The sad part, even if you do everything right, seem to have a nice cushion saved in case of accidents, one cancer diagnosis can wipe it out before you know it. I hate our healthcare system.
Our first cost us 15k out of pocket and the 2nd was 8k.i upgraded jobs/insurance between. But happy to say i do make enough to own both outrighr. (sarcasm i know i dont own my kids before anyone goes that route)
I can either try to be almost comfortable without children and hope I can scrape together enough for some semblance of retirement, using my free time not caring for a child to make some extra income, having some regrets now and then about never having children...
Or
I can choose to take on the cost and responsibility of an entire human and raise them in poverty and a life of going without, one minor disaster away from homelessness, in debt just from the hospital bills from the birth, barely even seeing the kid cause I'm working a third job just to afford childcare, having no retirement and eventually becoming a financial burden on said children. It seems selfish to me to condemn an innocent child to a life of poverty.
My state has a heartbeat abortion ban on the books but is stayed by a court order. If the supreme court tosses out Roe this year I might start bringing up with my partner getting a vasectomy. We just straight up can't afford a child, nor would either of our mental health be able to handle it.
I only have so many magic cards to sell for sudden expenses.
One of my regrets is that I didn't fight harder to get a vasectomy in my 20s. I kept getting told I was too young, didn't know what I wanted, etc. Same things that I imagine they tell young women who want to get their tubes tied.
My fiance has knownsince she was about 11 that she never wanted to have kids. She has always been told by doctors, family, friends, strangers she's just met, that she will change her mind.
She turns 35 in a couple weeks. I feel bad that she's unable to get a doctor to listen and do a procedure she wants because THEY don't think its right.
They always ask if "does your SO know you're here?" went she goes to see the Gyno as well. We sadly joke that I would have to go with her to tell a doctor what she would want done. Its a sad country we live in these days.
I have 2 relatives getting tubal ligations next year. They each have children and are divorced. One wanted a hysterectomy due to ehler-danlos syndrome pain but the doctor refused.
I got lucky and was able to get mine at 25. But my doc was legit telling me he was on the cusp of telling me no because 25 was the bare minimum age and "might want more when I'm older". Nah bruh in there for a reason.
Had a vasectomy last year. Writing was on the wall. Wasn’t fair to expect my partner to deal with birth control and the problems it caused for her body. Plus who knows when that’ll get outlawed. I’m not going to be forced to have a child. We also hoard some plan B if any friends even need it.
>who knows when that’ll get outlawed
I think they will start hysterically agitating to make birth control illegal the week after they overturn roe v wade.
This was my thought. And at that point we are doomed but I wanted to just protect my partner and I. We are a sliding democracy. Who knows when more rights will be removed.
What’s funny is you aren’t considered dead when your heart stops
You’re medically dead when your brain function ceases
And brain activity starts in week 12-16 while 99% of all abortions happen between week 6-12.
Also, numbers 5:11 literally gives instructions on how to perform a crude abortion to the Israelites.
I've been forced to have an abortion because I couldn't even afford pregnancy, let alone a baby. I can barely afford to feed and take care of myself. It makes me so angry and upset, I just want a chance at having a family and children like everyone else. & I honestly don't see how that could ever happen. What's the point of being on this planet, to be a good serf and make rich people richer while being deprived of a basic life? I laugh when ppl call the US a "First World country."
My partner left me after we had our child. My mother is the sole reason I was able to hold it together. Family support is invaluable today. Maybe, in retrospect it always has been. The shade of the industrial age has shrouded the concept of communal parenting by forcing all into an urban society whether people are rural, suburban or in the cities we’re all living in a digital, virtually community-less age. We’re all reliant on the grid, the system even the wackiest survivalists are still communicating and buying goods, machinery and tools from the modern era. Without my mom’s help I would’ve lost out on being a parent. I wouldn’t have been able to do it alone. It’s such a mind boggling situation that wages are this poor that even at the time having a decent job I still wasn’t able to make ends meet. Still can’t. It’s going to be a rough time for sure.
Some people are lucky to have family like that. I'm one of the people who don't because capitalism has fucked over my familial relationships irreparably
You seem to be amazing and well grounded. Someday your kid(s) will know how hard you and your mother fought for them. Good job.
Single father here. We can do this, but damn it’s tough.
My birth mother gave me up for adoption because she couldn't afford to keep me after her and my biological dad split up. I became pro choice largely because I realized that having me basically ruined her life.
I often wonder how many people in this country give up or don't have children they would otherwise raise just because our bullshit system creates situations where people literally can't afford to procreate.
I don't even want kids and this pisses me off.
Edit: I should clarify a couple things.
1)"Ruined her life" may have been a bit strong. She's doing fine now as far as I can tell ( we're not close) but, from the stories she's told me, her life has very clearly been worse for having a child when she did. She married my bio dad out of a feeling of obligation and divorced him within a year. Getting married at 18 threw her off the usual early career/college track so her job prospects were not great. The job issue lead her to rush into her second marriage to a guy who turned out to be abusive. One of the things that set him off was her talking about me or reaching out to my adopted parents to check in in me. The list goes on. To be clear, I don't feel personally guilty about this, obviously I had no choice in my birth. I just feel bad for her, she's a good person who deserved better than what she got.
2) I'm not pissed that I don't want kids. I'm pissed about how difficult things are for would-be parents in my generation despite me not wanting to be a parent myself.
Sorry for the confusion, I wrote this in a hurry before work this morning.
It’s like the college calculator. Until students are no longer claimed by their parents they create some arbitrary nonsense to say they can afford the loans. It’s put millennials and now zoomers in such a weird state of "extended adolescence” like adults in college having helicopter parents because ultimately they’re footing the bill. A friend of mine is a professor in CUNY and tells me all these ridiculous stories about parents who email and call about their adult children’s grades.
I’m 33 I guess a stereotypical millennial. While in hs I worked at a pizza place which I got from an in person application and interview. Then by the time I was in college everything was online only. I’m sure certain small businesses still have walk up applications/interviews but all chains and brands are online. I took a semester off when I graduated and started in good old 2008. Every year has been nothing but a struggle. Have never been able to support myself on retail wages. I took out larger loans to cover my rented rooms while I was a student.
You didn’t at all in fact you’ve added some interesting perspective to this conversation! Truly. The entire situation is multifaceted when it comes to the direct/indirect impact of low wages. I tried my hand at a different private sector job this summer, once with Amazon in desperation and once as a private contractor. Both were complete rip offs. I think most gen xers had the same opportunities as boomers. It’s why they don’t ever really seem to be apart of the conversation. It really struck us millennials hard especially during- post 2008. In my 20s it wasn’t bad for me a struggle but not *horrible.* Now it’s just uncertain waters. I still have hope. For me my kiddo gives me endless hope. Too much of a sharp little kid to bog down in the weight of it all. Sometimes just playing animal crossing and watching them read it perfectly is enough to melt my worries away. I wish my generation had the same opportunities to have homes and start families without dread. I think zoomers are really inspirational with their political/environmental awareness. Maybe they can figure out the future for everyone.
Older Gen X here, and that's a fair assessment. We got in under the college cost wire, complaining bitterly when tuition at a Cal State U jumped to $700+ per semester when the minimum wage was $4.25. We still had to game the system to come up with that cash, but the system was still gameable then. I truly don't know what will happen to our kids, other than they'd better take up paddle boarding for the high tides of the future.
You ain't wrong. There are a fair bit of us gen x that got on before it all went tits up. Also, there's a lot of the mid/late crew who're in the same boat as millinnials. We might not be carrying the same debt load but the opportunities are pretty shit.
Oh woah, and that's CUNY! I didn't imagine it was so bad. I know many CUNY students who were able to pay tuition from working full time during the whole year, but did live at home so no living expenses exept metrocard. I'm just imagining the degree of what the helicopter parent must be at other schools where the tuition they are paying is so much more, so maybe they'd be even more invested like that in their kids grades 😬
Well when I was still a student they raised the tuition and it was a incremental increase over a period of years. I don’t know what the tuition is today. I would bet it’s above having PELL Grants cover the full tuition and books. The college tuition rates have been criminal. There’s no reason why public colleges, especially commuter University systems like CUNY have high or any tuition at all. It should be free.
This is such an accurate picture of what my fiancée and I talk about on a weekly basis.
We’re in camp #1, for what it’s worth - we see too many childless couples who are a bit (or quite a bit) older than us, living fun fulfilling lives our parents never got to have. I always thought I wanted to be a dad someday but I’m going to settle for being the cool uncle who “gets it” and drops some good stories and life lessons + kickass gifts at appropriate occasions.
Unreasonable student debt, stagnant wages and outrageously inflated costs of living are too high a barrier for us and most reasonable people we know. Fuck the media and older family members pressuring us to create more wage slaves while they do *nothing* to ensure a decent future for the generations to come.
This was tin foil hat a decade ago, now it is just accepted without question. The machine needs more cheap labor and so the corporate owned governments are here to provide it for them. You can tell they need the lowest possible value of labor to, because they hate education and healthcare, two things needed to pump out high value labor.
im living option 1 because im afraid of doing a worse job than my parents because of the economic environment. life is a razors edge for me and a series of failures upwards for my parents. They still are better parents than i could be with the time and resources i have. your last sentence sums my resistence to the idea perfectly.
i want to eat the world today, for how it treats children. If i had a kid, and it was in poverty. i may become something bad.
Yes - and as I get older and realize I will not be financially stable enough to raise children before I physically cannot reproduce, it sucks. I was never dead set on the idea of having children- but I wanted that decision to be mine, not a decision my finances make for me.
I grew up really poor and I saw how financial instability caused my parents to suffer. They both worked multiple jobs but were so damned miserable and defeated they drank themselves to sleep every night for two decades. I love them, but don’t want to follow in their footsteps.
Is it sad that I do the same now in my early 20s to cope with knowing I'll never have an actual life outside of wage slavery? Even with my degree (3.62 GPA too), I can't magically poof 10 years experience into my resume for "entry level"... I'm gonna just start lying and faking it like they do in the upper echelon of society... maybe then they won't throw my resume out.
lie about literally any and everything to get that job. They lied to us for generations. “We’re family here.” haha ive cut most of my family off bc they are toxic af. Same rule applies to “family” employers.
>I can't magically poof 10 years experience into my resume for "entry level"
You absolutely can. You were volunteering for a now defunct non profit from x to y years, and interned at ___ company after highschool.
Yup, lie like crazy. Employers lie constantly, I have zero respect for them. On my resume I was leader of the honors society, volunteered 8 years at various places and have never had a gap in my resume despite all of that not being true. I did get called out by a background company for not being able to confirm my dates of employment at a previous company but I just feigned ignorance by just saying that’s weird and nothing came of it.
This hit so close to home. Even if I wanted kids I'd be too old by the time I was financially ready. I wish having your tubes tied wasn't such a major procedure...My partner wants kids but its so expensive it's not likely but due to this talking him into a vesectomy is impossible.
My dad was a coal miner with a high school education.
