etc: It's only when they are babies that you lose sleep to feed them and they wake up crying. They grow out of all that stuff. Sure there are times when my kids need me in the middle of the night, but that is a rarity like if they puked or something.
In the end, you do you. If you don't want kids, then don't have them. There is only a short window where women can have them, guys can have kids later in life so it doesn't matter as much.
My sons are 21 and 23. And the question of whether I regret having them has been a complex one that I can't really answer.
They are the reason that I stayed with their father for 18 years, even though he was not a good partner and ours was not a good marriage. I had the mindset that it would be selfish of me to break up the family or deny the kids the chance to be raised by their mother and father, so long as I could "manage" him. So I shut down arguments before they became fights, I pushed him to go outside when we had unpleasant discussions, I did everything I possibly could to contain his problems and to keep up the facade that everything was happy. And I did it too well. People say that kids see and hear and know things...mine did not, and that was the problem. When the end came, it came explosively. My ex had a mental break and turned seriously crazy and violent. The divorce...my younger son describes it this way, "it shattered my reality."
When I was a kid, my parents divorced when I was about 10, but they fought all the time around me. I always had contempt for their behavior, like why would two grown adults throw tantrums like children? How can a responsible adult, a parent, even act that way around their kids?? But when they parted, all I felt and thought was, "it's about damn time."
Staying together for the kids was not as good a decision as I always used to think. Now, I often wish I'd left back when things were unhappy but not catastrophic...even if everyone would have called me selfish for it.
Then there's the cost. Over a million and still adding about $15-20K/year. I'm an accounting nerd, I've got ridiculous spreadsheets, and detailed records. So I was able to figure it out. And that's only costs that were DIRECTLY related to the kids, not incidental things like the extra gas to take them places or the cost of a bigger home to house us, utilities and so on. For a long time, daycare cost more than our housing did.
But you know, everything I went through in raising them would have been worth it, if they were OK now. But they're not. They are both struggling in one way or another. The stress of their young adulthood has rendered miniscule and insignificant any hardship I went through with them when they were little. I never ever thought that this would be the hardest part, but it has been. It's been brutal. Neither of them is finding their way in life, both are just floundering. And suffering. And the more I help, the less they do for themselves, so I have to just force myself to take my hands off their situations and let them experience consequences.
Childbirth was one of the greatest physical pains I've ever felt but it doesn't hold a candle to the emotional pain and stress of worrying if your kids are going to be OK or not, and having to let them figure out how to answer that question more or less on their own.
Granted, I agree that having them, loving them, raising them when they were children, was the greatest joy, an indescribable joy that defies all reason and logic and I can only assume is rooted in blasts of hormones unlike anything else...there is no way to explain it to anyone who has not experienced it. And going through pregnancy sure was interesting and peculiar and I'm glad I have memories of that strange experience as well.
As for the rest of the life stuff, it's hard to weigh it. Because prior to getting pregnant with my first, I was not on a good path, personally. I wasn't a responsible person. I was fairly impulsive and self destructive. They really did push me to grow up and get serious and find my way. So I don't know if I'd have been a happy childfree person, out traveling the world with all that money in my pockets. I might have died in a ditch in a year or two, instead. No knowing what the real alternative might have been.
I don't know if I can say whether it was all worth it in weighing up those personal things, but where my sons are in life now definitely does make me wonder.
As for having a caregiver when I get old...LOL!!...No. I don't want one, thanks. I intend to try and raise and save enough to cover a generous period of care for myself and do as my Great Aunt did...I'll find a trusted younger friend to appoint executor of my estate and will, and have them put me into a home, trigger a plan I create before I get that far. My younger son said to me not long ago that he would take care of me when I'm old, but the notion is pretty ludicrous from where we stand today. Maybe things will change in time. I don't know. Nice that his heart is in the right place, I guess. But the person he is right now, would put me in a bed somewhere and collect my checks to buy drugs.
And that's the thing though, you know, people like to feel cozy and safe in their just world fallacies (boy did I feel this way) that if you raise your kids right, if you only set aside all of your own selfish needs to be the ultimate parent and do everything the right way with them, then you will raise young adults who emerge onto the scene of life ready to succeed and thrive. That having troubled young adult kids only happens to crappy parents who don't do a good job. I don't know how I could have done any better, other than if I'd chosen a better man to sire them in the first place. And yet.
There are several reasons why I'm averse to having kids:
1) Financial. With cost of living skyrocketing, many people are just able to get by alone. Adding 1-2 kids on top of it makes it harder.
