Opportunity. The longer you wait to have children, the harder it'll be to raise them and really participate in their lives unless you do manage to become some true success story.
I'm almost 34, unlikely to be married for at least another year (based on current relationship's progression), and don't want kids until we've been together for at least 3 years (I want us to have an opportunity now to act as a couple, so we have that relationship and not just children holding us together for the rest of ours lives). So I'm basically not planning to have kids until I'm 37. That's assuming this relationship works out. I'll be 55 when the youngest might graduate high school. 60 when they graduate college. They'll have children in, what, 10-15 years after that if they imitate me? So I'll see grandchildren when I'm 70-75. I'll never see great-grandchildren. And, thanks to already existing issues with my back, my mobility is going to be reduced each year despite my efforts to stay in shape. I won't be able to take my children camping and hiking like I'd like to. Neither the challenging areas, nor the long backpacking trips. I'll be able to watch them participate in physically challenging activities, but unable to participate myself. Parenting at a distance.
OTOH, had I pursued relationships more actively in my early 20s, I could have the kids out of the home by my mid-40s. That 10+ year difference is huge. It may have impacted my long term earning potential. Or, it could have given me better motivation at the time to maximize my income, for the sake of the family, rather than being contented with more middling offers because it was just my wellbeing and interests at stake.
I know your argument seemed to be simply stating some logic, I wanted to respond because even though you didn't say it outright, I sensed some degree of anxiety or sadness or something in your comment. Or maybe, others in a similar boat might be experiencing that.
In my case (turning 35 shortly), for reasons completely out of our control, my wife and I have not been able to bear children. We are getting to the point where the only option is adoption, which we are not against. The risk and cost of any other options are just far too high.
I didn't wait, I was married once in my 20s but my ex-wife had an affair and that was the end of that relationship. Took me a number of years to meet my current wife, and several years to get to the point of trying for children.
All I guess I'm trying to say is, even though you say you could have tried harder in your early 20s - I did, and it still didn't work out for me with regards to having children as young as possible (yet).
So for yourself, I hope you don't hold it against yourself that you did what you did. Even if you had tried hard, it might not have worked out - and I guess this is just how it goes.
So you reached out and I appreciate that and wanted to thank you for it. I think trying to help people with comments like this is one of the great things of this particular forum.
That said, there's no particular sadness for me with regard to this. I was trying to point out, though, that the calculus isn't money then kids, it's also time and health. All those things ought to be weighed, particularly if you're in a position in your younger years to choose to have kids or wait (or try, as your case and many of my friends' point out, not everyone will be successful). In my case, I skipped relationships in my 20s because of my issues with depression. If I couldn't hold myself together emotionally, I didn't need to be in a serious relationship. I tried that, it was disastrous for everyone involved. Once I got my head on straight a few years ago I opened myself up to it again.
But I also want to say, thanks for being open to adoption. My girlfriend is adopted, as are several of my other good friends. People who are willing to take on children not their own, and provide them with good, loving families, are among the best, in my book. I wish more of my friends in your situation shared your willingness.
> The risk and cost of any other options are just far too high.
A few years older than you and in a somewhat similar situation. Don't answer if it's too personal of a question, but did you check out IVF? If so, what was the average rates you were getting quoted?
We were told that IVF would cost anywhere between $12-15,000 per attempt, there is no guarantee, and the woman has to be injected with a cocktail of hormones that is quite complex and has some associated risks. Generally it seemed much more physically and mentally demanding and expensive for something that might not work out.
We chose to try IUI treatments at a local, well-regarded fertility clinic and have had several much less invasive rounds of treatment for about $6,000.
Alas, ultimately nature will decide. We are looking into adoption at this point, and honestly I feel that I would be very happy with that outcome as well.
Thanks for the answer. This is in the price range I've heard, and I've also learned that IVF is certainly no silver bullet - it is a gamble with decent, but not gimme, odds.
I am all for delayed gratification, being mindful of your lifestyle and consumption, but this should not translate to having all of our life decisions based on the final chapters of our lives.
In the long term, we are all dead. With regards with kids and family planning, the cruel calculus (especially for women) is that the more we get close to the best income-generating years, the closer we get to risky pregnancies and lower fertility.
I am losing count of how many mid-30s women I've met who kept postponing to start their families and now are desperately trying to revert their biological clocks.