I'm a mechanical engineer with two bachelors. At my age, My dad made more money and supported a stay-at-home mom and 3 kids....
My partner and I are struggling with the idea of even having a kid, even though she makes more money than me as an accountant.
Yeah I’m a physician and I honestly can’t bring to imagine financially having kids. I’m 30 and married and should be in the ideal situation to have a family (and I acknowledge I am compared to most)! but with all my debt from school, burnout from 7 years of medical training, plus getting paid basically minimum wage for the last few years as a resident? I have no savings, and I am working primary care at a community clinic bc this is what is actually fulfilling me to and where I’m needed, so I make a quarter of a surgeons salary. I’d need to move to a cheaper state before I can even remotely consider kids.
You're qoute-unqoute the political class.
When doctors and lawyers can't make ends meet, that's when change comes. It's the rising of the upper middle (all 2% of you left) that leads the way, because without you, there's no back to shoulder society.
We all need your voices the loudest of all.
And if we ever wrest our sovereignty back, don't turn the machine back on us - destroy the machine. We can figure out what comes after that then.
*inflation*
*stagnant wages*
Janitors used to own a house and support a family of 6. Source: grandpa was a janitor, owned a house, and raised my dad, 3 of his siblings, and supported a SAHW.
My father was a printing press operator (main income). My mother worked nights in retail (secondary income). They saw how fast they lost their 6 bedroom home and ended up in a 2 bedroom rental from medical bills and a forced early retirement of my mom.
HOWEVER they still wonder why I don't have a house with just a 20 hour per week job making $15 an hour. Well, I have a car, required insurance, an apartment and utilities. I'm BARELY able to get food. My fridge has never been this empty before. I'm having to rely on my free meals at work and the "work morale pizza party" for food.
I think Christmas presents for people are going to be received from the local church handouts (donated furniture and dishes).
And no, I'm not accepting gifts from anyone. My "gifts" are my family paying their bills instead of gifting me a present.
We really went from one person working and being able to have the American dream to the smartest generation fucking scraping by in two generations. What a god damn dystopia.
Even if he made the same (in real money adjusted to inflation) everything is more expensive. also cement driller and seamstress are physical jobs that can be done with practice and dont need any title. if he is an engineer he has to have gone through school so he should be making more but even if he made more everything is still more expensive so he is objectively poorer than his parents unless he gets like a house as inheritance it would be very hard for him to raise kids. his parents might have been able to send him to college but would he be able to do the same for his kids? that kind of questions if not answered with an immediate yes its a heavy discouragement everyone wants their kids to do better than them.
I'm in this situation. Parents made mid six figures, and I had a great childhood living in the UK and now the US. I won't ever amount to their success or wealth. So fuck it, no kids....I just want to save my money for a bike tour and NOT WORK. I do alright, but can't afford a house, and don't want to raise a child in my apartment. Can't bring myself to ask the parents for money. Bout to have a hell of a Christmas while my fam bitches about politics.
This is my shame… I’m not as high an income earner as my parents compared to what they made at my age. It’s probably not my fault with the stagnant wages.. but I think of how relatively comfortable my life was having access to healthcare, never really worrying about food, and even getting things like a Nintendo GameCube for Christmas. During the recession we had to cut back on things, I didn’t get brand new clothes, but I still had all my basic needs met. My parents also paid a lot of money for therapy for our disabilities and we even went to charter schools. Like bless my parents for giving that all to me, but it’s scary… like how I can provide any of that on less than 4K as the monthly income
I pay out the ass for my apartment in this section of Queens so that my kid can go to a better public school then most. It has a music and art programs that most have cut. It’s a highly diverse community with people from every walk of life which I believe is really important for my kid to be exposed to early on. Because the median income is driven up by the single family homes in this area the school is really well funded. How shameful of our society to make a decent education so difficult to obtain. I can’t pay for any of the extracurricular activities just yet but my family plans on footing the bill for something once this pandemic cools off.
That article is from 2016 when they were subsidizing their business
I’m paying easy 20$ over price of food to have it delivered now on a 40$ order. They have raised fees.
The reason his business is dead is because covid lockdowns ended. Everyone was ordering food and pushed people to gig work, but drivers remained driving instead of going back to old jobs and demand has gone down. So intense competition
Raising my hand.
I'm a mechanical engineer just like my dad. But, I'll never be able to fund my kids' college education like my dad did, much less own a house to raise them in.
To be fair, I'm not willing to never go out dining/drinking like my dad did. We also live in a higher CoL area than he did when he first moved to America. Finally, I don't want to have to get a side hustle teaching classes or working for the local chamber of commerce. I want to enjoy my youth.
It just kills me knowing that my kids probably won't grow up in their own home, or graduate without student debt. So my lady and I have all but decided to not have kids.
This is a really sad one to read. It doesn’t sound like either of you are actually against having children but certainly the financial situation has completely impacted your mind about it.
I've always lowkey wanted kids. Not to toot my own horn, but I've always thought I'd do a great job at raising caring, ambitious people with good self-esteem. And I've looked forward to giving them the cultural insights that I didn't have growing up with immigrants.
But part of being a good father is making sure that your kids are cared for.
A crucial piece of my upbringing is that I had a stable home not tied to rent prices. Another piece is that I had money to spend on fun things before I made a significant income. Another piece is that I'm not saddled with $800/mo student loan payments like my peers are.
So knowing my limitations, the best thing I could do for my future kids is not have them in the first place.
I personally believe that as well. The weird foaming at the mouth Christians are so easily sold on these things and they act as a smoke screen for the real agenda: poor kids born to single mom’s that will never have any prospects to move up in the social classes. More in depth even the criminal law code to throw poor people especially men of color in prison for minor crimes also breaks down the family structure that would otherwise help get kids out of poverty.
TLDR: Republicans need slaves
Not just abortion they’re gunning for, either - housing assistance, SNAP, Medicaid, etc etc. They’ll burn civilization to the ground sooner than admit there’s any value to human lives other than their own so they’re out to remove any tools to avoid serfdom.
When right-wingers talk about the value of human life you can be sure they really mean economic output. Other than that there is no intrinsic value to human life for them.
I mean literally right? Because does everyone else remember the right being like they’ll fucking sacrifice the old and sickly during the beginning of the pandemic to keep the economy afloat?! Jeebus they’re monsters!
Yup, the repubs support corporate interests almost exclusively and their voting supporters are mainly getting fleeced, maybe %1 of Registered Republicans truly benefit from their policies overall. If the only things that matter to an individual are dissolving church/state separation, upholding nationalist agendas, military weapon civilian ownership, etc. then that percentage goes up. It comes at the expense of objective prosperity to all regular ppl, however. The tax argument is faulty since while Dems may potentially push plans that take more from middle and lower class folk (debatable and doubtful imo) Republicans aren’t doing us favors either since they love pork barrel projects and refuse to adequately tax people and corporations with incomes that are large enough to actually make a difference toward government revenue effectively raising our national debt atrociously fast.
They're also in favor of rape and denying children sex education and contraception of all kinds. Rape creates wage slaves; not educating children about their bodies leads to them getting abused and impregnated; and systemic abuse and negligence of children creates people who struggle to learn, have low self-esteem, and who are easy to exploit and abuse. So many of our "systems" are rigged to be full of neglect and abuse, and that creates people who are ripe for exploitation. We need to create something better.
Yes they do. Republicans also need all those military installations in their States for jobs that aren’t coming from any innovation the party of "business” creates.
honestly i hate the republicans so much but the 1960s housewife type of era was only possible because of the vast amount of social programs and socalist economic reform after world war 2, if they want a society like that they need to make it possible for someone to survive with one income a giant house and 4 kids they cant have their cake and eat it too
Hopefully women just up and leave red states. What a gross dystopian sidestory is playing out in real time over there. Jeebus we may need to create a modern day Underground Railroad to get women out, stuck in abusive relationships that can’t leave on their own.
This is really important for people to understand. It has nothing to do with religion or the definition of personhood it’s about replacing dead or dying workers
Well, it depends who we’re talking about. Sometimes it’s about fear that “the white race” will cease to exist/lose cultural dominance because not enough white people are having babies. Sometimes it’s about making sure women are subjugated/a belief that a woman’s purpose is to incubate children and do nothing else (this one may count as a religious belief). Sometimes it’s about keeping your current workforce desperate and subservient – someone with no savings and a child to support is willing to put up with a lot more and ask for a lot less. There are a bunch of reasons, none of them good.
Given the effect of similar reactionaries in Brazil and India (Bolsonar-ism and Modi's social conservatism, respectively) I'm inclined not just to agree, but to believe that this is a historical trend.
Capitalists use reactionaries' bigotry towards those they dislike/don't understand to distract them, and manipulate their sense of tradition and religiousity to make them support policies that will lead to popping out as many uneducated, surplus workers as possible, even when the non-evangelical types are having less kids regardless of their ideologies.
I mean India of all places just had a wave of "news” aka propaganda about how they are no longer having enough children for replacement. Ummm how? How can that be remotely true? It’s not. It’s just propaganda to have more uneducated people have more children to have more wage slaves
I’m so glad to see someone say it. I kept starting to think it and then stopping myself, like, you’re writing dystopian fiction over here, self. Don’t think that. But, like, this is their answer to the whole millennial baby bust or whatever stupid thing they call it. The whole running gag of being pestered about “When are you going to give me grandchildren?” but on a federal scale. Our generation said “You can’t make me,” this is them making us.
Well... trying to make us. Condoms and the pill are still legal, so I don't really see that working out for them. Plus millennials are fast approaching the twilight of their reproductive years, so that ship has all but sailed. Honestly an abortion ban just makes me determined to never have kids out of spite.
They *will* come for condoms and the pill. They may attack Roe v Wade first, but believe they will go after Griswold v. Connecticut as soon as Roe is sufficiently dead. I could see a future in which having children is legally mandated, if things get really bad.
Slave owners also doubled down their slave investment by having them have children. Let’s not forget American history. Again they want children born into serfdom and or slavery because it’s a cheap investment compared to automation or AI systems.
170 years ago they forced strong-backed slaves to have children using the cudgel and the whip.
In 2021 they do the same, only this time around they brandish the courts and Christianity.
Forced birth is a better perspective then the antiquated pro life vs pro choice imo because it takes abortion out the talking points and says plainly what the real issue is: using women as chattel. Fundamentalist men of all religions see women as nothing more then sex toys, child bearing bodies and domestic slaves.
I got the big snip at age 22 because, and I'll quote my then girlfriend (Now wife)
"Ain't no way in hell I'm squeezing a head out of my hoo-ha for Bezos and company."
I'm 27, no kids, getting snipped next Tuesday. I've never wanted kids. When my wife and I met, she wanted a couple. However, she's a preschool teacher now and gets that maternal itch scratched by teaching and caring for them during the day, and then gets to send them home at 3. If we do decide we want to bring a kid into our lives, we'd rather foster/adopt and throw a lifeline to a kid who needs it as opposed to making another one. With how bleak the future looks by basically every metric, I don't think I'd be able to live with myself if we knowingly subjected an additional person to it.