2) Time. It's a 2nd job. You give up a lot of leisure and it's harder to fit things into your schedule
3) Having kids makes it harder to travel. Harder to move, if you want a better; you could still move, but displacing your children. (If you and your partner separate, you may have to be in the same state for 18+ years so that both parents can see the child).
4) Genetics. One may have illnesses (mental and physical) in their family's DNA that they don't want to risk passing on.
5) Is this a world we want to raise kids in? Granted, people have expressed this sentiment in past generation and still had kids anyway. Maybe the future will be much better, but the past few years, at least for NA/EU, it doesn't look good at the moment.
6) There's a possibility that once your children grows up, they all move to the other side of the country and rarely visit. Imagine starting a family just to be alone 30 years later.
7) It makes separation much more difficult. People may need to stay in bad marriages longer than they need to. They may have to pay child support for 20 years for a child they only see 1 day a week.
8) Sleep deprivation, and mental exhaustion in general.
Each of these reasons are self-contained. They are not interconnected where fixing 1 of them improves all of them. Even if 3-4 of these reasons aren't issues, that doesn't erase the other 4-5.
If you feel strongly about reasons 2,3, and 4 then that may not be a great candidate for having children...at this time. Unless you find an exceptional situation with your spouse/finances, you pretty much will sacrifice some part of freedom. Personally I've been flexible enough to accept the freedom and extra work.
The other reason regarding genetics, it is mostly a lottery, you really don't know for sure what will come out, even if you had great genetics, you can still wind up with a child with a serious disability, deformities, or worse. Odds of this are pretty low, but it's still a gamble.
It's only amongst a very small, exclusive portion of the world that this is even a question or a debate.
97% of the world just has kids and deals with whatever comes their way.
And obviously this topic has been discussed 1,000 times.
But one thing that has not been discussed 1,000 times.
Parents often wonder why their kids don't want to have kids. Part of it is because those parents ingrained in their kids' heads 'disastrous' circumstances of not being financially solvent or not being able to sustain an upper-middle class income. Fear, in other words.
The quoted material hits a nerve and prompted me to post; bolded parts are my doing.
I grew up poor; holes in my shoes, holes in my pants, holes in my teeth. Never knew being stable and secure, much less being "financially solvent." Saw the bill collector at our door, Mom unable to pay them with four kids and my father an invalid due to a stroke. Regular evictions and moving. People left groceries on our porch. And I'm lucky as a White guy, such a situation would be a double hardship if we were Black. Saw my sisters marry abusive drinkers like my father, helped move them during their divorces, saw their financial struggles, helped to raise some nephews.
I've come a long way since escaping the old factory town that was Baltimore, known as a branch office town, smokestack America, low pay, few benefits, lots of poverty for both Whites and Blacks. Guess what: I'm not going back.
Hell, it's no wonder I have no children, who'd want to bring kids into the world I grew up in, the gnawing need for security, always an outsider. I'm 74, no kids or grandkids to worry about in the heartless global economy. One of the sweetest women I've ever met was the nail tech who did my pedicures back in COLO SPGS. She married an abusive drinker, ironically he was a minister of music in one of the city's many evangelical churches, she had three kids, one went through the USAF Academy, one is special needs, and she often told me how she envied my childfree existence. I reached security and comfort decades ago and have no regrets. None at all. I'm not going back.
The days of large families where all the kids had happy childhoods and all did well ended at least 50 years ago. That's only possible these days if there's plenty of money at hand to afford financial solvency, which rules out most of rural America and much of the urban/suburban metro areas. These days even a 2-child family seems to push the time/money issues facing most families. In Fairfax County, VA, I went door to door in the mid-1970s trying to sell Fuller Brush products and found that two-thirds of homes had no one home during the day, even then the cost of living required 2-income families.
Having children is a personal choice; everyone's life and situation is different. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. There is no right or wrong aspect to this topic, only what's right for you, and it's your choice and your's alone, and none of us have any right to criticize anyone else's choices. IMO we need to teach high-schoolers about family planning, costs to raise children, responsibilities of parents, etc. People need to know more than the white-washed versions of American history plus some math, English, basic science and speaking a foreign language.
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The quoted material hits a nerve and prompted me to post; bolded parts are my doing.
I grew up poor; holes in my shoes, holes in my pants, holes in my teeth. Never knew being stable and secure, much less being "financially solvent." Saw the bill collector at our door, Mom unable to pay them with four kids and my father an invalid due to a stroke. Regular evictions and moving. People left groceries on our porch. And I'm lucky as a White guy, such a situation would be a double hardship if we were Black. Saw my sisters marry abusive drinkers like my father, helped move them during their divorces, saw their financial struggles, helped to raise some nephews.
