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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   26629 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024

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I'm very newly a father. My daughter is 3 days old. I'm turning 30 this year, and the general reaction I got from talking to my friends & strangers was very 'wow that's young to be doing it' or 'how can you afford this'. I was the youngest person in my highschool scholarship class in a good upper middle class suburb by about a year, 30 people of whom most have gone on to be Doctors, Dentists, Developers and other Desirable roles. I'm the only to have reproduced, and at this rate I'm the only one who even looks particularly close to it. My university cohort's fairly similar, with similar professional attainment.

The big themes I noticed when talking to people about why they haven't taken the leap are generally some combination of not owning housing, being stuck in the dating app treadmill, protecting their free lifestyles to do 'cool, spontaneous things' and versions of 'my potential children will inherit the apocalypse'

grats! sorry I don't have anything more substantive to say. but seriously, congrats!

Thank you!

Congratulations! Being younger makes it easier to raise young kids, I think. Obviously everyone has their own life situation, but I think it's good to start reasonably young if you can! Glad it is working out for you :) What percentage would you say of each of the themes you mention? Is there a lot of overlap?

Mind my asking what you do for a living?

Fairly high up in some interaction of gambling/crypto. It's not socially gainful but it is fairly lucrative.

Talking to my childless compatriots, I'd say one reason that's as common at least as those is "I have some form of mental distress and don't know if I can manage kids with them / don't want my kids to inherit it".

Perhaps you can suggest something like Orchid prenatal polygenic screening to them where they can choose to implant an embryo with low risk of inheriting the condition?

I'm going to guess the answers would be some combo of "that's eugenics" and "that's sounds expensive as shit, I can't afford that, especially if there's a baby coming".

This is pretty common I think. Makes for a potentially interesting connection with the prior post on Bad Therapy.

Maybe it's Seasonal Affective Disorder caused by magic dirt latitude and not anything inheritable?

Nah, we're pretty good at telling when it's SAD and when it's something else. Besides, SAD was already a regular affair in the 00s, when the TFR was much healthier than now, ie. around 1,8-1,9.

One of my best friends had a rough childhood and really struggled with depression and anxiety for while, so now that things are actually pretty good for him with a good partner, house and job; he doesn't want to have kids because he doesn't want them to have the same shit as him.

Very sad to me since I think he would be a great dad.

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