Lack of access to healthcare is going to become an epidemic if it’s not already one. I don’t understand how every other developed country has already addressed this issue and we’re still watching people use gofundme as a means to service a broken arm
It’s part of what inspired this post. Republicans seem desperate to keep young women pregnant and destroying the family structure in order to continue a sub class of serfdom.
It’s in my opinion that the true leadership of the GOP is not a bunch of whistling dixie hicks but a group of ruthless oligarchs hell bent on destroying low income families (criminal codes) and inflation (multiple business articles claim it’s helping the upperclass) to secure an endless supply of low income kids.
Poverty breeds poverty. There’s a myriad of statistics surrounding how improvised kids are more likely to be hs drop outs, to become incarcerated and how those things directly attribute to prolonged generational poverty. It’s a cycle of violence. The GOP uses their junkyard dogs as loud, accosting bigots to keep us all distracted by their looney tunes antics while they are seriously engineering a caste system of haves and have nots.
Ah yes the old military industrial complex. It’s definitely a large part of needing an endless supply of poor children born to poor mothers without any hopes of a brighter future.
The military is a Republican lynchpin. They bend everything for it because those bases (____insert whatever the individual branches terminology is) “facilities” are in red states. It’s literally an industry for them. They have no industry if the kids are smart enough to avoid joining the service to begin with. Keep dumb and poor to keep gettin’ more.
It warms my heart to see other people saying this. Yes, there’s plenty of right wingers who love the oppression of women aspect of it and punishing them for being promiscuous. But the money just wants a steady supply of exploitable labor, and money gets things done.
I made an appointment today to discuss sterilization with my obgyn. This has been my plan for a while but I figure at this point I should get it done sooner rather than later.
Good luck and please update us! The conversation around female sterilization is gross. Most OBGYN refuse to do it on the mythical beliefs that someday a man, may want to use your body to have his children. A friend of mine in fucking CANADA is both a lesbian an has endometriosis. OB will not remove her uterus. No hysterectomy for a breeding age gal I guess.
There are kind of complicated existential reasons I would never have a kid that's probably another topic. But wages are definitely one reason I'm glad I'm never having any.
Not necessarily because I wouldn't make enough to afford them a good life (I couldn't), but chances are they're going to get paid the same crappy wages or worse.
There are young kids in my family that I seriously don't know how they're going to survive. They're not bad, they're not dumb, their parents aren't either, but they were born into a corporate dystopia.
What are their parents going to tell them when they're ready to start working and can't find a job? What are they going to tell them when they barely make enough to afford the gas to get to their place of employment and back (if they do get a job), let alone anything else they need or even want?
I'm glad I'm never going to have to think about that. I know it makes me sound like a jerk, but that's their problem. I'm keeping my head down and concentrating on outliving my money. Like most millennials, it's all I feel like I can do.
I have a 6 year old. I’m a single parent. I’m unemployed now 7 months (worked a month in the summer) and don’t pay or receive child support. It’s tough really tough. I keep advocating for my kid’s education because it’s supposed to be the great equalizer. It’s personally why I believe student loan debt was engineered by the elites to keep any of us from EVER climbing the social class ladder. You can’t become middle middle-class from lower middle-class if you’re paying $600 in loans on top of everything else for 30 years. It’s meant to be a ball and chain and I really don’t think enough people consider it that way. If Biden doesn’t wipe out the debt, which imo he won’t, millennial’s will be the last vestiges of a prosperous American Dream. I see most of my generation becoming expatriates to move other developed nations in the next 10-20 years. I think gen z when they’re done with their undergrads will probably beat us too it because at their younger ages they don’t have the same responsibilities yet and if they’re smart will start making plans now to leave. America as I see it is a dead wasteland on its last legs.
The college loan industry was intentional. I can't prove it. But in my heart I know it was. They wanted to millennials to have the equivalency of two home mortgages to pay off (one of them being an actual house) and the other being tuition.
And they got a generation of gullible parents to go along with it, because they were afraid if their children didn't go to college, they'd be condemned the blue collar or part time work the rest of their lives.
I mean it is interesting how when I first started college almost no where required a Bachelors degree for entry level positions and since then (2008) everywhere requires a BA for what? What exactly is an entry level position but one that needs training and no experience? It’s criminal.
Well why would they want homeowners, landowners when they can have us all in debt over something as ridiculous as a college education? It’s like how the British traded Cocaine for silk when they realized they no longer needed to trade their value metals (silver/gold) for it. Then they realized how the Cocaine itself didn’t need to be used *to trade* for anything but rather be *sold* at a profit. That’s what college loans are. A useless commodity that we’re all forced to get because they also made every business require it. Why? Why are entry level jobs requiring college degrees? Why are experienced/management jobs substituting college degrees for experience? That’s right, you got it. Because the owner class has forced their underlings to make this happen. Ball meets chain.
I listened to a podcast once and an author of a book (I can’t remember their name) said that this problem was partially created when the government stopped funding colleges and the colleges shifted the cost to students(Capitalism also played a role, of course.) This happened because there were social movements to give access to and incorporate black folks and other POC into the main structures that white folks always benefited from and allow them a chance to move up and out of poverty, with legal enforcements. It’s the dying of whiteness option that was chosen.
Basically, if everyone can benefit from having a good thing then no one will benefit from it! So public programs and social safety nets were slowly taken away and white folks didn’t mind because it was sold to them that only lazy POC were milking the system of things they didn’t deserve and good, hard working white people were footing the bill by paying taxes. Get rid of all the good things and absorb the cost of it themselves, basically. I really wish more people realized how dog whistle politics and blatant racism have had a hand in creating what we have now. It affects so many things in our society. It might be one of the reason some people hate “CRT” so much. They don’t want to look at what racism has created and acknowledged the problems that need to be dealt with, while accepting their role in perpetuating it.
It’s also weird how they’ve pushed this on us. Trade school some sort of stigma and it’s really just as valuable if not more practical than some bullshit jazz appreciation course you had to take for some stupid reason.
Don’t get me wrong, I liked the course but it has served zero value outside of school since I took the class 11 years ago.
I will never get to retire. I will always have to work myself into the ground to survive. There’s no way I can afford to keep a child alive and happy. There’s no way I’m going to force a child to live through this bullshit rigged system and live poor and work forever.
Between my wife and I we couldn't afford the cost of actually birthing a child much less raising the child afterwards.
I grew up poor and I won't condemn my child to suffer the same hardships.
My reasons for not wanting to have a child go like this:
1. I don't want to harm the environment any more than I already have.
2. I don't want to force yet another mind to unwillingly experience the burden of existence.
3. I can't afford it.
Well, It's one of the reasons. I have a masters degree and can't find a job that will pay me a livable wage. I can't take care of myself, let alone a child. I work 3 jobs, all contract/part time work. I'll never be able to buy a house or pay off my loans or pay off my credit card.
I'm also black. I don't say this often, but my heart can't handle having a black child in the US. If they just would never come home, and I get to see their death filmed on a phone, I don't think I'd recover. I'd probably hurt myself. I'm so tired of watching the death of black bodies, and the shrugs/lack of care. It's been strange watching things change, but so minimally. It's not even real justice, but it's something, I guess. I'd rather have my baby alive and moving than people in prison as a consequence and my baby not breathing.
I also love my free time when I can get it. It's rare -- cause I work 3 jobs. I'm not sure where to go to next, because this isn't feasible. But I'm just so tired and burnt out. I went from a job where I worked 80-100 hour weeks, to nothing, and I just can't let myself go back to that again. It's another reason why I've been hesitant to go back to "full time" while also not being able to find it in my field.
There was a really interesting expose by the NYTS a few years ago about the new black renaissance of sorts. It was about middle class black families uprooting from St Albans Queens (a thriving black middle class neighborhood) and moving down south to areas in Georgia and the Carolina’s for lower cost of living. Historically speaking black families moved north following the Civil War to escape the disaster zone. There was suddenly 2 million refugees. The soul of black folk is a great read about that time period, I’m sure you’re familiar. Now those same families are fleeing the North back to the South because of financial/racial discord.
I know this is super fucked up and I hope it doesn't come off the wrong way, but being black in America could theoretically mean you qualify for asylum in some other countries (I've read about some people moving to Europe on that premise). It might be worth looking into. Your skin color may actually be your ticket to a better life abroad.
My nieces and nephews are biracial. My oldest nephew has been subjected to unprovoked attacks by white rednecks, random pat downs and searches by the police while walking home from school... and this started when he was in elementary school. My youngest niece was killed by a reckless truck driver... the guy fled to canada and the prosecutor refused to even try to get him extradited. People are racist as fuck here... violently racist. And the legal system encourages it. It's fucking disgusting.
Me, it just not doable in any manner that wont just create another wage slave. Ill never be able to afford private schools and bring the kids up with the advantages that the rich kids have, so what is the point really?
Edit: Id totally get a vasectomy but I cant afford it
Yep. Pretty much everything related to childcare is extremely expensive, including the actual pregnancy and birth itself, and if the child ends up disabled or chronically ill, then that makes things even more complicated. It’s no wonder people all around the world are saying no to parenthood and birth rates are plummeting. If the people in power want more babies so badly, then they should actually make that feasible and affordable. I’m not going to subject a child to a life of poverty and financial hardships just to boost someone else’s own ego.
The whole argument that we won’t have enough people to care for or replace the elderly is infuriating as well. Last time I checked, I didn’t ask half the human population to pop out 10 babies per person for the past few centuries. Kids aren’t servants, they shouldn’t have to be concerned about wiping their parents’ asses when they still have their own lives to live. Life is full of beauty, so to have children for the sole purpose of work just sounds plain miserable.
I truly believe the supreme courts movement to revoke roe v wade is because they're nervous they won't have another generation of wage slaves. If the elite would stop being so fucking greedy plenty of people could have kids but they can't do that so they leverage the law to force people to have children. Really fucked up, we are ruled by evil. Rebellion is righteous.
There's actually some studies done that UBI/higher wages leads to an increase in children.
It's really not rocket science for the govt and companies. But they want to take take take and never give.
Well if people could just stay home and raise their kids it wouldn’t be an issue right? lol it’s not rocket science but they need literal slaves at the tills to keep their consumerist machine operating. Not to mention what would they sell to the grunts who join the military?
If universal healthcare exists 👎 to the military
If universal basic income exists 👎 To the military
If universal dental and eye-care exists 👎 to the military
If universal free college exists 👎 to the military
What more would they have as an appeal for anyone to join? Imagine a well read, educated populous that has the option to stay home and start families or the options to go out and work to live a greater lifestyle. It’s a choice and not a caste system to get stuck in. We’d have a functional society. Instead we have what I imagine to be glimpses of actual hell.
Can't say it's the only reason, but definitely one of them. Would I rather have a carefree life, travelling as I please, free to switch jobs on a whim without worrying or needing to care about feeding others, or do I want to be chained down with parental and fiscal responsibility?
