> The upside is that I was a total basket case in my 20s, completely incompetent to be able to raise a child.
You see, in a proper early childrearing situation, you would be a) near your parents and inlaws ideally b) they would share in the burden of child-rearing.
We had kids later in life (33-ish) and I think if I were to do it again, I'd have moved quicker to having kids earlier (waited 2 years to marry and 3 years before having first kid).
More and more people are living closer to their parents - which opens up this possibility.
A lot of this assumes so many things that I think people who were born and raised in stable UMC (like most on HN) take for granted.
Even if I lived close to the family I was born into, I would never let them get near my children. The years of neglect and child abuse are reason enough that they should never see them - let alone be caregivers.
Similarly, you’re assuming that your marriage would have gone smoothly still and so would the childbearing if you hadn’t waited. I was with someone for five years and we never got legally married. We talked a lot about kids and marriage. I still felt like we had years to go before we were ready for marriage and kids. We separated over financial differences once it became clear they were never going to resolve. Imagine we had ignored our intuitions and married and had kids based on arbitrary deadlines? It would have been terrible. The differences wouldn’t have solved themselves with marriage or kids - we would’ve gone separate ways and both would experience truly insane hardship due to such poor decisions.
Living near people who can take care of your kids sounds lovely if you grew up where all the jobs are. Not uncommon for many SV types here who grew up in Palo Alto and such but it’s farfetched for so many more.
We need better regulations to give better paid leave and lower the cost of housing so I’m not homeless when my spouse decides to stop working to take care of the kids.
I'm not denying your experiences - I was reasoning using my own. I did not have a typical upbringing - I'm felt like an outsider and went to a different school for like 7 years in a row.
Clearly your circumstances dictated your options. Nowadays, in this truly oligarchic economy, most young people simply don't feel they'll ever be able to afford a home or family either (which is a massive regression). Perhaps the future means - you raise your family in your parents house (with their help)... if you trust your parents.
Agreed about better support for families and housing.
You see, in a proper early childrearing situation, you would be a) near your parents and inlaws ideally b) they would share in the burden of child-rearing.
We had kids later in life (33-ish) and I think if I were to do it again, I'd have moved quicker to having kids earlier (waited 2 years to marry and 3 years before having first kid).
More and more people are living closer to their parents - which opens up this possibility.