[HN Gopher] Are you a late bloomer in work or love? Maybe you're...
___________________________________________________________________
Are you a late bloomer in work or love? Maybe you're right on time
Author : impish9208
Score : 111 points
Date : 2023-06-19 11:41 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| cgio wrote:
| In my newfound wisdom I came to realise that comparing is not a
| game you can win. The thing with smarts, success, money, etc. is
| there will always be someone that's done better than you. There
| is value to playing the game, even if it is to appreciate its
| rules and give yourself enough experience to then go on your own.
| Late bloomers don't really bloom late, they bloom all the way to
| being noticed. The important is to take their example and not
| wait to be noticed. They would keep on blooming regardless and we
| should too, even if our bloom is greyish, boring and subpar to
| others. Blissful ignorance may be easy, blissful knowledge is
| different, not better but blissful still.
| adql wrote:
| Yup, be there to steal the ideas on why they become successful
| lusus_naturae wrote:
| There's an implicit value judgement that having children means
| you have "bloomed". You may have indeed, just into someone who
| has children. There's nothing more to it than that.
|
| Intellectually I understand why society values breeders. I
| understand the need for fostering the betterment of humanity by
| having a future generation. I just disagree that it requires or
| merit biological birth unless we have a population crisis. As far
| as I am aware, the US does not have that problem, so I won't
| judge someone for forgoing baby making.
|
| I hate the pretense that baby making for normies is anything
| other than creating workers for the ruler class. Maybe they're
| optimistic that somehow their children will become part of that?
| On average, that's simply not the case.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Historically, "breeders" have been useful or necessary.
|
| This is less true now, but perhaps only for now.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| See the change in Israeli politics for how useful breeders
| are in democracies.
| DrThunder wrote:
| Don't use the term "breeders" that's weird and seems like
| you're trying to apply a negative term to it. I'm not sure why
| it's become acceptable to refer to it this way. I suspect it's
| a modern movement to discredit having children as a valuable,
| worthy life goal and make it sound more like it's a dirty
| animalistic behavior that we're too smart for.
|
| "As far as I am aware, the US does not have that problem"
|
| Not true, we don't have a replacement population. This means
| all of your welfare programs and retirement programs will not
| have enough people in the younger generation to pay into them
| and support them.
|
| "I hate the pretense that baby making for normies is anything
| other than creating workers for the ruler class."
|
| Where did you pick this view up? Yes people have to work to
| survive. What do you think society would look like if you just
| did away with all the modern conveniences and the "ruling
| class". Do you just assume you'd be able to sit around doing
| nothing or pursue your "creative goals"??? No, you'd be
| gathering firewood and hunting all day, hoping you don't die of
| starvation or freeze to death.
|
| This is such a silly naive stance. I hear it all the time and
| it sounds so childish. I assume it's some Marxist trope young
| people pick up from college sociology class and think they
| sound smart. What you want is a class of plebs doing the manual
| labor for you so you don't have to do be a "worker". Someone
| has to do the shit work, just not an elitist like you right?
|
| My suggestion to you is to find an actual purpose and stop
| stewing in your hateful anti-humanist outlook. Having kids can
| be that purpose, but you could actually just go out and do
| something to be helpful to other humans too.
| testacct22 wrote:
| > What do you think society would look like if you just did
| away with all the modern conveniences and the "ruling class".
|
| You're drawing an association the ruling class and modern
| conveniences. Those are two incredibly different things.
|
| I have a really hard time believing that because a small
| group of people have a disgusting amount of wealth, somehow
| modern conveniences are "divined" from that
| DrThunder wrote:
| They're not. Someone HAS to work to provide basic
| necessities like food, electricity, heat, emergency
| services etc.
|
| What you want is for those plebs to provide that to you,
| while you essentially become the new ruling class that sits
| around benefiting off the working peasants.
|
| I love how you hardcore Marxists only take the good parts
| of what you say while conveniently leaving out the guy
| that's gonna be wallowing in the ditch for you.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > This means all of your welfare programs and retirement
| programs will not have enough people in the younger
| generation to pay into them and support them.
|
| So step 1 for sustainability: remove said programs, as the
| alternative is either A) acknowledging they are just a
| pyramidal scheme or B) removing individual freedoms and
| forcing people to have children they don't want to have, just
| to support the programs you want to have.
| DrThunder wrote:
| Step 3, don't enforce your borders or immigration laws and
| bring in a "replacement" population.
|
| You're right, they are pyramid schemes. Which is why I
| think it's dangerous to put important programs like this in
| the government's hands and make your population reliant on
| them.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| "Breeder" is a slur, so I'm way less likely to hear that word
| and think the utterer is on an even keel.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Ditto "normie".
| rcme wrote:
| To me, there is more to having children than breeding. Having
| children is something that, generally, ages well. You see your
| children grow, become adults, start their careers, start their
| own families, etc. You find new satisfaction and joy as your
| children age and progress in life.
|
| Compare this to a child-free lifestyle. I know many child-free
| people. Fundamentally, their lives at 50 are not so different
| than their lives at 30. The main differences are they have more
| money, but they're also fatter, uglier, have less energy, and
| are more jaded. The law of marginal utility dictates that,
| while they are still happy, they enjoy their life less over
| time.
|
| My decision to have children was less about breeding and more
| about not living an ever-shittier version of my late 20s life.
| solardev wrote:
| Are parents skinnier, more beautiful, more energetic, and
| less jaded at 50? I think that's just aging in general, and
| would apply to both parents and not. Anyway, that line aside,
| I think people are just pretty different and find different
| paths to fulfillment through life, even if it's not always
| obvious from the outside.
|
| Personal anecdote only: My life at nearly 40 is a
| tremendously better version of anything before it, even my
| 20s. No drama, way more peace of mind, little to no job
| stress, some disposal income, many hobbies both old and new,
| and most importantly... time. I'm not constantly focusing on
| the needs of kids, just what my partner and I feel like doing
| (both in the instant and in life in general).
|
| I lost my job recently and feel great. Time to breathe and
| regather, without having to worry about making kids homeless
| or moving them outside of their school system. Don't wake up
| to crying babies and come home to shouting matches and
| needing to cook for 4. No homework help, just learning
| whatever we want to. Or taking the night to just relax and
| watch TV, try a new board game, go out somewhere new, take a
| new class, spend time in nature. It's pretty great. Every
| time we see or hear about someone else's kids, we feel
| absolutely sure in our choice -- not that we ever doubted it
| to begin with.
|
| Far from feeling meaningless, I get to pursue work and
| hobbies that bring fulfillment, because they're well
| considered and taken for want, not need, and not dependent on
| the financial or time constraints of someone else.
|
| It's only shittier if your stop growing. At this age I'm
| still contemplating a new degree, making new friends,
| evaluating new careers and cities (and frankly lifestyles),
| all with the financial resources and mental and emotional
| maturity I never had in my 20s. It's pretty great, and it was
| the exact outcome I hoped for. I knew I didn't want kids as
| early as my early teens, and got a vasectomy in by mid 20s.
| Both turned out to be terrific decisions.
|
| Probably this sounds selfish. In truth I've always really
| valued community, and spend most of my adult life working in
| nonprofits and mission driven orgs, along with making a ton
| of friends all over the world. I love people, just prefer
| adults with their own interests rather than kids that I have
| to groom into something. The idea of living vicariously
| through them has no appeal to me (as someone subjected to the
| same from my own parents, in a nearly joyless childhood).
|
| Another big reason I didn't want to create children (as
| opposed to adopting) is that there are way more than enough
| Americans already, each of whom consumes dramatically more
| resources than a child raided elsewhere. From a social and
| global standpoint it's not really sustainable, and probably
| quite likely apocalyptic, to keep having kids without really
| having a plan for their future in regards to climate and
| democracy, both of which are in rapid decline. That seems
| more selfish to me than not having them at all. Adoption
| seemed like an accept middle ground, but my partner didn't
| want kids (adopted or not) so I didn't pursue it.
|
| Are there people who just settle into a routine after 30,
| never really changing much again? Sure, but that could happen
| with or without kids. That's up to you to prevent, as a
| parent or not. But I know more happy childfree couples than I
| do parents. Maybe it's a self selecting crowd. The happy
| couples probably don't want to spend time with kids, so we
| find each other. Likewise, the happy parents tend to fade
| from my life and have their own play dates and whatnot. To
| each their own...
| rcme wrote:
| I totally agree that there are too many people, Americans
| or otherwise. Even though I've decided to have children,
| I'm keeping the child count below the replacement rate, and
| I believe doing otherwise is immoral.
|
| That being said, I'm not saying that it's impossible for
| you to have a fulfilling life at 40 years old. My point is
| that, in my experience, 70 year olds with kids seem more
| fulfilled than 70 year olds without. Perhaps that's just a
| reflection of me and my role models.