I've come a long way since escaping the old factory town that was Baltimore, known as a branch office town, smokestack America, low pay, few benefits, lots of poverty for both Whites and Blacks. Guess what: I'm not going back.
Hell, it's no wonder I have no children, who'd want to bring kids into the world I grew up in, the gnawing need for security, always an outsider. I'm 74, no kids or grandkids to worry about in the heartless global economy. One of the sweetest women I've ever met was the nail tech who did my pedicures back in COLO SPGS. She married an abusive drinker, ironically he was a minister of music in one of the city's many evangelical churches, she had three kids, one went through the USAF Academy, one is special needs, and she often told me how she envied my childfree existence. I reached security and comfort decades ago and have no regrets. None at all. I'm not going back.
The days of large families where all the kids had happy childhoods and all did well ended at least 50 years ago. That's only possible these days if there's plenty of money at hand to afford financial solvency, which rules out most of rural America and much of the urban/suburban metro areas. These days even a 2-child family seems to push the time/money issues facing most families. In Fairfax County, VA, I went door to door in the mid-1970s trying to sell Fuller Brush products and found that two-thirds of homes had no one home during the day, even then the cost of living required 2-income families.
Having children is a personal choice; everyone's life and situation is different. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. There is no right or wrong aspect to this topic, only what's right for you, and it's your choice and your's alone, and none of us have any right to criticize anyone else's choices. IMO we need to teach high-schoolers about family planning, costs to raise children, responsibilities of parents, etc. People need to know more than the white-washed versions of American history plus some math, English, basic science and speaking a foreign language.
That's not what I meant at all.
I meant that upper class people often implant in their kids the need to amass big salaries and nest eggs (obviously the internet does nothing to help that), and to be low risk takers, and they inadvertently drive their kids away from having kids.
Though, the vast, vast majority end up having kids regardless of what situation they are in.
I meant that upper class people often implant in their kids the need to amass big salaries and nest eggs (obviously the internet does nothing to help that), and to be low risk takers, and they inadvertently drive their kids away from having kids.
Though, the vast, vast majority end up having kids regardless of what situation they are in.
That's okay. I grew up amid the "disastrous circumstances of not being financially solvent" and got the fear of that dreadful existence deeply ingrained in me, enough to create a fire in the belly to never live that sort of life if I could avoid it.
When it comes to "the vast majority end up having kids regardless" my internalization of "regardless" is to interpret that as the consequences of thousands of years without reliable birth control. For eons untold women simply got pregnant and had no choice, often having to face child rearing alone or with an unwilling partner, and I see no end in sight for the plight and agony of single moms in this world trying to raise kids without help.
Having kids IS worth it if both parents have a burning desire to be parents and are committed to see it through from birth to adulthood, otherwise, it may be better to forego parenthood.
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For me it was not worth it and never gave it much consideration.
I saw kids just a little older than me "have to get married" right out of high school and I grimly resolved that this would never be my fate. The guy got a BS job as a nail-beater, (not skilled enough to be called a "carpenter") or at best hired on at the local GM assembly plant - as a laborer, not an engineer or manager. The girl generally got fat and popped out a few more sprogs. Never had much money.
Firstly I never had so much money that the financial burden of kids could be ignored. I want to spend the money on other things than child rearing.
Secondly I would never wish pregnancy and childbirth on any lady I even liked, much less loved.
Thirdly the whole "Married with Children" lifestyle never appealed to me. The house in a highly taxed but "desirable" school district, driving a minivan, dropping out of the gym and losing one's attractiveness as "kid" tasks swallow up all your time outside of work, etc. No. Thank. You.
That's not true. Are you trying to say that other countries don't have nursing homes? I hope not, because that would be stupid, since it's so easy to verify that it's untrue.
If I wanted to say that, I would have. For clarity, no, I am not stating there are no nursing homes outside of the western world. Societal expectations and understandings have nothing to do with the existence of nursing homes or whether people in that society choose to utilize them. The cultural expectation and tradition is the family aka their children will care for them in their elder years. This is highly ingrained in Asian, Latin-American, Indian, and Caribbean cultures (one of which I come from).
If I wanted to say that, I would have. For clarity, no, I am not stating there are no nursing homes outside of the western world. Societal expectations and understandings have nothing to do with the existence of nursing homes or whether people in that society choose to utilize them. The cultural expectation and tradition is the family aka their children will care for them in their elder years. This is highly ingrained in Asian, Latin-American, Indian, and Caribbean cultures (one of which I come from).
Ah, OK, thanks for clarifying. I just get tired of hearing the oft-spouted routine about how Americans all dump their family members in nursing homes. It's true in some cases, not in others. The elders in our society definitely do not get the respect that is a deeper part of other cultures, that's for sure.
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