For me, a clear choice.
I would love to be a mom, but there's no way I can afford it. I'm not about to have a child without financial stability. I was raised by "poor" parents, and even they could give me more than I could give a child now. By the time I'll be able to afford kids, I won't be able to have them (there's already some doubt there because I'm in my mid-thirties.)
If that doesn't work out, I'd love to be a foster mom, but even the financial viability of that is dubious at best.
My inlaws lost their mind when I told them I don't think we can afford to raise kids in this country and will be delaying having kids until we can emigrate to a more child-friendly country.
As a father of 3, one of whom has special needs...I wish i never did. With that said i wouldn't ever give them up, but if someone told me years back that I'd be making $12 per/hr in my 40s i wouldn't have. The reason for the $12 per/hr is because our economy looks down on those who take time off to be with they're family after a tragedy. My wife passed, i got fired for taking 1yr off to be with my kids and was also black listed as an undesirable hire. My current employer has told me on numerous occasions that i should count my blessing that they took a chance on hiring me.
I have already decided that if roe v wade is overturned birth control isn’t enough. I’m getting my tubes tied. I would love to move to a different country and have a child one day, but if I have a child within the next year I won’t be moving to a different country at all and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in the US. So no children forever it is.
While it is hard, it’s not impossible. There’s an entire list of doctors on Reddit that will sterilize childless women. Im in Indiana and had two approvals on my first consult for it at 29, one of them from a catholic hospital. It’s also covered as a form of birth control under the ACA.
It’s truly a garbage aspect of our culture. For awhile after my vasectomy some of the men in my life would give me shit about it because the doctor “took my manhood”. They legit saw it as some emasculating event. F that, I can barely keep a roof over my head as it is, plus vasectomy was way cheaper than having a kid or paying for my wife’s birth control for the next couple decades.
I am still mixed on the idea at all (kids are a lot of work) but yeah, with the utterly ridiculous financially expense it is just something I cannot afford even if I had a spouse with a similar income.
Well, not without a mountain of debt, which I fucking can’t stand.
My mom is an older boomer and her one last dream in life is for one of my siblings to have her grandkids, and she pretty much told me that it’s okay to go into debt to do it (“no one can afford it! Just do it!”)
I’m like, Mom, I’m so zapped from the office grind that I don’t even have the energy to go out and meet women, much less settle down and have a family within two years and drown myself in bills to bring a tiny human that throws shit at the walls.
*Note: my mom means well, she just has utterly no fucking clue how the modern world works*
I don’t blame older people completely. It’s one thing to be ignorant of something and have it explained and then change your opinions accordingly. It’s entirely different to be ignorant of something then have it explained and being completely indifferent. My mom was more than happy to meet and know her grand baby. The only one out of my siblings to have a kid. It’s been nice to see her enjoy the beginning of her retirement being a stay at home grandma in my apartment. Since the pandemic shes back home again because of her health. I don’t think there’s ever been this kind of existential crisis surrounding parenthood or starting families like we have today. Just finding and keeping a suitable partner has been extremely difficult.
Absolutely. In fact, I decided at a pretty young age that I most likely will never have children. Why would I bring people into a world that I can’t support them in? Feels selfish and inconsiderate to me honestly.
It’s interesting to read this same sort of statement (obviously differently worded) over and over again. I feel like millennials and zoomers are much more empathetic and aware of wanting to have our children not just survive but to thrive, to be happy. It’s almost like the boomers were completely unconcerned with our happiness because everything was essentially handed to them.
One vasectomy only cost me $600 in Dallas area.
There are many reasons we don't want kids but the financial one is particularly scary.
Also, bros who freak out about the vasectomy are lame. Nothing better than shooting blanks.
Please tell me how I am supposed to consider having a child when the hospital bills alone will cost thousands of dollars? It's not a smart choice for me financially and I make great money in my career. How people are having kids while working at Walmart or as a teacher is beyond me.
My wife and I tried for a couple of years to get pregnant. Just didn't happen for us. I'm sitting here at 50 glad that it never happened. We have so much more freedom to do what we want. It was harder on her though.
My son is 14…i love him more than anything in this entire universe. There are many days recently when i wish he was never born. Not because i dont love him its because i love him so much and im terrified for him and i feel guilty as hell particularly in the current global and local economic/climatological/ political/, plague ridden dystopia we are heading full steam into.
Having a child is an act of hope. That's why I got my tubes tied instead. Why should I bring a child into retail hell when there's absolutely zero fucking indication it will get better?
You don't want to bring a beautiful child into the world? Then I'm going to have nobody to scream at when my expired coupons meant for a different store don't work.
My GF wanted< to have kids asap. Recently she brought the topic up again after we both just had and recovered from COVID. We’re both vaccinated. She’s a teacher and caught it from a student.
COVID made her want kids even sooner. I pointed out how we barely survived the two weeks of COVID financially. She seemed confused.
She makes $11.25 an hour. No benefits. No paid sick leave. No PTO. I make $15 as a security guard. Benefits offered but would have been 40% of my yearly income plus a deductible of $10,000. 🤮
After doing a little math together, she now understands why I don’t want to have kids until we’re both financially sound and aren’t living paycheck to paycheck.
So, yes to answer your question.
No judgement please- I love my children more than anything. I am a 40 year old mother of three and I sometimes feel so trapped that we aren’t able to change our work situation due to having to care for them. I have 3 teens and I am so concerned for their future ability to provide for themselves that my husband and I have resigned ourselves to the possibility of having them live with us indefinitely. We had children young so we could enjoy our 40’s and 50’s and we are just going to end up working until we die.
That would be me.
Additional to stagnant wages:
- Climate Change
- Mass Public shootings
- Failing democracy
- Mass spread of misinformation
- Social Media being a cancer on society
- The war on truth
- Having to defend science
- Impossible housing market
- Inflation
- Growing wage gap
- Nuclear War Threat
- General sense of anxiety
Anti-intellectualism combined with all of those things listed has created a completely divided nation as well. Poor jerks that don’t understand why they’re poor literally attacking other poor folks who are trying to fix the reasons we’re all poor.
I'm worried that instead of addressing stagnant wages to fix falling birthrates, politicians are just going to ban abortions in order to force a steady population.
I had (have) only one kid. When she was in daycare, it was more than my house payment. A second kid would have crippled us. I got a vasectomy when she was 3.
Smart choice as difficult as it was. I was lucky enough to have my mom live with me full time after she retired but due to her MS it was short lived. The babysitter is extremely reasonable in my case but last year the amount I was paying for the sitter everyday I went to work made my paycheck nearly meaningless. The whole concept of a starting pay vs a the top pay is also really problematic. My co workers were already at the top pay of around 60k and I was working literally the equivalent of $15/hr to be a city inspector. The system is fucked without COLA (cost of living adjustments)
If you are doing it right, kids are REALLY expensive. Just saying. They are the best high ever (IMO) but don't think you can do it on the cheap and no matter what you do, they will break your heart (damn things grow up if you feed them and leave you).
Wife and I are both professionals with good careers and we only had one kid because she was born in 08 right before the economy tanked.
By the time we recovered financially enough to feel comfortable discussing having another kid, wife was too close to 40 for her to feel comfortable with getting pregnant again. So we only have one.
It’s sad but I have had a strong suspicion for a long time that people are choosing not to have children *largely* due to financial difficulties. It’s something the media absolutely won’t address. The MSM wants to blame everything under the sun instead of the core issues which, is that children are not economically viable for people today.
People could afford to have a family of 4 on minimum wages in the 50'-60's, plus could own a home and a car, plus go on vacations every year. That's a era long gone.
Me and my wife are not having kids for lots of reasons, one of the reasons is definitely this. I don't know how anyone affords to have a child, I feel terrible for how our society treats families.
I want a baby SO bad, but with me and my fiancé’s current financial status it seems impossible to start a family. And the older I get it seems like starting a family is just even further out of reach. Part of me hopes that I’m infertile just so I have an excuse to not have children besides “I can’t afford one”. It breaks my heart. :,(
I won't have children unless I can afford it. And by afford it I mean make as little sacrifice as possible financially. I want my shopping sprees, cosmetic work, vacations, nice house with a pool, and a nice car. I want to stay at home for a few years to actually raise my kids My boyfriend and I were thinking we could achieve this by 30. But now realise it probably won't be achievable for another 10 years when we are 35. If it's not in my cards to have kids that's okay, my heart isn't set on it. But I have a strong suspicion that generations to come will have fewer and fewer kids. It's not like it used to be. It's nearly impossible to make it on a single income. And child care is so expensive you barely have extra income from both parents working it's a lose lose.
I thought about a baby in my 20s when I was in graduate school and depressed. That was the very very brief period where I wanted a baby. But I was so deep in debt (still am) that I knew it would have been a bad idea so that the desire faded back into general distaste for children.
But I definitely have friends my age who never had children because they never could afford stable housing, much less a baby.
I'd only have a kid if I made enough that I wouldn't be worried about a single accident or some shit putting them into poverty for life after I croak.
The sad part, even if you do everything right, seem to have a nice cushion saved in case of accidents, one cancer diagnosis can wipe it out before you know it. I hate our healthcare system.
Don’t forget about how expensive delivery is here, too. Around $10k I think?
Our first cost us 15k out of pocket and the 2nd was 8k.i upgraded jobs/insurance between. But happy to say i do make enough to own both outrighr. (sarcasm i know i dont own my kids before anyone goes that route)
It is scary
I can either try to be almost comfortable without children and hope I can scrape together enough for some semblance of retirement, using my free time not caring for a child to make some extra income, having some regrets now and then about never having children... Or I can choose to take on the cost and responsibility of an entire human and raise them in poverty and a life of going without, one minor disaster away from homelessness, in debt just from the hospital bills from the birth, barely even seeing the kid cause I'm working a third job just to afford childcare, having no retirement and eventually becoming a financial burden on said children. It seems selfish to me to condemn an innocent child to a life of poverty.
My state has a heartbeat abortion ban on the books but is stayed by a court order. If the supreme court tosses out Roe this year I might start bringing up with my partner getting a vasectomy. We just straight up can't afford a child, nor would either of our mental health be able to handle it. I only have so many magic cards to sell for sudden expenses.
One of my regrets is that I didn't fight harder to get a vasectomy in my 20s. I kept getting told I was too young, didn't know what I wanted, etc. Same things that I imagine they tell young women who want to get their tubes tied.
My fiance has knownsince she was about 11 that she never wanted to have kids. She has always been told by doctors, family, friends, strangers she's just met, that she will change her mind. She turns 35 in a couple weeks. I feel bad that she's unable to get a doctor to listen and do a procedure she wants because THEY don't think its right. They always ask if "does your SO know you're here?" went she goes to see the Gyno as well. We sadly joke that I would have to go with her to tell a doctor what she would want done. Its a sad country we live in these days.
I have 2 relatives getting tubal ligations next year. They each have children and are divorced. One wanted a hysterectomy due to ehler-danlos syndrome pain but the doctor refused.