| solardev wrote:
| I actually do know a few older childfree folks who are
| quite happy with their hobbies and have no regrets, but
| the sample size there is so small as to be worthless. And
| there's probably a sizable generation gap there too,
| since it wasn't always this socially acceptable to not
| have kids (especially women). We probably won't see the
| societal impacts for another few decades.
|
| But statistics aside, I think there is also a deliberate
| tradeoff there in terms of optimizing for the present vs
| the future. Some folks think of children as an investment
| for their future, someone to take care of them and
| provide companionship when they're older... but often at
| the cost of surrendering several decades of their mid-
| life for child rearing.
|
| Conversely, for those who don't want kids, some of us
| choose to frontload our life's pursuits towards the prime
| middle years instead, traveling and doing stuff and
| meeting new people etc. while we're still physically
| healthy mentally sharp. Some chronic illness is always
| around the corner, and being stuck with disabilities in a
| nursing home, with or without kids, doesn't really
| excite.
|
| Not having kids means planning for the future is a bit
| different, not just in finances but also risks and costs.
| We can choose to make a planned exit at some point
| without that decision being blocked by next of kin,
| opting for some happy accident doing something fun (space
| travel? free solo climbing? or just medication). I'd much
| rather shave off a decade or two of my life if that means
| a higher quality of life for the preceding decades...
| quality, not quantity :) Even without something that
| drastic, planning for retirement looks very different
| when you have no college funds or weddings to save for.
| Even homeownership (which is largely out of reach for my
| generation anyway) ceases to be as important a
| consideration. You can live more fully in the present
| time, instead of forever optimizing for some future state
| that may or may not ever come.
|
| And that's to say nothing of where society will be in
| 40-50 years... probably not gonna be pretty, lol, and not
| something I'd want to subject kids (or myself) to unless
| we make drastic improvements.
|
| In the meantime, though, what we have is the here and
| now. Might as well live it now instead of worrying about
| living it someday later.
| hdhdhsjsbdh wrote:
| I can't help but feel that your reductive description of
| child-free people says more about how you see your own
| choices than it does about theirs. Surely a sufficiently-
| motivated child-free person can use their advantages wrt time
| and money to not be fat, ugly, and jaded. More time for
| exercise, more money for travel, etc. And there are plenty of
| people with kids who are fat, ugly, low-energy, and jaded -
| I'd argue that number taken proportionally is probably even
| higher than it is for people who chose not to have kids,
| provided they made that choice consciously and they take
| initiative in life to make meaning out of it.
| rcme wrote:
| Whether or not someone can use their time to not be fat,
| not be ugly, etc. is irrelevant. The could have done those
| same things in their early 20s and been less fat and less
| ugly. My point is that as you age, without kids, most
| peoples' options for spending time is the same subset of
| things they could do in their late twenties and early
| thirties, except they will do those things worse as they
| age.
|
| Is travel at 50 really fundamentally different than travel
| at 30? Other than having a bit more money, my opinion is
| not really. In many ways, travel at 30 is better, even with
| less money.
| jolmg wrote:
| > My point is that as you age, without kids, most
| peoples' options for spending time is the same subset of
| things they could do in their late twenties and early
| thirties, except they will do those things worse as they
| age.
|
| They wouldn't be limited to options that don't build. You
| can have children and build a family, but you can also
| choose to dedicate your resources to building a business,
| or a skill, or knowledge, or whatever. Doesn't matter
| that you lose energy as you age and make lesser
| contributions, because you're kind of transforming it
| into something more persistent that you value. That could
| be a family, but it doesn't have to be.
|
| > Is travel at 50 really fundamentally different than
| travel at 30? Other than having a bit more money, my
| opinion is not really. In many ways, travel at 30 is
| better, even with less money.
|
| Even with relation to travel, maybe you dream of having a
| deeper understanding of one or more cultures or pieces of
| history and each travel contributes a bit to that.
|
| It seems like you think the point of traveling is just to
| enjoy the travel itself, a momentary pleasure, but I
| don't see the point of travel if you return in the same
| state as when you left. It's only when something changes,
| when a contribution to something was made, that a travel
| was worthwhile. I don't think that ability to contribute
| to something (interpersonal relations, business,
| knowledge, etc.) is all that much affected between being
| 30 and 50.
| golemiprague wrote:
| [dead]
| scarface_74 wrote:
| > _He_ became a dad at 51.
|
| Now what are the chances that a woman would get pregnant at 51?
|
| It is what it is. While I'm an only child and will never have
| biological grandchildren (married and by choice), my aunt who is
| 82 years old has been able to see her two daughters get married
| and have six kids and between those six kids have four kids.
|
| The tradeoffs are real.
|
| > This time, quitting her job led to a debut solo album,
| television appearances and sold-out shows
|
| And for every one of her, there are thousands of singers in
| obscurity that are probably just as talented making $.0006 per
| play on Spotify and doing free gigs for tips at the local
| nightclub.
|
| Life is what it is, but not meeting those deadlines have real
| consequences. I'm no wunderkind. While I was on a perfect
| timeline up until I was 32 - graduated at 22, house and married
| at 28, etc - it's probably because I did feel pressure that I had
| to start over between 32-34 (2006).
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36377647
|
| So, yeah I was a late bloomer and while please play the smallest
| fiddle for me:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966
|
| But, myself and my best friend since high school were on similar
| paths through high school and college - top of our classes (we
| went to different schools), went to the same college on academic
| scholarships, etc. I know what the road not taken looks like. He
| got married at 26 and been married for 20+ years and didn't give
| up half his stuff because of divorce at 32. He captured the
| upside from real estate and didn't make as many dumb decisions
| before he was 35.
|
| Again, I'm not jealous nor have I ever been.
|
| While he has literally 6 times more saved than I do for
| retirement and he is one day younger than I am, I made the best
| of my situation of being an empty nester and a remote worker so I
| don't have to retire to enjoy the life of a retired person (see
| the second link). You play with the cards you are dealt.
|
| I told him a long time ago that I realize that we aren't on the
| same road and I'm always pushing for him. We are both in a good
| place now.
| thinkingkong wrote:
| Perhaps I'm jaded but taking life advice from the WSJ seems a
| little odd. First of all, most of this piece is self-acceptance
| repackaged as 'everything is alright' style thinking. Everything
| is not alright for many people. Things are objectively worse for
| a _lot_ of folks and suggesting things are just meant to be is
| just lazy.
|
| Self-acceptance though is totally good to practice. I would go
| back in time and do more work on myself so I could accept the
| good things in my life faster with more integrity. But I can't,
| so I have no choice to but to accept that maybe I'll be a
| slightly older father. I can't actually change that but I also am
| not under any illusions that being an older parent would be
| better, all else being equal. That's just absurd. All else _isn
| 't_ equal though. I personally think siring a child at ~50 is
| fine but only if you think you'd be a better parent.
| spacemadness wrote:
| The WSJ just want the plebs to stop complaining so wall street
| can keep the profits to themselves.
| nextworddev wrote:
| Self acceptance is a decent advice - it's emphasized in
| Shintoism, Buddhism, Stoicism, etc.
|
| Obviously though, suggest a better option than self acceptance
| if you know one.
| sublinear wrote:
| > I personally think siring a child at ~50 is fine but only if
| you think you'd be a better parent.
|
| I think most people would be far better parents if they waited
| until at least around 30.
| leoedin wrote:
| Some of these examples are great - a pattern I see so much with
| my parent's generation is that they get locked into the same
| pattern of life. The same group of people, the same routines and
| the same hobbies for decades. I think that it's the natural path
| as we age - and you have to actively make choices to fight it if
| you don't want that.
|
| However, there's only some aspects of life in which you truly
| have choice later in life. The cold hard truth of biology
| (especially female biology) is that probabilities of successfully
| having children start declining pretty quickly at a certain
| point.
|
| And if you don't start saving for retirement early enough? You
| won't have a pension. If you don't buy a house when you're
| (relatively) young? At some point you'll find it very hard to get
| a mortgage.
|
| It's great to write a relatively shallow piece about how you
| don't need to hit milestones so early - but that's a symptom of
| an underlying system which is increasingly disenfranchising young
| people and not giving them the opportunity to have ownership in
| society.
| liftsh wrote:
| Expectations are important and are missing from the equation
| here. Not everyone needs children, a fat pension or a large
| house to be fulfilled. It is also perfectly fine to be with the
| same group of people, have the same routines and the same
| hobbies for your entire life.
|
| The less you want, the fewer milestones you need to hit.
|
| I used to think my dad was boring because he never really
| wanted to do anything. Worked the same mid-level job for 30+
| years, had no friends--just took care of us. A couple years
| back he passed away, smile on his face. Told me he did
| everything he ever wanted. Told me not to work so hard.
|
| I think about this all the time whenever I'm stressed about
| claiming my "ownership in society."
