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Yeah, I get it you have an excuse. A good excuse. And I have an excuse. And that's the point. Everybody has an excuse. My grandfather would have had a similar excuse, too, except he didn't make a lot of money and my grandmother didn't work at all. And yet they managed to have 5 kids between 1950 and 1963, because that's the way the culture was. If you were in the same position as you are now but it was 1953 instead of 2023, you'd have kids. The point I think the OP is trying to make isn't that your excuses are invalid, or that you're hypocritical, it's that eras with high fertility had high fertility because people didn't make excuses. A family wasn't something you meticulously planned, it's something that happened. And if you expect to raise fertility rates, bitching that women need to stop being so picky with dating apps isn't going to get you anywhere, because that isn't the problem.
I don't think you've really engaged with my point at all.
No I don't. I plan to have lots of kids, and I'm well-prepared to do so. There is nothing stopping me from having at least 5 children, we just haven't started yet, and plan to within a year or two. I mentioned my age already so you should know that this plan is perfectly reasonable, as opposed to the single mid-30's women who still plan on starting big families.
Yes, I would, but due to the factors I mentioned I'm not in the same position. I don't actually think money has much to do with whether you can have children, but I do think the sexual marketplace does, and that was my point throughout my comment.
I agree, but I think the same factors which led to picky women have also led to the fertility problem, which was what I was (perhaps unclearly) trying to get at. Thus, men complaining about how picky and unfertile women are are perhaps missing the point, but they're gesturing towards an obvious problem in our current society in a clear way. When your grandpa had kids in the 50's-60's The divorce rate was about half of what it is now and I suspect the "true" divorce rate was even lower comparatively, because nowadays many people just don't get married in the first place. You don't think this has anything at all to do with women being more picky?
There are plenty of other important factors too. People in the 50's (or even earlier) very rarely went to college, and often didn't even finish high school. That's like 4-8 extra years they had as a head start on starting a family. Jobs didn't require diplomas to nearly the same degree that they do now, so they essentially were in similar financial positions 4-8 years earlier than their equivalents nowadays.
I'll be more clear about my central point. Women have MUCH more power in nearly all heterosexual relationships, and this power disparity has been increasing over the years. When people say women are too picky on dating apps, this is what they are gesturing towards. My situation is similar--if I were in your grandpa's shoes I would start having kids immediately because I would be less worried about the strength of my relationship with my wife. This has nothing to do with culture (at least, childrearing culture), it just has to do with the different circumstances in which we find themselves.
"We just haven't started yet". And that's it, ladies and gentlemen, if we're talking about fertility levels. "Lord, make me fertile - but not just yet" to adapt the saying.
Right, if you're young enough "we haven't started yet" is perfectly reasonable. The reason it has taken on a negative connotation is because of all the single mid-30's people still saying it, which I already mentioned.
I'm nearing the older end of what I'd consider reasonable, but I think you're silly if you think starting at 25 is too late.
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Can confirm, I had 3 kids with my first wife, 1 with my second and maybe I will squeeze one more in with my (hopefully) 3rd wife before I turn 60. As long as you have the minimum level of space, you can cope. If you want kids, just have them. You can work things out, retool your lives and make it work.
You're kind of proving my point lol. It's very important to me that I stick with 1 wife. You can definitely have kids in any financial situation but I think that doing so if you're not stable is a good recipe for divorce. Not to imply that's what happened to you, but this is the sort of thing I want to be extremely careful about.
Well my first wife passed from cancer after 20 years of marriage and three kids. Which is not to make you feel bad, but just to illustrate, you cannot control the future. If you both prize kids above financial success thats unlikely to lead to a divorce. If you're on different pages, then thats the real problem.
Maybe it will add 1% to your divorce chance, but you have to trade that against the chance, the timing is never right,or something happens to one of you in the meantime.
Sorry about your wife. I agree that the timing is never perfect but there are certainly tradeoffs to starting earlier vs later, even if you disagree on where exactly that tradeoff lands.
For me the priorities are:
Have enough kids (3-6)
Don't have kids after my wife hits advanced maternal age
Don't have kids until completely financially stable
In that order. Since we're still pretty young, we're not yet constrained by 1-2, so may as well work on fulfilling 3. In a few years 1 and 2 will start to be actual constraints, so by then we'll be having kids whether or not 3 is met.
I think this is generally how people should be making these decisions--get your priorities straight and then act accordingly, rather than waiting for ill-defined life circumstances to line up correctly.
That doesn't sound unreasonable to me, especially at your age. The thing to look out for is if you start pushing that start time back. That can go more quickly than you think.
In any case i hope everything works out for you!
Thanks!
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