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This resonates with the way people I know actually seem to talk and think in a way the "status" conversation doesn't.
I have some friends who can't have a biological child because of health issues the wife is facing. They're otherwise parentally inclined, and have been fostering unrelated children the past several years, and this is a really sad thing for them. But not as sad as dying in childbirth or becoming permanently disabled, so they probably wouldn't prefer the world where the options were to join a convent or roll the dice.
Another friend from a while back didn't want children because she had a ton of mental and physical health problems in just about every member of her family, and that seemed reasonable to me. As far as I know she hasn't married, and might not. That's also sad, but then so is raising a child only for them to turn into a crazy homeless person or take up everyone else's entire life managing their psychosis.
It doesn't really help to inflate the misery of childbearing, though. Personally, I didn't mind being pregnant, and the worst part of babies was/is feeding them. Inconveniently, it's hard to know how things will go until trying, and bad results can really mess up a person's life.
Agree with others that having to entertain a 4 year old all the time is some combination of poor choices on the adults' part and an unfortunate consequence of being the only person there with a child around that age. Possibly with a side of talking a lot about incomprehensible far away things as a social default, vs cooking or hiking or something that makes sense to children. Not that I don't have sympathy for having to deal with constant interruptions, but it's not helpful to think of guiding children through learning social skills as "entertaining" them. I am constantly annoyed that I have a large, interesting yard, and my 5 year ld mostly just wants to talk to me about her virtual cupcakes or something. That is, unfortunately, largely my own fault though.
That's very sad. Like the discussion on the Wellness Wednesday thread about dementia, some experiences are tragic, in a society that tries to ignore that kind of small everyday tragedy.
This part is probably unnecessary, though. I knew some teenage girls once, with a sister who had profound health challenges, which kept her homebound and in need of constant support. Because finding a home health aid was too difficult, the sisters had to learn to be nursing aids at a young age, and often missed school to care for her. Their father hated it, and moved to another state. Last I heard one of the girls had moved to her father's house. It was both very sad, and looked from the outside like some poor choices had been made, perhaps pressed upon people. We seem to be in a healthcare uncanny valley for some conditions, where people are kept alive at the expense of everyone around them when in previous generations they would have gotten a fever and died young, and maybe at some point in the future they could be cured. That's not an unmitigated good.
It's almost never a good idea for a family to let everything revolve around even a very miserable, sickly, disabled child. It's too bad she couldn't have more non autistic children, more going on in the household, maybe eventually they'll figure out how to not let their whole lives be ruled by caring for that child.
I don't know if the "fertility crisis" is a crisis or not. It's unsurprising that in a civilization with very little mandatory difficult and dangerous work, women would be opting out of having children as well. But for most, it's probably not for the best long term.
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