| wnolens wrote:
| My dad can be described the exact same way (though still
| alive).
|
| I didn't inherent his tranquil mind. My life just looks so
| much different than his.
| rounakdatta wrote:
| Hard agree. There's this amazing tweet I want to share on
| this context: https://twitter.com/Nithin0dha/status/165555793
| 6868102146?t=...
| leoedin wrote:
| That's a good point. Trying to attain milestones because of
| some absorbed societal pressure is a recipe for unhappiness.
|
| But that's not really what this article says. If they had
| someone who said "I thought I needed kids, then I didn't and
| I'm totally happy with it" that would be aligned with that
| message. But to have someone who says "I didn't have kids
| until I was 50" is a bit dishonest, because biological
| realities make that almost impossible (for women, anyway).
|
| It's really uplifting to show lots of examples of people who
| took a different path and found happiness in a less
| conventional way. It's less uplifting to show lots of
| examples of people who did the conventional stuff, but later
| in life, because statistically that is unlikely to be
| possible for most people who leave those things until later.
| It feels more like building false hope.
| comfypotato wrote:
| The article presents kids as an option after 50 for men,
| not women, and that's reasonable. It's a popular thing to
| do to draw similarities between decreases in fertility
| between men and women, but it's not helpful. There's a
| plethora of risks that increase for men, but they all go
| from "negligable" to "slightly less negligable".
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _The less you want, the fewer milestones you need to hit._
|
| Doesn't feel like a good answer to the complaint that young
| people today can't possibly hit all the milestones their
| parents did, and their grandparents took for granted.
|
| The same amount of life, the same amount of effort and
| dedication, in a seemingly improving and more advanced world,
| still buys you less life milestones than it did for your
| elders. If anything, this sounds like a social analogue of a
| textbook case of inflation.
| dahwolf wrote:
| The mythical "middle class on easy mode" of boomers isn't
| coming back, it should be considered a historical anomaly.
| A vacuum in time where post-WW2 all but the US was in
| ruins, giving it economic free reign for a few decades.
|
| That being said, I admit it's not as simple as
| international competition only. Quite a few life supporting
| institutes (healthcare, education, housing) are downright
| dysfunctional for various other reasons.
| sokoloff wrote:
| In 1970, a US couple might have an "imaginarily fair" claim
| on 1/100Mth of America.
|
| Now, that same age couple might only have a claim on about
| 1/167Mth of America. That's about 40% less land or share of
| other inherently-constrained resources per American. Other
| countries have had more pressure on their populations.
|
| It's no surprise that "buying a big lot with a freestanding
| house" was a lot more attainable when there were 40% fewer
| people chasing that dream. Part of it is inescapable math.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Huh, I never thought about it this way. I'm not 100%
| convinced this is valid math, but I can't find any
| obvious fault with it. Thanks, I have something to think
| through.
|
| EDIT: in the 50 years since 1970s the US economy wasn't
| still - technology made huge leaps across all industries,
| and lots of wealth has been created. One would think this
| would offset the population growth, but it seems that it
| didn't.
| itairall wrote:
| Expectations go both ways too. Literally like an itch, the
| more you scratch the more it will itch after the most
| transient moment of relief.
|
| People tend to foolishly believe that their wants and desires
| are in some static container that once filled will lead to
| satiation as opposed to the reality that the more the
| container is filled, the bigger the container gets and at the
| same time it gets harder and harder to add to the container.
| testacct22 wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Can you please not post in the flamewar style? It's not what
| this site is for, and destroys what it is for, so we're trying
| for something else here.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the
| intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I think it's a good mentality for a lot of things, education for
| example, or starting a business. It's kind of terrible that we've
| decided that learning ends at 25 and a lot of people feel bad or
| out of place when they attend university at 40. Makes no sense at
| all especially in the current age.
|
| But having kids is the one thing where age matters. If you have a
| kid at 50, there's a good chance you are going to need assistance
| when they're barely in their twenties. I've had a few friends
| like this whose parents were very old, and they needed to take
| care of them when they didn't even have their own stuff together.
| I think it's better to either have kids early or not at all.
| glitcher wrote:
| I was a bit of a late bloomer when it comes to career, and the
| beginning was very challenging to land my first junior developer
| position. I'll never forget the guy who hired me commenting
| something along the lines of "it's unfortunate you didn't start
| earlier, you could've gone so much further", or something
| similar. He ended up being a great mentor, but that comment
| always bothered me and is the thing I remember most about him.
|
| Now several years later and I'm very happy where I'm at. And I've
| come to the realization, if I had gone directly into CS in
| college, there is a fairly good chance I may have gotten burned
| out by now and moved on to something completely different. So the
| "right on time" idea resonates with me, but YMMV.
| dsQTbR7Y5mRHnZv wrote:
| https://archive.is/QpZix
| mo_42 wrote:
| I think this piece of writing is quite worrisome.
|
| I feel like the message of the text is: It's the right time when
| you feel like it is.
|
| Certainly, true for many things in life.
|
| Having children later in life has risks for mother and child.
|
| It sounds more like a rationalization because the current
| situation is not in favor for having children.
|
| But I cannot accept this feel-good writing and leaving out the
| real issues that need to be fixed like student loans, housing
| etc.
| x3874 wrote:
| Nobody forces you to spend 200k on a student loan, and people
| which nonestly and dutyfully paid back theirs -or never applied
| for one!- shouldn't pay off yours. I am pretty sure even in the
| US there are many well-earning people that didn't went to
| college. It is just that it is seen as a must b/c marketing
| something works with most people. One top-important thing in
| life you need are connections, solves many things.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > there are many well-earning people that didn't went to
| college
|
| and there are many more of those who have much weaker access
| to opportunities because of no college degree.
| quesera wrote:
| As an argument against investing in education, this does not
| succeed.
| paxys wrote:
| Having a child when you are not ready for one is a lot worse
| for the physical and mental health of everyone involved.
| sublinear wrote:
| I can't agree with this more. Starting a family should not be
| taken lightly as some kind of whimsical selfish destiny.
|
| When people have kids later, it's because they're not ready.
| Some people are never ready because they are needed more
| elsewhere. Family will consume all of your free time, money,
| and effort. It's a big sacrifice.
| aetherson wrote:
| I had my first child when I was 38. Not as part of a well-
| conceived strategy, just, like, that's how life turned out. My
| wife was 33.
|
| All in all, I'm happy that we did end up having kids, but if I
| could go back through my life and rearrange things in some
| godlike way that let me still marry the same person and have
| the same children, I'd definitely have kids earlier.
|
| I feel like it's hard in my 40s to have the same energy that I
| did 10 years ago, and raising kids is definitely something you
| have to pour energy into. Also, my mother died a year and a
| half ago, in her mid-70s, and I really feel like both she and
| my kids would have benefited from having longer together. My
| father is 80 now and while he remains healthy, it seems very
| unlikely that he'll actually see his grandchildren grow up. My
| father-in-law died when his first grandchild was an infant.
|
| I think it'd also be nice to have my late 40s as a time when I
| could really heavily concentrate on my career because my kids
| were old enough to handle a lot of the small day-to-day things
| by themselves, since this feels like probably my prime earning
| time.
|
| None of this is stuff that makes me say, "I screwed up, I
| should have made any sacrifice to have it different." Overall,
| life is great. But if you're 28 and you're thinking, "I could
| go either way -- wait a decade to have kids or have them now,"
| I'd personally recommend "have them now."
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| As 35 and a parent of two young children, I strongly agree.
| It's a message I'd send back to my 23 year old self, even
| though I also know that at 23, I wouldn't believe it: if you
| feel you'd like to have kids, have them now. Those extra
| years didn't change me _that_ much, but having kids at 23
| would mean regaining most of the autonomy by the time I 'm
| 40, instead of 50. In terms of energy and prospects of doing
| anything interesting with it, the difference between 40 and
| 50 seems much bigger than that between 23 and 33.
|
| Alas, parenthood experience is both rewarding and challenging
| in ways that are near-impossible to properly communicate to
| non-parents. Perhaps that's for the better, as otherwise
| humanity would've gone extinct long ago.
| danenania wrote:
| Going from kids at 35 to kids at 23 sounds like a bridge
| too far to me. Your points about having kids later are fair
| enough, but kids at 23 basically means giving up any
| opportunity to have a life of your own as an adult. You're
| going from being a kid yourself directly to being a parent.
|
| To each their own, but I doubt this would be a good idea
| for most people (or their kids). 28-32 range seems like a
| more reasonable compromise. Then you at least get your 20s
| (or most of them) to have some fun, figure yourself out,
| get your career going, have a failed relationship or two,
| etc. before taking on 1000% more responsibility and
| limiting yourself in _many_ different ways.