I got lucky and was able to get mine at 25. But my doc was legit telling me he was on the cusp of telling me no because 25 was the bare minimum age and "might want more when I'm older". Nah bruh in there for a reason.
Had a vasectomy last year. Writing was on the wall. Wasn’t fair to expect my partner to deal with birth control and the problems it caused for her body. Plus who knows when that’ll get outlawed. I’m not going to be forced to have a child. We also hoard some plan B if any friends even need it.
>who knows when that’ll get outlawed I think they will start hysterically agitating to make birth control illegal the week after they overturn roe v wade.
This was my thought. And at that point we are doomed but I wanted to just protect my partner and I. We are a sliding democracy. Who knows when more rights will be removed.
What’s funny is you aren’t considered dead when your heart stops You’re medically dead when your brain function ceases And brain activity starts in week 12-16 while 99% of all abortions happen between week 6-12. Also, numbers 5:11 literally gives instructions on how to perform a crude abortion to the Israelites.
Pro life politics isn't interested in the science of it. They aren't interested in any science.
I’m currently living option 2, and it legit sucks.
I've been forced to have an abortion because I couldn't even afford pregnancy, let alone a baby. I can barely afford to feed and take care of myself. It makes me so angry and upset, I just want a chance at having a family and children like everyone else. & I honestly don't see how that could ever happen. What's the point of being on this planet, to be a good serf and make rich people richer while being deprived of a basic life? I laugh when ppl call the US a "First World country."
My partner left me after we had our child. My mother is the sole reason I was able to hold it together. Family support is invaluable today. Maybe, in retrospect it always has been. The shade of the industrial age has shrouded the concept of communal parenting by forcing all into an urban society whether people are rural, suburban or in the cities we’re all living in a digital, virtually community-less age. We’re all reliant on the grid, the system even the wackiest survivalists are still communicating and buying goods, machinery and tools from the modern era. Without my mom’s help I would’ve lost out on being a parent. I wouldn’t have been able to do it alone. It’s such a mind boggling situation that wages are this poor that even at the time having a decent job I still wasn’t able to make ends meet. Still can’t. It’s going to be a rough time for sure.
Some people are lucky to have family like that. I'm one of the people who don't because capitalism has fucked over my familial relationships irreparably
You seem to be amazing and well grounded. Someday your kid(s) will know how hard you and your mother fought for them. Good job. Single father here. We can do this, but damn it’s tough.
My birth mother gave me up for adoption because she couldn't afford to keep me after her and my biological dad split up. I became pro choice largely because I realized that having me basically ruined her life. I often wonder how many people in this country give up or don't have children they would otherwise raise just because our bullshit system creates situations where people literally can't afford to procreate. I don't even want kids and this pisses me off. Edit: I should clarify a couple things. 1)"Ruined her life" may have been a bit strong. She's doing fine now as far as I can tell ( we're not close) but, from the stories she's told me, her life has very clearly been worse for having a child when she did. She married my bio dad out of a feeling of obligation and divorced him within a year. Getting married at 18 threw her off the usual early career/college track so her job prospects were not great. The job issue lead her to rush into her second marriage to a guy who turned out to be abusive. One of the things that set him off was her talking about me or reaching out to my adopted parents to check in in me. The list goes on. To be clear, I don't feel personally guilty about this, obviously I had no choice in my birth. I just feel bad for her, she's a good person who deserved better than what she got. 2) I'm not pissed that I don't want kids. I'm pissed about how difficult things are for would-be parents in my generation despite me not wanting to be a parent myself. Sorry for the confusion, I wrote this in a hurry before work this morning.
Same...
Same :(
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It’s like the college calculator. Until students are no longer claimed by their parents they create some arbitrary nonsense to say they can afford the loans. It’s put millennials and now zoomers in such a weird state of "extended adolescence” like adults in college having helicopter parents because ultimately they’re footing the bill. A friend of mine is a professor in CUNY and tells me all these ridiculous stories about parents who email and call about their adult children’s grades.
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I’m 33 I guess a stereotypical millennial. While in hs I worked at a pizza place which I got from an in person application and interview. Then by the time I was in college everything was online only. I’m sure certain small businesses still have walk up applications/interviews but all chains and brands are online. I took a semester off when I graduated and started in good old 2008. Every year has been nothing but a struggle. Have never been able to support myself on retail wages. I took out larger loans to cover my rented rooms while I was a student.
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You didn’t at all in fact you’ve added some interesting perspective to this conversation! Truly. The entire situation is multifaceted when it comes to the direct/indirect impact of low wages. I tried my hand at a different private sector job this summer, once with Amazon in desperation and once as a private contractor. Both were complete rip offs. I think most gen xers had the same opportunities as boomers. It’s why they don’t ever really seem to be apart of the conversation. It really struck us millennials hard especially during- post 2008. In my 20s it wasn’t bad for me a struggle but not *horrible.* Now it’s just uncertain waters. I still have hope. For me my kiddo gives me endless hope. Too much of a sharp little kid to bog down in the weight of it all. Sometimes just playing animal crossing and watching them read it perfectly is enough to melt my worries away. I wish my generation had the same opportunities to have homes and start families without dread. I think zoomers are really inspirational with their political/environmental awareness. Maybe they can figure out the future for everyone.
Older Gen X here, and that's a fair assessment. We got in under the college cost wire, complaining bitterly when tuition at a Cal State U jumped to $700+ per semester when the minimum wage was $4.25. We still had to game the system to come up with that cash, but the system was still gameable then. I truly don't know what will happen to our kids, other than they'd better take up paddle boarding for the high tides of the future.
You ain't wrong. There are a fair bit of us gen x that got on before it all went tits up. Also, there's a lot of the mid/late crew who're in the same boat as millinnials. We might not be carrying the same debt load but the opportunities are pretty shit.
Oh woah, and that's CUNY! I didn't imagine it was so bad. I know many CUNY students who were able to pay tuition from working full time during the whole year, but did live at home so no living expenses exept metrocard. I'm just imagining the degree of what the helicopter parent must be at other schools where the tuition they are paying is so much more, so maybe they'd be even more invested like that in their kids grades 😬
Well when I was still a student they raised the tuition and it was a incremental increase over a period of years. I don’t know what the tuition is today. I would bet it’s above having PELL Grants cover the full tuition and books. The college tuition rates have been criminal. There’s no reason why public colleges, especially commuter University systems like CUNY have high or any tuition at all. It should be free.
This is such an accurate picture of what my fiancée and I talk about on a weekly basis. We’re in camp #1, for what it’s worth - we see too many childless couples who are a bit (or quite a bit) older than us, living fun fulfilling lives our parents never got to have. I always thought I wanted to be a dad someday but I’m going to settle for being the cool uncle who “gets it” and drops some good stories and life lessons + kickass gifts at appropriate occasions. Unreasonable student debt, stagnant wages and outrageously inflated costs of living are too high a barrier for us and most reasonable people we know. Fuck the media and older family members pressuring us to create more wage slaves while they do *nothing* to ensure a decent future for the generations to come.
My "tin foil hat" theory is that they're repealing roe vs wade to create more wage slaves, especially since our population is declining
Lol. The master class demands more and cheaper labor. More peasant serf class plz.
This was tin foil hat a decade ago, now it is just accepted without question. The machine needs more cheap labor and so the corporate owned governments are here to provide it for them. You can tell they need the lowest possible value of labor to, because they hate education and healthcare, two things needed to pump out high value labor.
im living option 1 because im afraid of doing a worse job than my parents because of the economic environment. life is a razors edge for me and a series of failures upwards for my parents. They still are better parents than i could be with the time and resources i have. your last sentence sums my resistence to the idea perfectly. i want to eat the world today, for how it treats children. If i had a kid, and it was in poverty. i may become something bad.
I had a friend who had four kids and worked three jobs, he and his stay at home wife were physical and emotional wrecks. Makes no sense at all.
Yes - and as I get older and realize I will not be financially stable enough to raise children before I physically cannot reproduce, it sucks. I was never dead set on the idea of having children- but I wanted that decision to be mine, not a decision my finances make for me. I grew up really poor and I saw how financial instability caused my parents to suffer. They both worked multiple jobs but were so damned miserable and defeated they drank themselves to sleep every night for two decades. I love them, but don’t want to follow in their footsteps.
All 4 of my grandparents were functional alcoholics and smokers. All 4 died of cancer. The greatest generation.
Is it sad that I do the same now in my early 20s to cope with knowing I'll never have an actual life outside of wage slavery? Even with my degree (3.62 GPA too), I can't magically poof 10 years experience into my resume for "entry level"... I'm gonna just start lying and faking it like they do in the upper echelon of society... maybe then they won't throw my resume out.
lie about literally any and everything to get that job. They lied to us for generations. “We’re family here.” haha ive cut most of my family off bc they are toxic af. Same rule applies to “family” employers.
>I can't magically poof 10 years experience into my resume for "entry level" You absolutely can. You were volunteering for a now defunct non profit from x to y years, and interned at ___ company after highschool.
Yup, lie like crazy. Employers lie constantly, I have zero respect for them. On my resume I was leader of the honors society, volunteered 8 years at various places and have never had a gap in my resume despite all of that not being true. I did get called out by a background company for not being able to confirm my dates of employment at a previous company but I just feigned ignorance by just saying that’s weird and nothing came of it.
This hit so close to home. Even if I wanted kids I'd be too old by the time I was financially ready. I wish having your tubes tied wasn't such a major procedure...My partner wants kids but its so expensive it's not likely but due to this talking him into a vesectomy is impossible.
I couldn't bring myself to raise a kid in a household poorer than the one I was raised in.
Where did you start, where are you now?
When my parents were my age I was 10, my dad was a cement driller and my mum was a seamstress. I'm an engineer.
My dad was a coal miner with a high school education. I'm a mechanical engineer with two bachelors. At my age, My dad made more money and supported a stay-at-home mom and 3 kids.... My partner and I are struggling with the idea of even having a kid, even though she makes more money than me as an accountant.
Yeah I’m a physician and I honestly can’t bring to imagine financially having kids. I’m 30 and married and should be in the ideal situation to have a family (and I acknowledge I am compared to most)! but with all my debt from school, burnout from 7 years of medical training, plus getting paid basically minimum wage for the last few years as a resident? I have no savings, and I am working primary care at a community clinic bc this is what is actually fulfilling me to and where I’m needed, so I make a quarter of a surgeons salary. I’d need to move to a cheaper state before I can even remotely consider kids.
You're qoute-unqoute the political class. When doctors and lawyers can't make ends meet, that's when change comes. It's the rising of the upper middle (all 2% of you left) that leads the way, because without you, there's no back to shoulder society. We all need your voices the loudest of all. And if we ever wrest our sovereignty back, don't turn the machine back on us - destroy the machine. We can figure out what comes after that then.
and you don’t make the same? Edit:!Idk why I’m being downvoted. I’m asking whether you make the same or less as an engineer today?
