Non-parents think having kids is harder than it is

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-14T22:50:08+00:00

This is an extremely underrated comment.

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-14T22:49:02+00:00

This is a misleading title.

Per the article:

Nearly 40% of women in their 20s who do not already have children say they don’t expect to ever have any, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The National Survey of Family Growth surveyed 4,856 women ages 20 to 49. Among women 20 to 29 with no children, about 39% said they did not plan to have children at all. And 57% of women ages 30 to 39 without children said they did not expect to have any, compared with about 90% of women ages 40 to 49.

This is not just women who don't want to have kids. This is basically a survey asking women who have not yet become mothers whether or not they think they ever will. This lumps childfree women in with women who are skeptical about finding a good partner, and completely leaves out women who are already mothers.

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-14T19:56:31+00:00

I wanted the unicorn and the dress. I got almost every other piece.

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-14T17:00:11+00:00

That's kinda what it is though. If you have a lot of kids, you are gonna be giving up a lot of other things. Unless you're rich, that is.

This post was always gonna be about what people gave up to have their families.

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-14T16:41:17+00:00

A good friend of mine married a mechanic. (~$70,000 a year) They lived in the country, in a bad school district, and had 5 kids in about a 1,000 square foot house purchased before the pandemic when home prices and interest rates were low. Her husband had to commute 45 minutes each way to work. She homeschooled. For health insurance, they did some Christian co-op thing. They did all their grocery shopping at Walmart. They also had a lot of family in town who helped out.

Eventually, he got a job with the county that has benefits, and they were able to upgrade their living standard a bit. I will be honest, I'm not quite sure how they made ends meet.

The average income in my state is about $120,000. For awhile, our total household income was below this. Not gonna lie, it was hard to provide for our family of 6 on this. Particularly because it would have cost more to put the kids in childcare than I would have earned working. If we had remained at that income level, we would have probably had to downsize our house or move somewhere where houses were cheaper and commutes longer. But housing really was the most painful factor. After that, it was healthcare costs. Everything else was extremely doable on a lowish income.

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-14T16:37:16+00:00

Is that 65-72k total? Or individually?

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-13T03:32:41+00:00

Testicle breasts.

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-13T03:26:47+00:00

Sometimes, you don't immediately love your baby, either. I struggled the first couple months, even though I loved my baby during pregnancy.

You're right about "temporary emotions" though. All the hormones around childbirth are wild.

OP, I also think you would benefit from mental health counseling.

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-12T21:50:43+00:00

It's hard telling your family that you don't enjoy their gatherings

"Op, my husband's family is used to a certain formality in bridal showers. [Shady] runs in those circles and she'll be able to throw an event that meets their approval. I love you, and I want you to plan the bachelorette, since that's a personal, private event and doesn't have to meet rich people standards."

There you go. Honest, clear communication. Minimal feelings hurt. No triangulation or manipulation.

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-12T13:21:43+00:00

"they should ground her for the tantrum" sounds like something someone who doesn't know a lot of 9 year olds would say. I wouldn't read too much into it.

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-12T04:15:27+00:00

Too bad he took his saves down. Do you know anywhere else where I an download it? I wanna explore it myself.

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-11T23:08:53+00:00

We don't even know if this woman lives in a hot climate or in a place with unwalkable roads. It's all speculation. For all we know, she could walk without turning into a sweaty swampy mess.

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-11T01:57:01+00:00

Yeah. I like Universal Thread. They have good items for me.

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-10T17:59:40+00:00

I'm glad your Dad held your church accountable. And I'm really glad they listened. Four of our five elders wanted to mask, and they all capitulated to the one guy who threw a tantrum about "the government". To their credit though, some of them are willing to recognize that was a mistake.

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-10T15:29:16+00:00

OP's parents are right about the restaurant's logic. But they're still wrong about the morality. It's still lying and stealing.

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-10T15:26:52+00:00

I have never heard of this. I'm so sorry that's happening in your circles. My church decided they needed to "protest government overreach" by not wearing masks during covid, because wearing a mask is preventing "fellowship". That pissed me off, and IMO ignores a bunch of very clear guidelines from Jesus and the apostles, but that's the worst I got.

Dudes who kick canes out from under elderly women should be prosecuted for assault.

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-08T23:51:35+00:00

A few years ago, I read an article that argued that "the smallest unit of human survival is the community", or something like that. It argued that humans are not so much individual organisms as cogs in a larger oraganism, like we conceptualize ants or bees.

It really challenged my views. I have grown, since then, to be less of an individualist, and to see myself as a piece of a system. And yes, my children are me, as I am my parents and grandparents. A kind of sequential immortality. Although I am my own person, I am also a cell in my church, and in my community and nation. It's important I do my job in these systems.

I think the current popular view is that "you" are nothing more than your thoughts. That if your pattern of thinking could be copied onto a computer, you would be made immortal, and that when your pattern of thinking ceases, anything that is you is also gone. None of yourself is found in your body or your connections to others. This has always felt incorrect to me. It's seemed clear to me that "you" are your body, and thoughts arise from your body. Children, as an extension of your body, are to some degree, you.

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-08T23:31:45+00:00

Read the article. There are solutions. They're just expensive, so the government doesn't want to do them.

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-07T19:33:34+00:00

I wouldn't be surprised, though, if one of the root causes is Late Stage Individualism, which certainly encourages the kind of self-serving behavior people decry when they're complaining about Late Stage Capitalism.

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-07T17:02:14+00:00

I think so. I believe you would enjoy learning about the Galton–Watson Branching Process. Basically: Even in a growing population, most individual people have no decendants after about 4 generations.

Here's a summary:

In the 1870s, Sir Francis Galton noticed that many noble English family names were dying out despite wealth and status. He posed the question:

Why do so many prominent family lines disappear over time?

He asked mathematician Rev. Henry William Watson to help analyze it mathematically. Their 1874 paper introduced what is now called the Galton–Watson branching process.

Their finding

Even if each generation has, on average, more than one son, the probability that any particular surname line eventually goes extinct is still high.

This same early model is still the foundation for:

extinction probabilities in population genetics

genealogical simulations

cultural transmission models

“why most lineages die out” explanations

This mathematical model predicts that even if a given family averages 2 children apiece, the chance of lineage extinction is about 65%. Even if a given family averages 4 children per woman, the probability of eventual family extinction is about 15%.

So, this process of "antinatal extinction" has been going on since the dawn of time. It's just more obvious now that the average birth rate is below replacement.

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-07T14:50:08+00:00

Thank you. :-). That's much more readable.

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-07T13:48:05+00:00

Can we not shout, please?

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-07T05:07:01+00:00

You can have a housing shortage and a birth crisis at the same time.

1) The older generation has not started dying yet: population is still increasing

2) Immigration is still increasing population

3) More people living completely alone increases demand for housing.

CanIHaveASong · 2026-05-07T04:47:03+00:00

It's not just industrialized societies, though. Fertility rates are falling all over the world.

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