|
| Also, just speaking for myself personally, I'm 38 (with a 4
| year old) and actually feel healthier and more energetic
| now than I did during my 20s due to taking diet, exercise,
| sleep, and other health/lifestyle things much more
| seriously. I don't know if I'll continue to feel this way
| into my 40s, but I guess my point is that age definitely
| isn't the only factor--I'm not even sure it's the most
| important.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Fair enough, and you're likely right that 23 is a bit too
| early. I'm writing this from a perspective of being 35,
| with a 4 year old and an almost-2 year old. It's fine
| now, and I too feel OK in terms of energy levels - but I
| also fear that, by the time the kids grow up enough for
| my wife and I to regain some degree of autonomy, neither
| of us will be strong enough to make good use of it. But
| maybe it's just me panicking a little.
| klondike_klive wrote:
| Agree with this, had my kid at the age of 44, exactly ten
| years older than my dad was when I was born. My parents both
| died in the last couple of years and although I have some
| photos of them with my son, their only grandchild, it saddens
| me that they never got to spend more time together. My
| mother's situation was especially cruel as she got Alzheimers
| and declined pretty quickly - went into a home two months
| before the first lockdown.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| And it is worth pointing out that it may be safer to have a
| kid at 33 today then it was at 26 fifty years ago. People
| were smoking, the air was dirtier, a lot of medical imaging
| was rarer, etc.
| mo_42 wrote:
| There is certainly an age-dependent point of maximum
| utility for the family.
|
| It consists not only of physical health but also economic
| stability and other factors.
|
| 33 seems totally fine. But generally people tend to be a
| little more cautious for pregnancies after 35 (mothers's
| age).
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Having kids later in life keeps the total population smaller
| while still allowing the same number of people to exist
| spread out over time. This has a theoretical positive effect
| of reducing crowding. Would you rather your children have the
| opportunity to live in a house, or be permanent
| apartment/condo dwellers?
| soligern wrote:
| [dead]
| mi_lk wrote:
| > Having children later in life has risks for mother and child.
|
| Say more?
| mo_42 wrote:
| I'm not a medical professional but webmd.com seems like a ok
| source for the general public:
|
| https://www.webmd.com/baby/guide/pregnancy-after-35
| auntienomen wrote:
| Well known higher rates of illness, death, genetic
| abnormalities, you name it. Only benefit to waiting is you
| have more cash.
| [deleted]
| willcipriano wrote:
| > He became a dad at 51.
|
| In both the stories about men having children or dating later in
| life the age of the woman wasn't included for some reason.
| inkyoto wrote:
| Men can remain fertile well into their seventies and even into
| the eighties, with occasional random stories of a man in his
| nineties impregnating a woman. It does not happen the other way
| round, unfortunately.
| tekla wrote:
| Well I suppose its for the same reason why the women in the
| article also didn't have the men in their lives mentioned/named
|
| Or did you not read past the first 2 paragraphs?
| willcipriano wrote:
| Everyone knows a man can get a woman pregnant at 51, what
| would be surprising is a woman having a successful pregnancy
| without complications at that age. If that's what happened
| why not include it, if not and she was younger, I fear women
| make takeaway a false message here.
| [deleted]
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Yes but there is a real biological timeline for having
| children that is different between men and women.
| ohthatsnotright wrote:
| I imagine they were more interested in the age of the partner
| as men can produce offspring until very late in their life
| (see Al Pacino for a recent example) whereas women do undergo
| some physical changes that make them incapable after a
| certain age. If it was a 51 year old man but a 20 year old
| woman, that's a very different story than both of them being
| well over 40.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Because it would derail the discussion when they point out she
| is almost half his age
| bluepod4 wrote:
| idk how much it would derail the discussion. The first
| paragraph said specifically "she couldn't get pregnant" after
| trying for five years, indicating fertility problems.
| willcipriano wrote:
| If she was in her thirties then that would've turned the
| discussion into East Palestine. If she was in her fifties
| it would've proved their point better than the man's story
| and they would've used hers instead.
| bluepod4 wrote:
| > would've turned the discussion into East Palestine
|
| I guess you're right about that. There's so many
| illogical people on the internet without reading
| comprehension. I thought you speaking about a specific
| kind of discussion.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| which could just as much be a him problem at that age (or
| all his life, but compounded by his age for different sperm
| viability problems)
| bluepod4 wrote:
| Possibly but not likely. It specifically said "she"
| couldn't get pregnant. Not "they" couldn't get pregnant.
|
| My interpretation seems to be the most correct one based
| on the juxtaposition. He finally found the "right one"
| but "she couldn't get pregnant."
|
| Of course, he could have lied or not looked into his own
| fertility issues. Being skeptical should always be a
| given when reading articles like this.
|
| But also, what you're saying goes against what many other
| people here have been commenting (i.e. "it's well known
| that men can have children late in life").
|
| And let's say that he did have fertility issues. My point
| would still stand, the mentioning of her age wouldn't
| derail the discussion. (Which I think you're agreeing
| with)
| yieldcrv wrote:
| okay.
|
| the counterpoints to that are that everything you
| observed are based on pervasive assumptions. which would
| be reflected in what everyone else wrote. which are
| perpetuated by the same health professionals and
| individuals that don't look into men's fertility
| realities first.
|
| but for example, why do we know its just "she couldn't
| get pregnant", were their other partners? was there an
| accident in the past? was one of her ovaries taken out in
| a procedure? the article doesn't say, the only thing for
| us to assume is that they tried and tried and tried and
| eventually one egg stuck.
|
| mentioning her age _shouldn 't_ derail a discussion
| whether she was 25 or 43 or other. that part we agree on,
| or at least I agree on, I think you're suggesting that
| she was closer in age and "therefore it would be okay",
| which is different than my observation entirely.
| bluepod4 wrote:
| My point was that if you take the article at face-value
| and believe that the journalist did her due diligence and
| that the man in the article was telling the truth, then
| you can _presume_ (not assume) that the woman had
| fertility issues so her age wouldn't matter regardless.
|
| Also, you must have missed the paragraph in my last
| comment where I acknowledged it does make sense to be
| skeptical when reading articles like this, which is what
| you're doing in recognizing that people make assumptions
| and then those assumptions pervade culture, media, etc
| etc.
|
| Yes, I get that men have fertility issues too. Yes,
| there's been a history of women being blamed for
| fertility issues. Yes, the medical community used to do
| XYZ and still does ABC today when dealing with fertility
| issues, etc etc.
|
| Yes, I know all of those things and I still have the same
| opinion. Nothing in those first 2 paragraphs of the
| article set off any BS alarms for me.
|
| If you want to be one of those "don't believe everything
| you read on the internet" or "anybody can write anything
| on Wikipedia" proselytizers, then that's your
| prerogative. I've outgrown that and that seems to be
| where we disagree.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| These types of articles always try to put a positive spin on life
| just getting harder for many.
|
| Less people are able to move out and start families due to
| student loans and wages not keeping up with cost of living.
|
| This isn't a matter of 'well , in time you'll have everything you
| want'. It's more like you may never have what your parents had.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| What you might have that your parents didn't have is a longer
| life expectancy. Not for sure, but it is a good idea to
| consider the deadlines in your head.
| vinyl7 wrote:
| Its not worth living longer if life sucks.
|
| Deadline is early 30s for kids and 50 to buy a house
| xwdv wrote:
| Do _not_ have kids before buying a house. This will almost
| certainly guarantee you'll never reach escape velocity to
| buy a house if you have standard income levels.
|
| Also, it doesn't actually matter much when you have kids.
| As long as you have a fertile partner and sufficient
| resources you can basically have them whenever.
|
| The time to have kids depends on what parenting style you
| want. If you want a more hands off approach where you
| mostly just prevent kids from making stupid decisions while
| they decide their own course in life, it's fine, perhaps
| advantageous being an older parent. If you prefer though to
| micromanage your kid and learn about life with them as you
| go along and get in arguments with them about the best way
| to do things, being younger is better.
| WalterSear wrote:
| Fwiw, life expectancy is dropping in the US, in part due to
| lifestyle choices, but also due to deaths of despair. The
| increase in deaths of despair is indicative of adversity in
| the greater population - not just those who essentially
| commit suicide via drugs or alcohol.
|
| It's dropped by much yet, but I anticipate life expectancy to
| drop further - and become more significant in relation to
| previous generations as economic adversity increases, also
| making adequate medical care harder to come by.
| darkclouds wrote:
| A positive spin but arguably deceitful spin on the state of
| affairs in the US and UK.
|
| https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2023/uk-drops-new-gl...
|
| "A new analysis of global rankings of life expectancy over
| seven decades shows the UK has done worse than all G7 countries
| except the USA."
|
| "According to the OECD, state the researchers, the UK recently
| became the second most economically unequal country in Europe
| after Bulgaria."
