While I understand and empathize with what this article is getting at ("If you intend to have children, but you don’t intend to have them just yet, you are not banking extra years as a person who is still too young to have children. You are subtracting years from the time you will share the world with your children."), I strongly disagree. I think people should have kids when they are ready. Make an assessment to the best of their ability when exactly that time has arrived. Then, don't dwell on it further. Especially don't blog about it. There are no counterfactuals, this kind of reflection can only serve to make us miserable.
I think most great parents didn't feel ready, and in some sense not feeling ready is evidence of the kind of conscientiousness that makes you a great parent. I think it is a valuable service to push people who want kids but aren't sure when to have them to have them earlier than they otherwise would. You never know how difficult it will be for you until you start trying.
I’m about to become a parent, about 10 years later than I’d have liked. Main reason for that is just not meeting the right person, pandemic, money etc.
But I only feel ready now. I’m a late developer in general (aren’t all software engineers haha arf) and I honestly felt too free spirited in the past. Many friends had kids a decade or more ago, and they are looking forward to their kids leaving home so they can travel etc. But I’ve already done all that, I have nothing to devote my life to now other than work and family.
In my case at least, being ready was a real thing. It’s really about maturity and having had enough of a life myself.
Providing food, clothes, health and shelter? My parents weren't ready. I interrupted my fathers dream he was on track for, but only later learned about by doing the math in his rare moments of nostalgia after a cancer diagnosis and given a handful of years to live. My parents did a hard pivot and worked 3-5 jobs between them at any given time to make ends meet because his sense of duty to the family he wasn't ready for. I rarely saw or interacted with them, but gained valuable experience in navigating the world independently and being responsible for myself. I had good parents -- I was fed, clothed, housed and healthy enough to make it to adulthood and move out on my own after high school.
This part stuck out:
There are good reasons to wait, [...] My children have not had to live with parents who are working 15-hour days, the way we worked in our 20s, or who are financially desperate, as we might have been if we’d been paying for children on the salaries of our 20s. Our professional standing allows us to skip work for pediatric appointments or parent-teacher conferences. [...] I got a promotion [...] when it was time to buy a piano. We all sit down together for home-cooked meals most evenings and talk about things.
That must be nice, but I wouldn't know. My youngest sibling does though, their grandchildren knew that with them when they were younger too. My parents finally built up the stability that gave them time -- as I was on my way out. I have no idea who they are, nor they me, that was not our relationship -- I had that with my grandfather, but only briefly. And I would not trade that decade for anything in the world, except maybe to have had that with my parents, even if only for a few years to get to know as a child should. My youngest sibling got the great parents because they were ready to be by that time.
You get to be a great parent because you can spend time with your kids -- whether you "felt" ready or not you were, but maybe consider that's because the time you waited gave you the time to spend with them. You're looking at it in terms of maximizing years. Having more years doesn't mean anything if they can't be quality years.
the question is if this is not survivor bias - 'Those were great parents and they where not ready so' doesn't implicate that most people that are not ready will be great parents.
It also what you want to optimize for. I would prefer to have hordes of good parents that just only dozens of great one in society. We most likely can also say: "Most worst parents didn't feel ready"
I'm torn here because you're both right, kinda, from my viewpoint. And that is you should do a thing, whether getting married, having kids, etc. as soon as you're sure you want that.
You shouldn't rush it thinking of years lost, but at the same time, shouldn't delay it until everything's perfect/'the right time', because, from experience, everything will never be perfect.
No matter how long we waited, we did not feel ready. There was always too much to do, it was never really the right time. At some point we just gave in and perhaps we should have done it sooner.
Having kids in a later stage has a lot of advantages. You (hopefully) saved more. You are more mature and informed. You know how to save for your children from day one and what to teach them.
But the thing about time is true and doubly so when it comes to grandparents. First of all if you live around your family and they can help out, it's an invaluable rock to lean on, and of course if you waited the grandparents are going to be too old to really help. But what's worse, is your kids will probably know them for a very short time if they even remember them when they grow up.
The thing about "being ready" is nonsense because you can't be ready. You don't understand what a massive gift and blessing it is to have children, and also how everything changes. You can't be ready because you just can't understand it before it happens. So waiting for the perfect time is useless. If you know want children at some point, just do it.
For thousands of years, mankind struggled for survival. We invented agriculture, shelter, clawed our way into modern medicine and eventuallt multiplied on the face of the earth.
But as it turns out, the limit of our growth was that precious currency of desk space. We scoured the ends of the earth and wept, for there was no more desk space left.
Ready? When is anyone ready? My wife (of 18 months) and I just decided to have a baby. It never occured to us we weren't ready. In the 9 months we decided we needed to live somewhere with another room for the baby and moved in with 3 months to go. We had next to nothing prepared, but do you know what, it didn't matter. Babies demands are, at first very simple, food and sleep. We just handled the rest as we went along. We had done having children by the time we were 30.
To some degree, you can't be 'ready' to have kids. They are a nuke that explodes in your life. You're totally different after having a kid. You're always 'on stage', listening, watching, being there for your kid. You can't just check out and 'do it tomorrow' when it comes to the kid (laundry, sure though). And telling people that don't have kids what it is like just ends up as a list of complaints and misses all the intense joys, and you can tell that they just don't get it.
If we all bury our heads in the sand, maybe it will go away. After all, our personal happyness is #1. It's our world and our children are just living in it
