The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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How the hell do people have kids??
I'm a rather pronatal person. I very much would like 2 kids at the bare minimum, 3 if I can wrangle it. Not today, or next year, but starting hopefully in my early 30s.
That being said, I find the prospect of having kids in the West deeply anxiety inducing. How do people manage while being in nuclear families? Where do they get the time and energy?
If I did have kids back in India, I'd have the immense relief of parents willing to lend financial and physical assistance rearing them, and happily. Domestic help to boot. Schooling and education costs nowhere near as bad as in the West. Even if you don't have the family to help out nearby, parenting is definitely easier for a professional couple.
When I look at the comparative difficulty in the West, I find it not particularly surprising how fertility rates have plummeted. I'm all for it in theory, but deeply daunted in practise myself. Especially assuming my prospective partner is a working professional.
It scales a bit. After reasonable success with the first one, the 2nd was different but less anxiety producing. The 3rd and 4th even less so.
We had been DINK for some time. After the 2nd there was a move so my wife could be a SAHM. I don't think we'd have 4 if we were still both working in demanding careers shuttleing the kids between creche / daycare and school etc.
Thanks for doing your part to fight dysgenesis.
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I agree that after having the first one, things get easier and scale better, two kids don't require literally twice the time and money as the first, especially when you've moved your life around to adjust.
I doubt the SAHM thing will be an option, but there are some options to cut down working hours even as a doctor (going from 48 hours a week to what most professions consider as standard at 40 hours).
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Were fertility rates higher before because it was easier to raise children (to some required standard) then?
People smarter and better paid than I have speculated on the global, secular decrease in TFR and there's no single conclusive answer I'm aware of.
That being said, I personally lean towards a decrease in community and family support being major issues. Having siblings and parents nearby to help with looking after kids is a big help. Add in delayed child rearing (often due to lengthy higher education eating up potential fertile years) and people, like me, being concerned about how they're going to handle the time costs (or make enough money that they can trade it for other people's time). And to a degree, the heightened expectations and demand to micromanage worsen things as you contemplate, you can't just kick kids out till sundown to make their own entertainment these days in many places.
I'm confident I can bite the bullet if need be and have kids despite how daunting a prospect it seems, but it's looking like a damn hard thing to pull off.
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