|
| Me personally, I dont even think I'll be reaching retirement
| age if I continue to live in the UK, and thats not through not
| wanting to work, but thats because of the how the UK has
| become. Everything has just got too expensive living in the UK
| now.
|
| More people died during the period of time energy prices rose
| rapidly recently than during the covid pandemic in the UK, but
| you cant point this stuff out to people in the street because
| they'll have a go back, a form of denial of the situation in
| the UK.
|
| Its become very dog eat dog, quality of work in decline but
| costs still going up.
|
| Crime in my experience is also off the scale and the attitude
| of the police now means I no longer report crimes to them.
|
| So yes this sort of article is portrayed as positive spin but
| is in fact deceitful spin.
| [deleted]
| totallywrong wrote:
| I've noticed the same thing, though I already left quite a
| while ago. It saddens me because when I first moved there the
| country provided a lot of opportunity and I grew a ton. I
| used to really like living there, in London specifically.
| 86415632 wrote:
| > More people died during the period of time energy prices
| rose rapidly recently than during the covid pandemic in the
| UK
|
| Do you have a source for this? I was looking at
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1115077/monthly-
| deaths-i... which made it seem like that wasn't the case.
| I've seen https://www.economist.com/graphic-
| detail/2023/05/10/expensiv... which shows that more people
| died from high energy prices than from covid, but only since
| energy prices went up, not in total.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Me personally, I dont even think I'll be reaching
| retirement age if I continue to live in the UK, and thats not
| through not wanting to work, but thats because of the how the
| UK has become. Everything has just got too expensive living
| in the UK now.
|
| Anecdotally, seems there's a lot of British and European
| expats here in the Valley and they don't seem too keen on
| returning. We've been getting a lot of international
| applicants (but work from home was supposed to mean Europeans
| could avoid moving to the "dangerous" US but work for
| American companies?).
|
| Post 2016 the messaging from most commonwealth countries (UK,
| Canada, Australia) seemed to be that they were going to be
| the ones benefiting from a brain drain of Americans leaving
| the country. Canada was supposed to become an "AI Superpower"
| and Universities in the UK were supposed to be where
| innovation was going to happen next due to the perceived
| hostility of the United States to foreign talent. I recall
| someone pitching the "Silicon Roundabout" and that Cambridge
| and Oxford were going to be the new Stanford and MIT.
|
| It's interesting, in retrospective, to see how wrong these
| predictions were. Top destination for UK nationals in
| Academia was, and still is... the US [0].
|
| [0] http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-
| bra...
| angarg12 wrote:
| I'm a relatively new immigrant to the US, Seattle area,
| spaniard but moved from the UK. I'm actually extremely
| tempted to move back to Spain and my experience in the US
| so far has been very negative.
|
| Very high cost of living, inflation, uncertainty due to
| layoffs, salaries down due to a combination of lack of
| raises and stocks going down, housing price still
| increasing despite the high interest rates, which have made
| real estate even more unaffordable. To top things up the
| green card priority dates for my immigrant class have gone
| back, so I have even more uncertainty of when I will
| achieve permanent resident status.
|
| I don't know the circumstances of the people that you
| describe, but Europe is looking way more attractive than
| the US. The whole reason why I left Spain was lack of jobs
| and low salaries, but Covid and remote seem to have
| incredibly improved the situation (I know from second hand
| accounts).
|
| The only reason I'm holding on is a combination of sunken
| cost fallacy and an unjustified optimism in the future. It
| took me years and tons of effort to move my family to this
| country, so I'm not ready to give up just yet. I'm also
| aware than my bad experience is in part due to random
| circumstances, and if the situation improves (both for me
| personally, and for the country as a whole) my experience
| will be different.
|
| Still, I give it a 50%/50% chance that in 3 years I will
| hate my situation here, give up and move back home.
| totallywrong wrote:
| If you're open to it I feel like the sweet spot right
| now, specially for Spanish speakers, is to work remotely
| from somewhere in LATAM, earning in dollars or euros and
| spending in local currency.
| throw_nbvc1234 wrote:
| "inequality is bad for you so go move someplace where you
| can contribute to making inequality even worse for the
| locals"
| totallywrong wrote:
| How is it bad to bring foreign money into a country and
| spend it on the local economy?
| c_o_n_v_e_x wrote:
| >Anecdotally, seems there's a lot of British and European
| expats here in the Valley and they don't seem too keen on
| returning.
|
| Anecdotally, as an American expat in SE Asia and Australia
| for the past 14 years, I've NEVER met a British expat who's
| keen to return. Tax, crime, weather, etc.
| [deleted]
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| The UK shot itself in the foot _hard_ with Brexit, and has
| become a quite undesirable place for many for that reason.
| Doesn 't mean that the US is necessarily doing great.
| Lacerda69 wrote:
| I still dont get why they did it. To me it was the most
| stupid thing any country did in my lifetime and am still
| mad about it.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| Because reactionaries successfully channeled discontent
| about declining material conditions into a reductive
| scapegoating of the EU and faced no meaningful opposition
| from what is now a center-right Labor Party, post Blair.
| adventured wrote:
| Which part of the US? It's so dramatically different from
| city to city, state to state.
|
| Software developer or equivalent income capable tech job,
| remote, university city/town. It's a fairly easy set-up
| (unless you're already very rooted somewhere). They're
| relatively inexpensive to live in (you can actually buy a
| real house at $100k per year!), and there are tons of
| safe choices (specifically with a low murder rate).
| Primary downside is far weaker food/nightlife/etc. vs
| what you get in major cities.
| pessimizer wrote:
| What did Brexit do to the UK, and why is the rest of
| Europe nearly as bad off?
| onos wrote:
| From the lens of economics, EU doesn't seem to be doing
| great either.
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/80ace07f-3acb-40cb-9960-8bb4a4
| 4fd...
| netbioserror wrote:
| Cost of living isn't going up. The value of our money is going
| down, and real wages are stagnant. Technology is, at it has
| always been, deflationary, but we see none of those benefits.
|
| Basically, the typical process of getting iterative raises has
| become fighting to tread water. Saving cash or cash-derived
| assets is somewhat meaningless because you're guaranteed a
| future where the savings buy a fraction of what they do when
| you put it away.
| skulk wrote:
| No. The cost of living IS going up. Corporations bought a
| huge chunk of the housing stock and have been fixing the
| prices and squeezing renters. Everything else you said is
| still true, though.
| karaterobot wrote:
| It doesn't feel like life is actually getting harder, it feels
| like people's expectations of what will be given to them is
| just unrealistic. If you bought into the idea that just getting
| a college degree would guarantee a dreamlike future with a
| great job and a house, I don't know what to tell you. There
| were never any promises made to that effect by people who
| mattered. Maybe some vague memory of a TV show or an old movie
| misled you into believing this? In reality, life has always
| been hard, dreams have always been crushed or deferred. But now
| we have instantaneous access to all recorded information, are
| constantly entertained, never get lost, and can travel anywhere
| on the planet in a day.
| neilv wrote:
| I'm repelled by "millennials are choosing experiences over
| things!" which I perceive as disingenuous and/or vapid.
|
| Let people afford a home and family-raising, and without a
| lifetime of student loan debt required for BS jobs.
|
| And stop trying to twist the forced economic exploitation of
| us, to sell us your avocado mindfulness spa package, like a
| gratuitous insult thrown on top of everything else.
| lumb63 wrote:
| I'm not going to argue that reaching traditional life
| milestones isn't harder for a lot of young folks today, but
| that isn't really the focus of the article in my opinion. A lot
| of the folks mentioned are from one or two generations prior,
| and took unconventional paths to get to their present life. A
| lot of wildly successful people say they didn't really start to
| figure life out until their 30s or 40s. I think the spirit of
| the article is "you never know when your time might come".
| mancerayder wrote:
| The point of the article.. (the positive spin as you put it) is
| that one's mental state due to increased wisdom and experienced
| puts one in a better position to achieve or appreciate the
| milestones that may have not worked out at a younger age. Fame
| in the example of the musician, finding appreciation in a
| partner in the older couple, etc.
|
| The message is around things happening in their due course
| rather than in some sort of age-delimited set of phases.
|
| While idealistic, it's more optimistic than the feeling of
| having failed many of us feel as we compare ourselves to
| others.
| rr808 wrote:
| So many people I know in tech have incredibly highly paid jobs,
| much much higher than their parents. That doesn't even include
| the immigrants from much less developed countries.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| The people you know is certainly not a representative sample.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > It's more like you may never have what your parents had.
|
| That's a natural consequence of economic mobility.
|
| It would suck in a different way if everyone always had more
| than their parents in absolute (inflation-adjusted) amounts and
| obviously, not everyone can have more in percentile terms.
| WalterSear wrote:
| Except there's more stuff around, and it's increasingly
| unevenly distributed, not due to disparate effort or ability.
| silisili wrote:
| See also:
|
| https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/average-net-
| worth...