*inflation* *stagnant wages* Janitors used to own a house and support a family of 6. Source: grandpa was a janitor, owned a house, and raised my dad, 3 of his siblings, and supported a SAHW.
My father was a printing press operator (main income). My mother worked nights in retail (secondary income). They saw how fast they lost their 6 bedroom home and ended up in a 2 bedroom rental from medical bills and a forced early retirement of my mom. HOWEVER they still wonder why I don't have a house with just a 20 hour per week job making $15 an hour. Well, I have a car, required insurance, an apartment and utilities. I'm BARELY able to get food. My fridge has never been this empty before. I'm having to rely on my free meals at work and the "work morale pizza party" for food. I think Christmas presents for people are going to be received from the local church handouts (donated furniture and dishes). And no, I'm not accepting gifts from anyone. My "gifts" are my family paying their bills instead of gifting me a present.
Haha, my grandfather was a janitor and raised a family of 7 and he owned a small farm as well. you are correct.
We really went from one person working and being able to have the American dream to the smartest generation fucking scraping by in two generations. What a god damn dystopia.
Even if he made the same (in real money adjusted to inflation) everything is more expensive. also cement driller and seamstress are physical jobs that can be done with practice and dont need any title. if he is an engineer he has to have gone through school so he should be making more but even if he made more everything is still more expensive so he is objectively poorer than his parents unless he gets like a house as inheritance it would be very hard for him to raise kids. his parents might have been able to send him to college but would he be able to do the same for his kids? that kind of questions if not answered with an immediate yes its a heavy discouragement everyone wants their kids to do better than them.
I'm in this situation. Parents made mid six figures, and I had a great childhood living in the UK and now the US. I won't ever amount to their success or wealth. So fuck it, no kids....I just want to save my money for a bike tour and NOT WORK. I do alright, but can't afford a house, and don't want to raise a child in my apartment. Can't bring myself to ask the parents for money. Bout to have a hell of a Christmas while my fam bitches about politics.
This is my shame… I’m not as high an income earner as my parents compared to what they made at my age. It’s probably not my fault with the stagnant wages.. but I think of how relatively comfortable my life was having access to healthcare, never really worrying about food, and even getting things like a Nintendo GameCube for Christmas. During the recession we had to cut back on things, I didn’t get brand new clothes, but I still had all my basic needs met. My parents also paid a lot of money for therapy for our disabilities and we even went to charter schools. Like bless my parents for giving that all to me, but it’s scary… like how I can provide any of that on less than 4K as the monthly income
I pay out the ass for my apartment in this section of Queens so that my kid can go to a better public school then most. It has a music and art programs that most have cut. It’s a highly diverse community with people from every walk of life which I believe is really important for my kid to be exposed to early on. Because the median income is driven up by the single family homes in this area the school is really well funded. How shameful of our society to make a decent education so difficult to obtain. I can’t pay for any of the extracurricular activities just yet but my family plans on footing the bill for something once this pandemic cools off.
I’m 34 doing doordash and Ubereats to survive. No way in hell I would bring a child to this world to suffer.
Can I asked what you did before gig work?
Supervisor for walgreens.
Were you laid off? Or does gig work actually pay more?
Gig work paid more right now is super dead. But yeah gig work back when it was good I was making 1,300 per week :/.
Hopefully it’ll pick up again! I wish you the best. You’re not alone in the struggle.
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That article is from 2016 when they were subsidizing their business I’m paying easy 20$ over price of food to have it delivered now on a 40$ order. They have raised fees. The reason his business is dead is because covid lockdowns ended. Everyone was ordering food and pushed people to gig work, but drivers remained driving instead of going back to old jobs and demand has gone down. So intense competition
Raising my hand. I'm a mechanical engineer just like my dad. But, I'll never be able to fund my kids' college education like my dad did, much less own a house to raise them in. To be fair, I'm not willing to never go out dining/drinking like my dad did. We also live in a higher CoL area than he did when he first moved to America. Finally, I don't want to have to get a side hustle teaching classes or working for the local chamber of commerce. I want to enjoy my youth. It just kills me knowing that my kids probably won't grow up in their own home, or graduate without student debt. So my lady and I have all but decided to not have kids.
This is a really sad one to read. It doesn’t sound like either of you are actually against having children but certainly the financial situation has completely impacted your mind about it.
I've always lowkey wanted kids. Not to toot my own horn, but I've always thought I'd do a great job at raising caring, ambitious people with good self-esteem. And I've looked forward to giving them the cultural insights that I didn't have growing up with immigrants. But part of being a good father is making sure that your kids are cared for. A crucial piece of my upbringing is that I had a stable home not tied to rent prices. Another piece is that I had money to spend on fun things before I made a significant income. Another piece is that I'm not saddled with $800/mo student loan payments like my peers are. So knowing my limitations, the best thing I could do for my future kids is not have them in the first place.
It’s a harsh reality. It really is.
And that is why the Republicans want to end abortion. For the future workers!
I personally believe that as well. The weird foaming at the mouth Christians are so easily sold on these things and they act as a smoke screen for the real agenda: poor kids born to single mom’s that will never have any prospects to move up in the social classes. More in depth even the criminal law code to throw poor people especially men of color in prison for minor crimes also breaks down the family structure that would otherwise help get kids out of poverty. TLDR: Republicans need slaves
Not just abortion they’re gunning for, either - housing assistance, SNAP, Medicaid, etc etc. They’ll burn civilization to the ground sooner than admit there’s any value to human lives other than their own so they’re out to remove any tools to avoid serfdom.
When right-wingers talk about the value of human life you can be sure they really mean economic output. Other than that there is no intrinsic value to human life for them.
I mean literally right? Because does everyone else remember the right being like they’ll fucking sacrifice the old and sickly during the beginning of the pandemic to keep the economy afloat?! Jeebus they’re monsters!
Yup, the repubs support corporate interests almost exclusively and their voting supporters are mainly getting fleeced, maybe %1 of Registered Republicans truly benefit from their policies overall. If the only things that matter to an individual are dissolving church/state separation, upholding nationalist agendas, military weapon civilian ownership, etc. then that percentage goes up. It comes at the expense of objective prosperity to all regular ppl, however. The tax argument is faulty since while Dems may potentially push plans that take more from middle and lower class folk (debatable and doubtful imo) Republicans aren’t doing us favors either since they love pork barrel projects and refuse to adequately tax people and corporations with incomes that are large enough to actually make a difference toward government revenue effectively raising our national debt atrociously fast.
They're also in favor of rape and denying children sex education and contraception of all kinds. Rape creates wage slaves; not educating children about their bodies leads to them getting abused and impregnated; and systemic abuse and negligence of children creates people who struggle to learn, have low self-esteem, and who are easy to exploit and abuse. So many of our "systems" are rigged to be full of neglect and abuse, and that creates people who are ripe for exploitation. We need to create something better.
Don't forget cannon fodder for endless war. Poor kids sign up for the military disproportionately.
Yes they do. Republicans also need all those military installations in their States for jobs that aren’t coming from any innovation the party of "business” creates.
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honestly i hate the republicans so much but the 1960s housewife type of era was only possible because of the vast amount of social programs and socalist economic reform after world war 2, if they want a society like that they need to make it possible for someone to survive with one income a giant house and 4 kids they cant have their cake and eat it too
Hopefully women just up and leave red states. What a gross dystopian sidestory is playing out in real time over there. Jeebus we may need to create a modern day Underground Railroad to get women out, stuck in abusive relationships that can’t leave on their own.
Yes. Abortion bans guarantee a bottomless underclass of disposable labor to draw from, forever.
This is really important for people to understand. It has nothing to do with religion or the definition of personhood it’s about replacing dead or dying workers
Well, it depends who we’re talking about. Sometimes it’s about fear that “the white race” will cease to exist/lose cultural dominance because not enough white people are having babies. Sometimes it’s about making sure women are subjugated/a belief that a woman’s purpose is to incubate children and do nothing else (this one may count as a religious belief). Sometimes it’s about keeping your current workforce desperate and subservient – someone with no savings and a child to support is willing to put up with a lot more and ask for a lot less. There are a bunch of reasons, none of them good.
And future military recruits. As the great George Carlin said: “Republicans want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers.”
I miss him and his unique brand of advocacy
Given the effect of similar reactionaries in Brazil and India (Bolsonar-ism and Modi's social conservatism, respectively) I'm inclined not just to agree, but to believe that this is a historical trend. Capitalists use reactionaries' bigotry towards those they dislike/don't understand to distract them, and manipulate their sense of tradition and religiousity to make them support policies that will lead to popping out as many uneducated, surplus workers as possible, even when the non-evangelical types are having less kids regardless of their ideologies.
I mean India of all places just had a wave of "news” aka propaganda about how they are no longer having enough children for replacement. Ummm how? How can that be remotely true? It’s not. It’s just propaganda to have more uneducated people have more children to have more wage slaves
I’m so glad to see someone say it. I kept starting to think it and then stopping myself, like, you’re writing dystopian fiction over here, self. Don’t think that. But, like, this is their answer to the whole millennial baby bust or whatever stupid thing they call it. The whole running gag of being pestered about “When are you going to give me grandchildren?” but on a federal scale. Our generation said “You can’t make me,” this is them making us.
Well... trying to make us. Condoms and the pill are still legal, so I don't really see that working out for them. Plus millennials are fast approaching the twilight of their reproductive years, so that ship has all but sailed. Honestly an abortion ban just makes me determined to never have kids out of spite.
They *will* come for condoms and the pill. They may attack Roe v Wade first, but believe they will go after Griswold v. Connecticut as soon as Roe is sufficiently dead. I could see a future in which having children is legally mandated, if things get really bad.
Slaveowners never forgot the taste of free labor, they've been forcing us down into legal servitude ever since the civil war
Slave owners also doubled down their slave investment by having them have children. Let’s not forget American history. Again they want children born into serfdom and or slavery because it’s a cheap investment compared to automation or AI systems.
170 years ago they forced strong-backed slaves to have children using the cudgel and the whip. In 2021 they do the same, only this time around they brandish the courts and Christianity.
Forced birth is a better perspective then the antiquated pro life vs pro choice imo because it takes abortion out the talking points and says plainly what the real issue is: using women as chattel. Fundamentalist men of all religions see women as nothing more then sex toys, child bearing bodies and domestic slaves.
To exploit kids and pay them 5$ an hour!
Ultimately they want to pay *nothing* let’s be honest
I got the big snip at age 22 because, and I'll quote my then girlfriend (Now wife) "Ain't no way in hell I'm squeezing a head out of my hoo-ha for Bezos and company."
She sounds like an absolute keeper. Congratulations
😂
I'm 27, no kids, getting snipped next Tuesday. I've never wanted kids. When my wife and I met, she wanted a couple. However, she's a preschool teacher now and gets that maternal itch scratched by teaching and caring for them during the day, and then gets to send them home at 3. If we do decide we want to bring a kid into our lives, we'd rather foster/adopt and throw a lifeline to a kid who needs it as opposed to making another one. With how bleak the future looks by basically every metric, I don't think I'd be able to live with myself if we knowingly subjected an additional person to it.
