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And it also becomes recursive I think.
People want to be good parents. But in late stage capitalism, that means setting your children up to succeed in that environment. If people struggle to set themselves up as parents, they can’t have faith that they’ll be able to set their children up such that there’s just no point. Especially if you start thinking about the future and whether your grandkids could even be ok.
As someone living in the USA going into my late 30s still without kids, you nailed it. We’ve been married for 10 years. In a different world, we might have had a kid at some point in the last 5, but between covid and climate change and the second Trump term and the general sense that everything is about to implode, it doesn’t really make us feel inspired to try.
To be clear, at the moment we have everything we would need to be parents if we wanted to. But the prospect of subjecting a kid to young adulthood in the 2040s seems brutal. We’re what I would consider “nudge-able” into having a kid or two, but the world keeps giving us nothing but nudges in the direction of choosing to be childfree for life.
Random example from this year: we keep getting barraged with news slop about how our jobs are about to all be replaced by LLMs or the economy is about to collapse under the weight of the LLM bubble. Not particularly reassuring. I realize there’s no perfect time to have kids and tons of people make it work, but as a couple who have always been in the “maybe” camp, inaction feels like the only thing a logical person would choose, year after year after year.
We don’t have many years left where it’s actually viable, and frankly I can’t imagine it’s going to change.
This is what happened to my wife and me. We kept waiting and delaying because shit sucked and now… we can’t. Nature made the decision for us, much to the dismay of my parents but to the joy of my bank account.
I'm sorry, but every human being from every generation has suffered from fear for their children. The future is always unknown. There's always been a looming future doom. The future of the climate is unprecedented, but so was the advent of the nuclear bomb. So was the advent of the trebuchet. So was the advent of steel.
The only certainty about the future is uncertainty. While absolutely terrifying, my view on it was even though it's scary, I'll give it a shot.
I do fear for my children's future, but so has every human who ever had children. I enjoy the here and now and carry the hope that masses truly care for each other and always will.
Historically that hope doesn't bear out but good for you, if not for your children.
You're here. Is that not enough hope?
No, that's fuckin dumb.
That's a good point, I guess.
Why are you so upset all of a sudden? Are you ok?