| monero-xmr wrote:
| A friend started as a construction worker in the suburbs at 18
| right out of high school. Now he is 40 and has a general
| contracting firm so large he grew out the local bank - they
| couldn't write him more loans as it centralized risk.
|
| My neighbor was a corporate guy downtown, opened up a brewery
| as a side hustle in a very run down neighborhood, shortly quit
| his corporate job and he has 3 locations now.
|
| I think there is a failure to think outside the prescribed
| paths. There are some with disabilities and trauma that prevent
| them from doing anything but surviving, and I understand that
| and feel for them. But there are plenty - the majority - of
| people who are able bodied and need to invent their own
| futures.
|
| Or maybe just be a victim forever but I don't think that's a
| good outcome.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| That's pretty unusual to graduate college at 18, and then to
| start as a construction worker with a college degree. But my
| anecdote would be my uncle who started as a diesel mechanic
| from a young age. He worked hard all his life but never made
| a lot of money and then died of cancer at 60.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| I meant high school, edited
| diob wrote:
| Aren't these just anecdotes though? What was their
| background? What time period did they do these things? Did
| they have support growing up? A strong network? How many
| other friends or neighbors do you have and what are their
| outcomes? Has anyone failed? Why?
|
| Sorry, but I'll trust the data around economic equality above
| random stranger anecdotes online.
|
| Yeah, I myself am doing wonderful as well, but I'm not so
| narcissistic as to imagine that's some special property of
| "not being a victim".
|
| What a bleak outlook to have of one's fellow man.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Can everyone run their own general contracting firm? Both of
| your examples require workers. Good for the outliers who are
| doing well, but if their employees can't keep up with the
| cost of living that's a problem, right?
| coding123 wrote:
| have you seen the cost to build a building lately?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| In theory, the underlying land value should go down if
| only the cost of construction went up.
| adql wrote:
| Sounds like baseless theory
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > but if their employees can't keep up with the cost of
| living that's a problem, right?
|
| The sad truth is that employees that can't afford the cost
| of living have little leverage and might be replaceable by
| employees that will work for even less (because they have
| to, not because they want to).
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > I think there is a failure to think outside the prescribed
| paths.
|
| because the prescribed paths work for a larger population. it
| doesn't need ingenuity, and less luck. hence why it is
| generic advice.
|
| economies cannot support everyone being an entrepreneur. if
| you want to be a go-getter that's fine. you're in like
| company here. but its dumb or at least disingenuous to think
| of this as a predictably available example for all.
| rnk wrote:
| Great that these people had success. But how many breweries
| are there a town of 10k people, 1 or 2 maybe. These are the
| 1% success stories. The economics doesn't allow each of us to
| open businesses that succeed, there just isn't that much
| demand. Such as amazon wiping out many small stores, before
| that walmart killing small cities downtowns when they built
| one of the edge of town. That doesn't mean there were not
| some other new businesses to be formed, but there's a limit.
| KallDrexx wrote:
| Those two data points are extremely anecdotal and have
| survivorship bias. According to data I can find online, in
| 2021 while 549 breweries opened, 319 closed. As the number of
| breweries has gone up each year, a significant amount of
| closures also occurred. Your neighbor could have easily been
| one of those.
|
| More than 50% of small businesses fail in the first year of
| business according to well published and cited industry data.
| These are all people who tried to "invent their own futures"
| and it did not work out. That also doesn't mean that the
| remaining percentage were successful. Many of them have their
| owners working much more than corporate full time for less
| money then they'd be working on a cushy 9-5 job.
|
| For an opposite anecdote to yours, a family opened up an ice
| cream shop around the corner. They had good business and made
| ok money, but closed after 2 years. Why? Not only was the end
| of the day profit not great, they were heavily sacrificing
| time with their own family in order to run the day to day
| operations. They could have hired more people to handle those
| day to day hurdles, but that would have meant almost no take
| home pay.
|
| We should encourage people to "invent their own futures" but
| we also have to be realistic, because we don't have good
| safety nets for what happens when inventing your future
| fails, which means you have to make your own safety net. It's
| also not always trivial to re-enter corporate gigs after
| you've been doing something else for years, especially if
| closing of your small business has burned you out.
|
| It takes much more than just a good idea to make a small
| business succeed.
| inconceivable wrote:
| "yeah but you might fail and then your life is destroyed"
| is not exactly a new take on the issue.
|
| this is in fact what 99% of people will tell you in real
| life if you try it.
|
| 10 years later those same people will either forget they
| said anything, or pretend they were on your side all along
| if you make it.
| JieJie wrote:
| In my experience with local businesses (alt-weekly
| newspaper for the college / queer bar scene), the same
| people were starting clubs that lasted for a year or two,
| then closed, then they started up a new one. It was about
| trying out a new business plan that may or may not work
| and if it doesn't, clearing the slate and starting over.
|
| The people who succeeded eventually landed on one with
| staying power, and the people who didn't eventually gave
| up. I bring it up to say that a single owner can be
| responsible for multiple business failures, and like you
| say, no one remembers those once you're successful.
| malfist wrote:
| You have to come from money to be able to make a
| succession of failed business ventures before you finally
| hit success
| nickfromseattle wrote:
| The only way to lose is to quit.
|
| I am 36 and working on my 4th company over a period of 16
| years. I've started even more projects that never
| materialized into companies. I worked for 4 years at a
| startup in-between failures. Besides working at the
| startup, I made minimum wage or less (12/16 years).
|
| I'm 4 years into my current company, and things are just
| beginning to work.
| bojo wrote:
| Would you say the same thing if we were talking about
| software startups?
| ideamotor wrote:
| Now: yes. 10 years go: no.
| detourdog wrote:
| or believe it is all going to work out ok. You come in
| with nothing and you leave with nothing.
| jorvi wrote:
| That's not how banks work. They will want you to either
| buy in or put up collateral. You can't just walk into a
| bank, say "here's the detailed plan for my club, please
| give me a $100 000 unsecured loan."
|
| Note that you can buy in via personal debt, but that is
| not "leave with nothing".
| 9659 wrote:
| it depends on the scale. want to start a small cafe in a
| strip mall? if the mall has some unleased space, and is
| having problem filling it, you can cut a deal. my BIL did
| this, and negotiated a 5 year lease for a percent of his
| gross sales. the burger joint took off, and the landlord
| is very happy...he is paying twice the going rate due to
| success.
|
| the landlord took the risk, could have been $0.
|
| second hand restaurant equipment can be bought at a
| discount. food suppliers offer credit, 30 - 60 days.
|
| if you are willing to put in the work, there are ways to
| get started other than borrowing money from a bank.
| detourdog wrote:
| Nobody likes the pull your self up by your own boot
| straps advice, but it works. I know many people who
| started with nothing but being the best right hand person
| they could. They ended up with the business one way or
| another when the owner retired. I personally can think of
| 3 like that without trying.
|
| The rule of incorporation in the US is to minimize the
| cost of failure to the individual.
| [deleted]
| jjulius wrote:
| One can communicate that kind of concern while
| simultaneously remaining on their side...
|
| Edit, regarding OP's flagged response: Wow. Hope you have
| a nice day.
| inconceivable wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| DangitBobby wrote:
| They were on your side all along, otherwise they wouldn't
| have bothered with the uncomfortable conversation about
| how they don't think your idea is going to be successful.
| inconceivable wrote:
| yeah, they're all on team crabs, and they're all in the
| bucket together.
| muzani wrote:
| I really dislike stats like these, because it doesn't show
| the odds of getting a cushy corporate job. About 10% of the
| people who did a diploma with me took a technical job. Many
| went on to become insurance agents, HR, real estate agents,
| selling food, and so on. Some figured out that they can't
| make it as an architect or engineer, and start successful
| bakeries. If you choose to live outside a major town, your
| odds of getting a corporate job are probably lower than
| your odds of running a brewery.
|
| People today talk about FAANG jobs and such but right after
| I graduated, all of FAANG (except Apple) were crazy
| oversized startups losing money. I was one of the few who
| stuck it out in the tech industry because I just wanted to
| program for a living, and I was willing to take lower
| salaries doing PHP than I would working at KFC. I ended up
| freelancing for about 5 years because many employers
| couldn't figure out how to make apps profitably, right
| until venture capital came to the country and the first
| unicorns appeared.
| gymbeaux wrote:
| Certainly they belie the statistic that around 99% of
| startups fail.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| Even if you fail you learn so much in the process. I've
| had many failures in my entrepreneurial career, but
| during those failures I earned a salary, I had health
| insurance, and even in the "failure" acquisitions I had
| jobs despite no shareholder payout.