Times have changed. When my parents were in their twenties, they were buying their first house, having kids, and starting up the (relatively certain) career ladder. If you're in your twenties today, there's no way you're thinking about either of these because you're saddled with six figures of student loan debt, and do not have the employment certainty it takes to take root in an area to buy a home.
> they were buying their first house, having kids, and starting up the (relatively certain) career ladder
There's still plenty of people still doing exactly that. Get out of the HCOL areas and there are tons of people going to an inexpensive state school and buying a house in a new suburb outside of Boise Idaho or wherever.
I bring up Boise because I did an internship with Micron 5 years ago and other interns were meeting with realtors so they could buy a house as soon as they graduated.
I agree with what your comment, but perhaps a better solution (instead of having children earlier) would be to freeze eggs and sperm and use them when you are ready. The only problem then would be whether an older mother's body would be more likely to experience problems, and if it is, whether the cost to hire a surrogate would be less than the cost of earlier parenthood.
Surrogacy on top of actual harvesting is very expensive and time-consuming and painful if even possible without donor sperm/eggs. I doubt most people are able to make up the $100k+ needed with earning potential differences in the 10-15 years of waiting that you are talking about. Maybe couples in tech and other fields making six figures could save that up, but that's JUST a basic pregnancy, forget any parenting costs, and most people are not making six figures. A lot of folks start considering adoption before they'll do surrogacy with or without donors just due to sheer cost.
Even if a couple decides to go at it with IVF that's easily $10-20k/cycle (and older = more likely to want PGD etc. adding to costs) and a lot of emotional/physical hardship and time sunk into the effort. After a point there is just no luck on your side either no matter how much money you throw at it... I have cried with too many friends over their failed cycles. And some of them discover this in their 20s, not even 40+.
If you want to have kids, it's going to cost money and time _somewhere_. If you want to have bio kids, it's likely to be far less painful and far better (in terms of cost, maternal outcome, child outcome, etc.) to do it while younger if possible. Maybe there are tradeoffs - and as a pregnant 20something woman in tech that struggled with infertility treatments but thankfully not all the way to the pain that is IVF and beyond, I'm acutely aware of them - but that's a personal decision to make. I also had older parents that were not as lucky as yours and find it to be a hardship I refuse to put my own children through.
It is not necessarily a crazy or bad idea to have children earlier if you can and want to.
> freeze eggs and sperm and use them when you are ready. (...) cost to hire a surrogate (...)
Sorry if I am reading too much into your comment (or the sibling comment about not being able to start a family in the 20's due to excessive loans), but when I start seeing this line of thinking is where I see how out of touch is this "progressive" mentality of the millennials. Excuse in advance for my little rant.
It's so focused on the self and so eager to "have it all", that they never get to exercise the simple task of knowing to establish priorities in life. It has associated so much the idea that "you are what you consume" that it simply does not even consider the possibility of "not going to pay 200k for a stupid degree", or "not be running the corporate treadmill". Women are so self-conscious about not appearing "strong and independent" that the perfectly acceptable choice of "I want to focus on the family and supporting my husband, let him be the breadwinner" looks like things only a loser would do.
Not to mention this überization of everything. Would you really like to live in a world where people routinely assess the idea of getting a surrogate to have their kids for them? It is not enough to have kids nowadays being raised by nannies instead of their parents, the parents should also now delegate even the incubation? How much of parent are these parents, after all? What is next? Brave New World-style in-vitro cloning?
/rant.
Listen to the advice. If you want kids, have them as soon as possible. You will never "be ready" until you have them.
Oh, we have our priorities alright. We want to be financially comfortable and secure before bring children into this world, and if that means "running the corporate treadmill", freelancing, what have you, so be it. Due to how precarious incomes are today, single-earner households are often too fragile to raise kids, so "focusing on the family and support my spouse" (not necessarily husband, mind you...if single-earner households are the solution men should take it more often) is an unfeasible choice for many. "Having it all" is not a decadent luxury--it is a necessity in order for children to have a stable family life. It's not selfish, and I resent progressive-haters more and more for saying it is. We're not out of touch (except to a 20th century society that no longer exists); we're in touch with the challenges of life and parenthood today.
> Would you really like to live in a world where people routinely assess the idea of getting a surrogate to have their kids for them?
I would love to live in such a world where parents aren't restricted to their own genetic material or gestational capabilities when conceiving a child. I'd much rather delegate the incubation than the raising; I'd gladly ditch the nanny and pay for the surrogate.