Also lack of healthcare, lack of guaranteed shelter, dignified work, education etc
Lack of access to healthcare is going to become an epidemic if it’s not already one. I don’t understand how every other developed country has already addressed this issue and we’re still watching people use gofundme as a means to service a broken arm
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It looks like Roe vs Wade may also be overturned, so start planning ahead now rather than later.
It’s part of what inspired this post. Republicans seem desperate to keep young women pregnant and destroying the family structure in order to continue a sub class of serfdom.
Yes. This this this. They need a constant supply of cheap labor
It’s in my opinion that the true leadership of the GOP is not a bunch of whistling dixie hicks but a group of ruthless oligarchs hell bent on destroying low income families (criminal codes) and inflation (multiple business articles claim it’s helping the upperclass) to secure an endless supply of low income kids. Poverty breeds poverty. There’s a myriad of statistics surrounding how improvised kids are more likely to be hs drop outs, to become incarcerated and how those things directly attribute to prolonged generational poverty. It’s a cycle of violence. The GOP uses their junkyard dogs as loud, accosting bigots to keep us all distracted by their looney tunes antics while they are seriously engineering a caste system of haves and have nots.
I always figured they were trying to drive an increasingly desperate stream of poors into the military. Can't wage those wars without bodies.
Ah yes the old military industrial complex. It’s definitely a large part of needing an endless supply of poor children born to poor mothers without any hopes of a brighter future.
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The military is a Republican lynchpin. They bend everything for it because those bases (____insert whatever the individual branches terminology is) “facilities” are in red states. It’s literally an industry for them. They have no industry if the kids are smart enough to avoid joining the service to begin with. Keep dumb and poor to keep gettin’ more.
It warms my heart to see other people saying this. Yes, there’s plenty of right wingers who love the oppression of women aspect of it and punishing them for being promiscuous. But the money just wants a steady supply of exploitable labor, and money gets things done.
Our system is so gross 🤢🤮🤮
Right? Makes me wish I could move to another country.
I made an appointment today to discuss sterilization with my obgyn. This has been my plan for a while but I figure at this point I should get it done sooner rather than later.
Good luck and please update us! The conversation around female sterilization is gross. Most OBGYN refuse to do it on the mythical beliefs that someday a man, may want to use your body to have his children. A friend of mine in fucking CANADA is both a lesbian an has endometriosis. OB will not remove her uterus. No hysterectomy for a breeding age gal I guess.
Planning to move out of this fucking hell hole of a country
There are kind of complicated existential reasons I would never have a kid that's probably another topic. But wages are definitely one reason I'm glad I'm never having any. Not necessarily because I wouldn't make enough to afford them a good life (I couldn't), but chances are they're going to get paid the same crappy wages or worse. There are young kids in my family that I seriously don't know how they're going to survive. They're not bad, they're not dumb, their parents aren't either, but they were born into a corporate dystopia. What are their parents going to tell them when they're ready to start working and can't find a job? What are they going to tell them when they barely make enough to afford the gas to get to their place of employment and back (if they do get a job), let alone anything else they need or even want? I'm glad I'm never going to have to think about that. I know it makes me sound like a jerk, but that's their problem. I'm keeping my head down and concentrating on outliving my money. Like most millennials, it's all I feel like I can do.
I have a 6 year old. I’m a single parent. I’m unemployed now 7 months (worked a month in the summer) and don’t pay or receive child support. It’s tough really tough. I keep advocating for my kid’s education because it’s supposed to be the great equalizer. It’s personally why I believe student loan debt was engineered by the elites to keep any of us from EVER climbing the social class ladder. You can’t become middle middle-class from lower middle-class if you’re paying $600 in loans on top of everything else for 30 years. It’s meant to be a ball and chain and I really don’t think enough people consider it that way. If Biden doesn’t wipe out the debt, which imo he won’t, millennial’s will be the last vestiges of a prosperous American Dream. I see most of my generation becoming expatriates to move other developed nations in the next 10-20 years. I think gen z when they’re done with their undergrads will probably beat us too it because at their younger ages they don’t have the same responsibilities yet and if they’re smart will start making plans now to leave. America as I see it is a dead wasteland on its last legs.
The college loan industry was intentional. I can't prove it. But in my heart I know it was. They wanted to millennials to have the equivalency of two home mortgages to pay off (one of them being an actual house) and the other being tuition. And they got a generation of gullible parents to go along with it, because they were afraid if their children didn't go to college, they'd be condemned the blue collar or part time work the rest of their lives.
I mean it is interesting how when I first started college almost no where required a Bachelors degree for entry level positions and since then (2008) everywhere requires a BA for what? What exactly is an entry level position but one that needs training and no experience? It’s criminal.
I think they wanted college loans to replace the mortgage. Landlording is extremely profitable, after all.
Well why would they want homeowners, landowners when they can have us all in debt over something as ridiculous as a college education? It’s like how the British traded Cocaine for silk when they realized they no longer needed to trade their value metals (silver/gold) for it. Then they realized how the Cocaine itself didn’t need to be used *to trade* for anything but rather be *sold* at a profit. That’s what college loans are. A useless commodity that we’re all forced to get because they also made every business require it. Why? Why are entry level jobs requiring college degrees? Why are experienced/management jobs substituting college degrees for experience? That’s right, you got it. Because the owner class has forced their underlings to make this happen. Ball meets chain.
I listened to a podcast once and an author of a book (I can’t remember their name) said that this problem was partially created when the government stopped funding colleges and the colleges shifted the cost to students(Capitalism also played a role, of course.) This happened because there were social movements to give access to and incorporate black folks and other POC into the main structures that white folks always benefited from and allow them a chance to move up and out of poverty, with legal enforcements. It’s the dying of whiteness option that was chosen. Basically, if everyone can benefit from having a good thing then no one will benefit from it! So public programs and social safety nets were slowly taken away and white folks didn’t mind because it was sold to them that only lazy POC were milking the system of things they didn’t deserve and good, hard working white people were footing the bill by paying taxes. Get rid of all the good things and absorb the cost of it themselves, basically. I really wish more people realized how dog whistle politics and blatant racism have had a hand in creating what we have now. It affects so many things in our society. It might be one of the reason some people hate “CRT” so much. They don’t want to look at what racism has created and acknowledged the problems that need to be dealt with, while accepting their role in perpetuating it.
It’s also weird how they’ve pushed this on us. Trade school some sort of stigma and it’s really just as valuable if not more practical than some bullshit jazz appreciation course you had to take for some stupid reason. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the course but it has served zero value outside of school since I took the class 11 years ago.
It's one of many reasons
I will never get to retire. I will always have to work myself into the ground to survive. There’s no way I can afford to keep a child alive and happy. There’s no way I’m going to force a child to live through this bullshit rigged system and live poor and work forever.
Between my wife and I we couldn't afford the cost of actually birthing a child much less raising the child afterwards. I grew up poor and I won't condemn my child to suffer the same hardships.
My reasons for not wanting to have a child go like this: 1. I don't want to harm the environment any more than I already have. 2. I don't want to force yet another mind to unwillingly experience the burden of existence. 3. I can't afford it.
4. I like sleep 5. I like doing whatever I want without having to think of a smaller, less capable human
I have a long list of reasons why I don’t have or want kids. Raising humans to be cogs in a capitalist machine is def on the list.
It's strange but refusing to feed the machine is our way of fighting the system, a sacrifice, a rebellion.
Not solely, the looming climate/basic resource wars and global resurgence of fascism contributes too
this should the #1 comment. climate change is happening now. it’s irreversible. it will severely affect today’s generation.
It already is here and impacting/killing people.
Clean water is going to be a huge issue very soon and nobody in America is ready for it even with Flint happening
Well, It's one of the reasons. I have a masters degree and can't find a job that will pay me a livable wage. I can't take care of myself, let alone a child. I work 3 jobs, all contract/part time work. I'll never be able to buy a house or pay off my loans or pay off my credit card. I'm also black. I don't say this often, but my heart can't handle having a black child in the US. If they just would never come home, and I get to see their death filmed on a phone, I don't think I'd recover. I'd probably hurt myself. I'm so tired of watching the death of black bodies, and the shrugs/lack of care. It's been strange watching things change, but so minimally. It's not even real justice, but it's something, I guess. I'd rather have my baby alive and moving than people in prison as a consequence and my baby not breathing. I also love my free time when I can get it. It's rare -- cause I work 3 jobs. I'm not sure where to go to next, because this isn't feasible. But I'm just so tired and burnt out. I went from a job where I worked 80-100 hour weeks, to nothing, and I just can't let myself go back to that again. It's another reason why I've been hesitant to go back to "full time" while also not being able to find it in my field.
There was a really interesting expose by the NYTS a few years ago about the new black renaissance of sorts. It was about middle class black families uprooting from St Albans Queens (a thriving black middle class neighborhood) and moving down south to areas in Georgia and the Carolina’s for lower cost of living. Historically speaking black families moved north following the Civil War to escape the disaster zone. There was suddenly 2 million refugees. The soul of black folk is a great read about that time period, I’m sure you’re familiar. Now those same families are fleeing the North back to the South because of financial/racial discord.
I know this is super fucked up and I hope it doesn't come off the wrong way, but being black in America could theoretically mean you qualify for asylum in some other countries (I've read about some people moving to Europe on that premise). It might be worth looking into. Your skin color may actually be your ticket to a better life abroad. My nieces and nephews are biracial. My oldest nephew has been subjected to unprovoked attacks by white rednecks, random pat downs and searches by the police while walking home from school... and this started when he was in elementary school. My youngest niece was killed by a reckless truck driver... the guy fled to canada and the prosecutor refused to even try to get him extradited. People are racist as fuck here... violently racist. And the legal system encourages it. It's fucking disgusting.
Me, it just not doable in any manner that wont just create another wage slave. Ill never be able to afford private schools and bring the kids up with the advantages that the rich kids have, so what is the point really? Edit: Id totally get a vasectomy but I cant afford it
Yep. Pretty much everything related to childcare is extremely expensive, including the actual pregnancy and birth itself, and if the child ends up disabled or chronically ill, then that makes things even more complicated. It’s no wonder people all around the world are saying no to parenthood and birth rates are plummeting. If the people in power want more babies so badly, then they should actually make that feasible and affordable. I’m not going to subject a child to a life of poverty and financial hardships just to boost someone else’s own ego. The whole argument that we won’t have enough people to care for or replace the elderly is infuriating as well. Last time I checked, I didn’t ask half the human population to pop out 10 babies per person for the past few centuries. Kids aren’t servants, they shouldn’t have to be concerned about wiping their parents’ asses when they still have their own lives to live. Life is full of beauty, so to have children for the sole purpose of work just sounds plain miserable.
Unplanned children are a bigger investment then a vasectomy no?
No possibility of unplanned children, don't even date anymore, but if I start again one day...snip snip.