|
| And now I have way less fear, way more risk tolerance, so
| much knowledge about things. Taking risks and doing new
| things is _less risky_ to me because I can always make my
| own future. I have enough connections and history to take
| jobs, or raise capital for something new. It might work,
| it might not, but I'm willing to try and it's so much
| more fun. Of course I want the lottery ticket but I've
| had enough singles and doubles to be very comfortable. It
| required many 60 hour weeks and sacrifices but I feel so
| alive, all the time.
| fuzztester wrote:
| Yes, nothing beats independence.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > It might work, it might not,
|
| So what is the point of your anecdote?
|
| My immigrant parents worked their ass off in their small
| business, 24/7. No health insurance, no benefits, and no
| barely anytime to spend with their kids.
| fuzztester wrote:
| >> It might work, it might not,
|
| >So what is the point of your anecdote?
|
| What is the point of _yours_?
|
| Pot. Kettle.
| ctvo wrote:
| > Or maybe just be a victim forever but I don't think that's
| a good outcome.
|
| Alternatively, recognize that you have two anecdotes of
| people succeeding. It doesn't mean there aren't systemic
| issues, and people can both strive to succeed in the current
| system and push for its change.
|
| It's dull reading tl;dr: bootstrap yourself like my friends.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| Everything starts small and takes time. The moment someone
| gets successful there is some tendency to try and tear them
| down, find out why they were privileged, what connections
| they had, and worst case say they got lucky. If it weren't
| for people trying to do something - anything - taking a
| risk - not knowing if it will succeed but not caring if it
| goes under or not - there wouldn't even be anything. No
| art, no startups, no creative endeavors.
|
| Especially among the highly educated in our western system,
| people desire guaranteed paths. "Check these boxes and get
| this, get this credential and get that." Everything in
| reality is hustle and sales.
|
| As another anecdote a former gym trainer is now a
| firefighter. She tried a long time to be a firefighter but
| couldn't break into it despite passing all the tests -
| there is a whole application process following all the
| tests and credentials and it's quite complex. So after a
| few years she started sniffing out where the firefighters
| hung out, their bars, and went out there and spoke to them,
| told them her story, made connections. She did get accepted
| following that because the people who could make it happen
| helped her, after she took the initiative to think outside
| the box and meet them in a unique way.
|
| All the successful people have a different story. And your
| definition of success can vary greatly. But to say society
| is making success impossible is simply untrue - I see so
| much opportunity and so many upcoming people all the time.
| Unless you are disabled or traumatized or have some other
| issue, I can't take someone who blames society for their
| lack of "being where they want to be in life" seriously.
| Not in America at least.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Especially among the highly educated in our western
| system, people desire guaranteed paths.
|
| Yes, guaranteed healthcare and land.
|
| Option 1) you can have a likelihood of being able to
| provide healthcare and decent home for your kids.
|
| Option 2) high likelihood of not being able to provide
| either for your kids.
|
| I am not referring to the 0.1% of people who have the
| option at tech startups paying generous pay and benefits.
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| > The moment someone gets successful there is some
| tendency to try and tear them down, find out why they
| were privileged, what connections they had, and worst
| case say they got lucky
|
| > So after a few years she started sniffing out where the
| firefighters hung out, their bars, and went out there and
| spoke to them, told them her story, made connections. She
| did get accepted following that
|
| You're saying that people tear down successful people by
| saying they're privileged or have connections (but
| implying that they're not successful because of these
| things and rather because they took a risk), and then
| immediately say that if it weren't for the connections,
| she wouldn't be successful? Seems contradictory to me.
| There's no recipe for success, so discounting the luck
| factor also seems disingenuous.
|
| Don't get me wrong, it's great that your friends "made
| it" but I doubt that it's solely their own doing without
| any "insider" help. It's the same thing now, applying for
| companies - if you don't have a referral, you're not
| getting to the front of the line for callbacks.
|
| Personally, I'm against glorifying hustle culture and
| this sort of risk taking, because it implies that
| everyone can do it and if you're not successful then you
| aren't taking enough risks.
|
| > Especially among the highly educated in our western
| system, people desire guaranteed paths. "Check these
| boxes and get this, get this credential and get that."
|
| But that's how it used to be - and it's not so anymore. I
| think it's a valid complaint.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| > You're saying that people tear down successful people
| by saying they're privileged or have connections (but
| implying that they're not successful because of these
| things and rather because they took a risk), and then
| immediately say that if it weren't for the connections,
| she wouldn't be successful?
|
| When people say "oh, they're successful because of their
| connections," they generally don't mean because they went
| out did a bunch of customer acquisition work, they mean
| because they have a dad who's a bigwig at Amazon or
| something.
| ctvo wrote:
| > But to say society is making success impossible is
| simply untrue - I see so much opportunity and so many
| upcoming people all the time.
|
| It's not impossible. It's harder than it was 20-50 years
| ago. Real wage growth has stagnated since the 1970s. The
| cost of higher education has grown at a faster rate than
| wages can keep pace. Young people (those under say 35)
| can't afford to buy homes, with the rate of home
| ownership amongst this age group dropping by ~20% since
| 1993. The median age of a home owner is now 56 years old,
| the highest it's ever been.
|
| It takes but a moment to look up these things and realize
| there are systemic issues at play, but no, continue to
| share anecdotes and hyperbole.
| matwood wrote:
| > It's harder than it was 20-50 years ago.
|
| I think you and the person you're responding to are
| dealing in absolutes. In some ways it is harder, but in
| others it's easier. The world's knowledge is literally at
| people's fingertips now. Almost any creative skill
| someone has can be leveraged to make money. In many ways
| it's the easiest it's ever been to start a business or
| make money.
|
| But, as you mention, homes are priced insanely high. The
| flight to the coasts has caused anything within 50-100
| miles of the ocean to go crazy price wise. That is much
| harder on people.
|
| Healthcare is a mess. One of the biggest small business
| unlocks the US gov. could do is pass universal
| healthcare. So many people are tied to companies for
| healthcare, and boom we would see if we could break that
| tie would be like the tech boom all over again, if not
| greater.
| treis wrote:
| >But, as you mention, homes are priced insanely high
|
| Homes in some areas are higher. Others they have
| increased with inflation and are more affordable due to
| lower interest rates.
|
| The "life is so hard these days" crowd is living in a
| bubble. They live in a coastal city and have debt from
| their expensive school that they may be struggling to pay
| back. [Not coincidentally this describes lots of the
| media].
|
| Reality is that the majority of people don't go to
| college. And the majority of those that do graduate with
| reasonable debt into jobs that pay well enough to pay it
| off. Simply put, it's easier to live today than virtually
| any other time in American history.
| hirvi74 wrote:
| > So many people are tied to companies for healthcare...
|
| If the US passed some sort of halfway decent universal
| healthcare bill, then I would walk of my job that same
| day.
| jltsiren wrote:
| > All the successful people have a different story. And
| your definition of success can vary greatly. But to say
| society is making success impossible is simply untrue - I
| see so much opportunity and so many upcoming people all
| the time.
|
| There is a difference between "anyone can" and "everyone
| can at the same time".
|
| The economy grows only a few percent a year. That means
| the society as a whole is an almost-zero-sum game. In the
| long term, things will get better. But in the time scale
| relevant to individual success, they remain mostly the
| same. If you are successful, most of that success is at
| the expense of other people. The majority can't be
| successful at the same time.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| I'm taking the (sadly) unpopular view that you are better
| being optimistic, hopeful, confident you can succeed,
| working towards your goals.
|
| It is tough when the pessimism is there. But I look
| around me and see so much to be positive about and
| hopeful for.
|
| And 3% of 23 trillion is a lot of new cash. But yes, it
| all goes to the rich, or whatever. Don't bother being
| hopeful, don't bother trying something new, you can't
| overcome whatever etc. etc.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Can people choose to be optimistic, hopeful, and
| confident? Or are those traits something shaped by
| genetics and life experience?
|
| Also, 3% of $23 trillion is not that much, if you divide
| it by 330 million. That's what success looks like if we
| are talking about success for everyone at the same time.
| sokoloff wrote:
| If I didn't clown the digits, it's a little over $2K
| extra per person each and stacking every year
| ($20K/yr/person extra after 10 years).
|
| That feels like quite a lot to be honest.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| 50% of small businesses fail within the first five years, so
| lovely anecdotes and all, but textbook survivorship bias.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| That's not a new phenomenon. Life has always been hard, the
| narrative that it's gotten harder is much more of a
| survivorship bias.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| Sorry, but statistics don't care about your platitudes.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| What statistics? All the stats I've seen are that there
| has never been less poverty in the world.
| winphone1974 wrote:
| Many of the failures in the west are far above what
| global statistics define as poverty, so this doesn't make
| much sense
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Do you have any statistics saying that the west is poorer
| than it used to be?
| brnaftr361 wrote:
| Can you transmute qualitative data into quantitative data
| and reliably measure it?