I really find it hard to believe most people at the time of your parents or grandparents only thought about family after achieving "financial stability".
The challenges of "life and parenthood" today are not that different from our parents. It's that nowadays everyone gets this anxiety-inducing message that you can only consider yourself "an adult" when you traveled the whole world, achieved some level of education, worked for so-and-so, played in a rock band, got your 15 seconds of Internet fame, slept with a few dozen people... all of these challenges are artificial.
This kind of "we know our priorities" is not really about choosing anything. When the priorities being elected are as abstract as "financial comfort", it is unworkable. It becomes just some illusory target that in the end works just as a rationalization to not settle down and take "grown up" responsibilities.
Or put another way: if you say "We want to be financially comfortable before bringing children", you are stating that you won't think about family before having all of the financial comfort guaranteed. You may succeed at it or not, and even if you do it might be too late to have a family. If on the other hand you establish that having a family is important to you, you can work for it right now and then start thinking about how to secure yourselves financially. The main difference is that if you already have a good family, you already get a bigger support network.
> I'd gladly ditch the nanny and pay for the surrogate.
First, take a look at silencio's reply. It is currently illogical for the financial point of view.
Second, it is not about money! You are proposing a world where some privileged "elite" gets to postpone their fertile years and make more money at the expense of poorer women who will nothing but breeders for you, and that in the end might not even be able to have kids of their own. Is this really the kind of dystopia you'd like to live in?
First of all, having children and having a family are two different if related things. You can have children without having a family, and you can have family without having children. Having children alone does not give you any stronger a support network than you otherwise would have.
Second, if we prioritize being financially secure over having kids early, that /is/ a priority, and criticize that priority all you want, but it is a consciously made and valid choice, and one that does not take away from being "grown up", whatever that means. Settling down and being responsible does not require having children, and as we too often see, the reverse is also true.
Egg harvesting + IVF + surrogate is certainly very expensive. However I doubt it is more expensive than having a nanny for a few years, especially if nothing is done under the table, so for those who have enough money to pay for a full-time nanny, trading the nanny for a surrogate is not necessarily financially illogical.
> You are proposing a world where some privileged "elite" gets to postpone their fertile years and make more money at the expense of poorer women who will nothing but breeders for you, and that in the end might not even be able to have kids of their own.
It's better than a world where the "elite" have to choose between having children early and forgoing earnings (and non-childraising contributions to the world) or not having kids at all and the poor often lack resources to raise children to prevailing standards. If that's a dystopia, then that's one I'd rather live in than the world we have right now.
> if we prioritize being financially secure over having kids early, that /is/ a priority, and criticize that priority all you want, but it is a consciously made and valid choice.
Not quite. It would be a priority if people said "I prefer financial stability for myself over a family", and it would be perfectly acceptable. What I do not get is the amount of people (especially women) who say they want a family, but that there are other things they need to have "first", or that "they are not yet ready" and so on.
It is not "financially secure/healthy kids later" vs "financial uncertainty/healthy kids earlier". It is more "slight less uncertain financial/uncertain kids and family later" vs "financial uncertainty/certain kids and family earlier".
To ignore biology is the part that I don't get. It seems that these people are playing poker with their fertile years and justifying it as an "investment".
> the poor often lack resources to raise children to prevailing standards.
Which prevailing standards?
If you are surrounded by people living in big coastal cities from the USA, then you'd probably be expected to be providing things such as having your kids going to expensive private kindergarten schools, extra-curricular activities, pay for all the doctors for all the treatments and special care required due to having a late pregnancy, spending lots of money so they can have the gadgets and clothes and everyone else in their school have, etc... And what does this game of keeping with the Joneses give you? Some networking and good connections, so that maybe you have an influence where your children will go to university and grow up to be as neurotic and anxious as everyone else?
It doesn't have to be this way. This "prevailing standard" is sick to the core. It is fueled by consumerism, it benefits only the status quo and sucks the soul out of everyone. I'd never argue against looking for ways to give the best education possible to your child. But education is not something that you buy, and that the more expensive the better.
The best thing one could do would be to not have their kids living like this. Which doesn't mean that getting out of the city and moving to the suburbs is the solution.
The millennials are without a doubt among the richest, most educated and with the whole world at their fingertips. They could take all this power and do some actual change, break away from this broken system. Yet it seems that the more they want to prove they can be better than their parents' generation, the more they commit the same mistakes.
