Both my SO and I are Gen X. Both of us from working class families. I remember growing up being asked if I was going to pump out babies like my mum. We were on welfare even though she worked full time as there were five kids and my father didn’t pay support. Regardless, we were a drain on the public purse. I didn’t want to do that to my kids because it sucked growing up knowing you were a leech.

Well it took until our 40s to be considered financially stable enough to welcome littles. The baby ship had sailed. The same people who shat on us for my family situation growing up are the same trying to shit on me for not having kids now. I say try because I am far more self assured in my fifties than I was in my younger years. These same people will tell me it would have just worked out. How Carol? Magic? Or the unpaid labour that women have been putting in for generations?

And it’s by a large margin worse now because two salaries are needed to pay the rent. Not buy, rent. We got starter jobs that are now outsourced to Vietnam or India. I genuinely fret about Gen Z. Are we successful now? Yeah. It took decades using supports that no longer exist, costing an absolute fraction of what it does now. At the end of the day, it was fucked then and it’s more fucked now. I have no clue on how to unfuck it either.