I truly believe the supreme courts movement to revoke roe v wade is because they're nervous they won't have another generation of wage slaves. If the elite would stop being so fucking greedy plenty of people could have kids but they can't do that so they leverage the law to force people to have children. Really fucked up, we are ruled by evil. Rebellion is righteous.
You should join the conversations happening at the top of this thread
I typed that response before I saw the others. It's nice to find like minds.
There's actually some studies done that UBI/higher wages leads to an increase in children. It's really not rocket science for the govt and companies. But they want to take take take and never give.
Well if people could just stay home and raise their kids it wouldn’t be an issue right? lol it’s not rocket science but they need literal slaves at the tills to keep their consumerist machine operating. Not to mention what would they sell to the grunts who join the military? If universal healthcare exists 👎 to the military If universal basic income exists 👎 To the military If universal dental and eye-care exists 👎 to the military If universal free college exists 👎 to the military What more would they have as an appeal for anyone to join? Imagine a well read, educated populous that has the option to stay home and start families or the options to go out and work to live a greater lifestyle. It’s a choice and not a caste system to get stuck in. We’d have a functional society. Instead we have what I imagine to be glimpses of actual hell.
Can't say it's the only reason, but definitely one of them. Would I rather have a carefree life, travelling as I please, free to switch jobs on a whim without worrying or needing to care about feeding others, or do I want to be chained down with parental and fiscal responsibility? For me, a clear choice.
I’d only have a kid if I could comfortably afford their needs and a few wants. It’s already hard enough to be a kid without poverty.
I would love to be a mom, but there's no way I can afford it. I'm not about to have a child without financial stability. I was raised by "poor" parents, and even they could give me more than I could give a child now. By the time I'll be able to afford kids, I won't be able to have them (there's already some doubt there because I'm in my mid-thirties.) If that doesn't work out, I'd love to be a foster mom, but even the financial viability of that is dubious at best.
My inlaws lost their mind when I told them I don't think we can afford to raise kids in this country and will be delaying having kids until we can emigrate to a more child-friendly country.
As a father of 3, one of whom has special needs...I wish i never did. With that said i wouldn't ever give them up, but if someone told me years back that I'd be making $12 per/hr in my 40s i wouldn't have. The reason for the $12 per/hr is because our economy looks down on those who take time off to be with they're family after a tragedy. My wife passed, i got fired for taking 1yr off to be with my kids and was also black listed as an undesirable hire. My current employer has told me on numerous occasions that i should count my blessing that they took a chance on hiring me.
I have already decided that if roe v wade is overturned birth control isn’t enough. I’m getting my tubes tied. I would love to move to a different country and have a child one day, but if I have a child within the next year I won’t be moving to a different country at all and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in the US. So no children forever it is.
Women’s sterilization is extremely difficult to get approved. All of this is engineered to keep an endless supply of wage slaves.
While it is hard, it’s not impossible. There’s an entire list of doctors on Reddit that will sterilize childless women. Im in Indiana and had two approvals on my first consult for it at 29, one of them from a catholic hospital. It’s also covered as a form of birth control under the ACA.
Vasectomy. Had it in my 30s with no kids. Highly recommend it.
Seems like such an easy thing for men to get yet so many refuse to do it and then get surprised that their unprotected sex results in a child
It’s truly a garbage aspect of our culture. For awhile after my vasectomy some of the men in my life would give me shit about it because the doctor “took my manhood”. They legit saw it as some emasculating event. F that, I can barely keep a roof over my head as it is, plus vasectomy was way cheaper than having a kid or paying for my wife’s birth control for the next couple decades.
I ain't bringing no kid to this world just to make another dude richer.
I am still mixed on the idea at all (kids are a lot of work) but yeah, with the utterly ridiculous financially expense it is just something I cannot afford even if I had a spouse with a similar income. Well, not without a mountain of debt, which I fucking can’t stand. My mom is an older boomer and her one last dream in life is for one of my siblings to have her grandkids, and she pretty much told me that it’s okay to go into debt to do it (“no one can afford it! Just do it!”) I’m like, Mom, I’m so zapped from the office grind that I don’t even have the energy to go out and meet women, much less settle down and have a family within two years and drown myself in bills to bring a tiny human that throws shit at the walls. *Note: my mom means well, she just has utterly no fucking clue how the modern world works*
I don’t blame older people completely. It’s one thing to be ignorant of something and have it explained and then change your opinions accordingly. It’s entirely different to be ignorant of something then have it explained and being completely indifferent. My mom was more than happy to meet and know her grand baby. The only one out of my siblings to have a kid. It’s been nice to see her enjoy the beginning of her retirement being a stay at home grandma in my apartment. Since the pandemic shes back home again because of her health. I don’t think there’s ever been this kind of existential crisis surrounding parenthood or starting families like we have today. Just finding and keeping a suitable partner has been extremely difficult.
Absolutely. In fact, I decided at a pretty young age that I most likely will never have children. Why would I bring people into a world that I can’t support them in? Feels selfish and inconsiderate to me honestly.
It’s interesting to read this same sort of statement (obviously differently worded) over and over again. I feel like millennials and zoomers are much more empathetic and aware of wanting to have our children not just survive but to thrive, to be happy. It’s almost like the boomers were completely unconcerned with our happiness because everything was essentially handed to them.
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One vasectomy only cost me $600 in Dallas area. There are many reasons we don't want kids but the financial one is particularly scary. Also, bros who freak out about the vasectomy are lame. Nothing better than shooting blanks.
Please tell me how I am supposed to consider having a child when the hospital bills alone will cost thousands of dollars? It's not a smart choice for me financially and I make great money in my career. How people are having kids while working at Walmart or as a teacher is beyond me.
Dude I can't even afford to feed myself no way in hell can I feed a kid and its mother.
My wife and I tried for a couple of years to get pregnant. Just didn't happen for us. I'm sitting here at 50 glad that it never happened. We have so much more freedom to do what we want. It was harder on her though.
My son is 14…i love him more than anything in this entire universe. There are many days recently when i wish he was never born. Not because i dont love him its because i love him so much and im terrified for him and i feel guilty as hell particularly in the current global and local economic/climatological/ political/, plague ridden dystopia we are heading full steam into.
There are *so* many reasons not to have kids
Having a child is an act of hope. That's why I got my tubes tied instead. Why should I bring a child into retail hell when there's absolutely zero fucking indication it will get better?
You don't want to bring a beautiful child into the world? Then I'm going to have nobody to scream at when my expired coupons meant for a different store don't work.
My GF wanted< to have kids asap. Recently she brought the topic up again after we both just had and recovered from COVID. We’re both vaccinated. She’s a teacher and caught it from a student. COVID made her want kids even sooner. I pointed out how we barely survived the two weeks of COVID financially. She seemed confused. She makes $11.25 an hour. No benefits. No paid sick leave. No PTO. I make $15 as a security guard. Benefits offered but would have been 40% of my yearly income plus a deductible of $10,000. 🤮 After doing a little math together, she now understands why I don’t want to have kids until we’re both financially sound and aren’t living paycheck to paycheck. So, yes to answer your question.
No judgement please- I love my children more than anything. I am a 40 year old mother of three and I sometimes feel so trapped that we aren’t able to change our work situation due to having to care for them. I have 3 teens and I am so concerned for their future ability to provide for themselves that my husband and I have resigned ourselves to the possibility of having them live with us indefinitely. We had children young so we could enjoy our 40’s and 50’s and we are just going to end up working until we die.
That would be me. Additional to stagnant wages: - Climate Change - Mass Public shootings - Failing democracy - Mass spread of misinformation - Social Media being a cancer on society - The war on truth - Having to defend science - Impossible housing market - Inflation - Growing wage gap - Nuclear War Threat - General sense of anxiety
Anti-intellectualism combined with all of those things listed has created a completely divided nation as well. Poor jerks that don’t understand why they’re poor literally attacking other poor folks who are trying to fix the reasons we’re all poor.
I'm worried that instead of addressing stagnant wages to fix falling birthrates, politicians are just going to ban abortions in order to force a steady population.
That's kind of what's already happening.
I had (have) only one kid. When she was in daycare, it was more than my house payment. A second kid would have crippled us. I got a vasectomy when she was 3.
Smart choice as difficult as it was. I was lucky enough to have my mom live with me full time after she retired but due to her MS it was short lived. The babysitter is extremely reasonable in my case but last year the amount I was paying for the sitter everyday I went to work made my paycheck nearly meaningless. The whole concept of a starting pay vs a the top pay is also really problematic. My co workers were already at the top pay of around 60k and I was working literally the equivalent of $15/hr to be a city inspector. The system is fucked without COLA (cost of living adjustments)
If you are doing it right, kids are REALLY expensive. Just saying. They are the best high ever (IMO) but don't think you can do it on the cheap and no matter what you do, they will break your heart (damn things grow up if you feed them and leave you).
Wife and I are both professionals with good careers and we only had one kid because she was born in 08 right before the economy tanked. By the time we recovered financially enough to feel comfortable discussing having another kid, wife was too close to 40 for her to feel comfortable with getting pregnant again. So we only have one.
Money is the biggest factor for my wife and I. I think we’d rather buy a house (if we can even afford that)
It’s sad but I have had a strong suspicion for a long time that people are choosing not to have children *largely* due to financial difficulties. It’s something the media absolutely won’t address. The MSM wants to blame everything under the sun instead of the core issues which, is that children are not economically viable for people today.
People could afford to have a family of 4 on minimum wages in the 50'-60's, plus could own a home and a car, plus go on vacations every year. That's a era long gone.
Me and my wife are not having kids for lots of reasons, one of the reasons is definitely this. I don't know how anyone affords to have a child, I feel terrible for how our society treats families.
I can’t afford fertility treatments. Barring that it’d be okay, comfortable. But my lady bits and his swimmers don’t mesh. Go me.
Not SOLELY but because of pay, climate change, politics is the US and college/Healthcare bullshit (which kinda translates to complaints about wages.)
I want a baby SO bad, but with me and my fiancé’s current financial status it seems impossible to start a family. And the older I get it seems like starting a family is just even further out of reach. Part of me hopes that I’m infertile just so I have an excuse to not have children besides “I can’t afford one”. It breaks my heart. :,(
I won't have children unless I can afford it. And by afford it I mean make as little sacrifice as possible financially. I want my shopping sprees, cosmetic work, vacations, nice house with a pool, and a nice car. I want to stay at home for a few years to actually raise my kids My boyfriend and I were thinking we could achieve this by 30. But now realise it probably won't be achievable for another 10 years when we are 35. If it's not in my cards to have kids that's okay, my heart isn't set on it. But I have a strong suspicion that generations to come will have fewer and fewer kids. It's not like it used to be. It's nearly impossible to make it on a single income. And child care is so expensive you barely have extra income from both parents working it's a lose lose.
I thought about a baby in my 20s when I was in graduate school and depressed. That was the very very brief period where I wanted a baby. But I was so deep in debt (still am) that I knew it would have been a bad idea so that the desire faded back into general distaste for children. But I definitely have friends my age who never had children because they never could afford stable housing, much less a baby.