It’s presented as one of the inevitable stages in life – having children. However, for many, this is not seen as a inevitability but as a choice.
Here, people share the reasons not to have children.
I’m going to talk you out of having kids.
Before I do, I should mention that I have two beautiful children and feel that I am better at being a father than anything else I’ve ever done, and there’s some stuff I’m pretty good at. Also, everything that happened to me before I had kids seems compressed, to the point where it’s still kind of there, but almost like it happened to someone else. And that was only three years ago.
So anyway, here we go:
Raising two kids costs us about 4k a month. Not counting college, and any savings, etc. That’s just childcare, clothes, toys, books, and a swim class or something. You can lease 2 serviceable Mercedes for $1k per month. A pretty good rate on a $700k house with nothing down and a 30 year fixed is like $4k per month. You could fly to Maui two weekends a month, every month, and stay in the a nice hotel, for $3k per month.
If you love your spouse as much as I love mine, you should enjoy the time you have together now, because that decreases at an alarming rate once you have kids. No joke. If your kids aren’t talking yet (or if they’re just mute I guess) it’s not as noticeable, but once they hit about two, your meaningful conversations are relegated to naptime and bedtime.
If you have some hobbies or maybe a job that requires a lot of travel and long hours, you’re going to have to choose, every day. You have 18 hours in a day. How much of that time are you spending with your kid? How much is not enough? If you’re working 8-5 and their bedtime is 7:30, you’ve probably got an hour in the morning and maybe two at night. That’s three hours a day, minus eating, dressing, bathing, etc. So you have maybe 90 minutes of quality time with your kid. If you have two and they’re on different schedules (common when they’re young), decrease accordingly. But you have them on weekends, right? Sure, but you’re not the only one who wants to see them. And you’ve got house chores, errands, etc. Your time is no longer your own, and you never have enough for them, much less anything else.
My oldest kid gets up at 6 am. Every day. She doesn’t get up like we get up either, like she needs time to get going or anything. She literally bursts out of her room every morning like sunlight cresting a mountain. She goes from sleeping to full adrenaline in a nanosecond. She wakes up motivated, like a miniature female version of Patton. Whereas later in the day she’s polite, in the morning she commands people. “It’s time for you to get up and make oatmeal, dad.” Like a boss. What time do you get up on weekends? Ever sleep in? I kind of remember sleeping in. It actually hurts to try and remember it. Like if I lost the sense of smell, but could still remember the aroma of fresh baked cookies.