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| Blatant goalpost shifting. Conversation was about how
| representative the anecdotes were to the documented
| reality of the rate of small business failures. Now,
| you're discussing global poverty.
|
| But even if we go with your scrambling goalposts, small
| business start rates have declined markedly over the past
| 50 years at the noted high rate of failure:
|
| https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56945
|
| So yes, all signs point to it actually being more
| difficult for small businesses to succeed.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Thanks for the numbers. I do always enjoy learning
| something new
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| What was the failure rate of small businesses in the
| past? I think it's higher than 50%, looking forward to
| being proven wrong.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| Secondary references to the SBA say they've been
| consistent since the 90s.
| HEmanZ wrote:
| 1) there is lots of opportunity in the market 2) the
| opportunities in the market are less common and more
| difficult, in labor, luck, or expertise required than the
| past 3 generations experienced.
|
| How are these two contradictory things?
|
| Put another way, at the individual level, there is still lots
| of opportunity. But at the aggregate level there is a
| squeeze.
| bittercynic wrote:
| I'm sincerely happy for their success, and it an important
| feature of the US that some sharp, driven people are able to
| create a substantial fortune for themselves.
|
| In some ways this is in direct conflict with working-class
| people being able to assemble a stable life where they can
| depend on being able to work diligently and have some
| stability in life. I think the total wealth of society could
| be greater if we adjusted some laws and the tax code to make
| it more possible for working class people to have a real shot
| at a stable life through diligent, hard, work.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> make it more possible for working class people to have a
| real shot at a stable life through diligent, hard, work_
|
| The problem with this is that, ultimately, if you view
| yourself as "working class", as opposed to being an
| entrepreneur, then your shot at a stable life through
| diligent, hard work is _not_ dependent on the laws and the
| tax code, it 's dependent on the overall business
| environment and what kinds of employers you can find. Which
| means, on luck.
|
| If you are a lucky working class person, you will be able
| to find an employer who (a) recognizes your diligence and
| hard work, (b) is able to manage the business risks of the
| company so that they can _afford_ to reward you
| accordingly, and (c) _does_ in fact reward you as you
| deserve, i.e., is willing to share the benefits of the
| business with you even though you 're not an owner, you're
| just an employee.
|
| I'm not saying there are _no_ such employers out there; but
| my description should make it evident that they will be
| rare. Far too rare for _all_ diligent, hard-working working
| class people to benefit from them. The diligent, hard-
| working working class people who aren 't lucky enough to
| find one of those employers will have to live with whatever
| they can get, which will range all the way from "okay but
| not great" down to "sweatshop".
|
| The only way to escape this crapshoot is to be an
| entrepreneur--i.e., to _own_ at least a piece of whatever
| business your livelihood depends on (and in practice it has
| to be a large enough piece that your voice will carry
| weight in business decisions). In other words, dealing with
| unavoidable business risks due to the fact that the world
| is always changing and businesses have to adjust, is
| something that, all things considered, you are better off
| _not_ outsourcing to an employer.
| switch007 wrote:
| I'm convinced there has been a concerted effort recently by the
| media to gaslight us in to not desiring things like a home, money
| and possessions.
| jimmywatersabc wrote:
| "you'll own nothing, and be happy!" (and eat ze bugs)
|
| - World Economic Forum
| testacct22 wrote:
| [flagged]
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I'd say the opposite. There has been a _massive,_ concerted,
| sustained effort to make us think we want more things that we
| actually want.
|
| A description I stole (I'd give credit where due, but I don't
| remember the source): Advertising is designed to make the
| person you are envy the person you could be with their product.
| That is, advertising attempts to steal your satisfaction and
| then offers to sell it back to you.
|
| Take cars, for instance. I have a car that drives just fine.
| Ah, but with the car in the advertisement, the girls look at me
| with interest. If I want that, I need to go buy _that_ car.
| (Maybe those ads are the reason that the first sign of a
| midlife crisis is going out and buying a fancy new car.) The
| point of the ads is to make me want to buy a car when I don 't
| actually want a car. Same, and equally obvious, with beer, soft
| drink, and potato chip commercials. It's more subtle with some
| other kinds of ads, but it's still there.
|
| This has been going on for decades - for all of our lives, in
| fact. (The difference now compared to the 1960s is that we
| don't have the same thing going on in cigarette ads.)
|
| What's happening now is that more and more people have maxed
| out, either financially or emotionally. Financially is "I can't
| make enough money or borrow enough money to continue to play
| this game." (The decline of the middle class may drive this, at
| least in part.)
|
| The emotional part of maxing out is when you realize: "I've
| tried that kind of thing a bunch of times. Buying this one
| isn't going to satisfy me. I don't actually have to buy it to
| find that out; I already know."
|
| A related phenomena is the realization that you can't actually
| have it all. You can't have the fulfilling job _and_ the high
| pay _and_ lots of vacation time _and_ the nice car _and_ the
| nice house _and_ the boat _and_ lots of money in the bank.
| Women can 't have the nice career _and_ be there with their
| kids (neither can men, but for most families, the women are the
| ones getting pinched on that particular front.) You have to
| choose what is more important, and try to get that, even if it
| costs you other things that you also want. "You can have it
| all" is a lie, and people are starting to see that.
| switch007 wrote:
| Oh I totally agree about advertising. My comment wasn't well
| thought out.
|
| I guess I mean it's more about not building wealth: go live
| your life, don't save for a pension. Don't strive for a
| bigger house to build roots and a family, just rent one in a
| cool city and have fun! Don't buy a car outright and maintain
| it like your fuddy duddy parents, just lease one and be
| happy.
|
| Still a badly thought out comment I'm afraid but I can't
| quite put my finger on it
| sdwr wrote:
| My dad's been telling me that exact thing, which is weird
| as hell.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| This is almost like you're saying the same thing as me. We,
| the advertisers, can make more money from you if you lease
| your car instead of buying it, if you rent your apartment
| instead of buying a house, if you spend everything instead
| of saving for retirement.
|
| So maybe you're seeing a sub-species of the broader thing
| I'm seeing.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| These kind of feel like two different axes to me. There's
| "enough", and then there's "more".
|
| The step up in happiness and utility from owning no car, to
| any car that just about works well, is enormous.
|
| The difference between a clapped out Honda Civic and a brand
| new Tesla is pretty marginal.
|
| It's the same with most things. Owning a home in Kensington
| is nicer than, say, Willesden, but there are enormously
| diminishing returns.
|
| The most important thing in life, to me at least, is safety
| and stability. In family, in partner, in friendship, in
| housing and possessions.
|
| Advertising focuses on trying to extract value. There's not
| that much value to extract when I buy a 20 year old car.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Ah, but with the car in the advertisement, the girls look
| at me with interest. If I want that, I need to go buy that
| car. (Maybe those ads are the reason that the first sign of a
| midlife crisis is going out and buying a fancy new car.)
|
| Wanting to attract and competing to attract a desirable mate
| is a basic mechanism of nature that enables the propagation
| of species. Those ads might use it specifically to show cars
| can help, but the underlying desire would still be there
| without the ads.
| testacct22 wrote:
| [flagged]
| themedia wrote:
| Nah, I'm a liberal and I think those things should be owned by
| the masses - you're thinking of the rentier class.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Why in the world would The Man conspire to make you not want
| those things?
|
| The more possessions and money you desire, the harder you work
| to buy more things in the economy, pushing up GDP, and driving
| up the value of stocks, real estate, etc. that rich people own.
|
| Wouldn't it be the opposite?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| "The Man" would rather have you renting rather than owning.
| There are also those who see the increased cost of life as a
| good thing because it would help the Earth due to decreased
| consumption and a lower population.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > the harder you work
|
| the problem is that harder work doesn't necessary bring
| success in rent seeking economy.
| jgon wrote:
| The conspiracy is not to "own" those things, even though in
| most cases you still need them. So don't fret that you're
| still renting and don't own your own place and pay no
| attention to the fact that your rent goes to an enormous REIT
| that you'll pay for the rest of your life as opposed to when
| you finally own your home free and clear. Don't worry about
| owning possessions, just send subscription services a monthly
| fee, each and every month for the rest of your life, unlike
| that book on your shelf that you can read now or when you're
| 80.
|
| Wanting possessions definitely fuels you to work hard, but
| you know what gives people even more drive? Existential
| threats like not being able to afford food or keep a roof
| over your head. A man with his own house and his own car and
| no debts is a man you don't have much leverage over. A man
| who needs to keep sending you a monthly flow of money in
| order to have shelter, entertainment and whatever else is a
| man who you control on a fundamental level.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| One of the interesting stats I learned recently is that if you
| are not a parent by the age of 30, there is a 50% chance that you
| will never be a parent.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| That's survivorship bias. You have eliminated from the sample
| all the people who wanted to have kid and already have one.
| It's unsurprising that people who don't want kids and will
| never have some are overly represented in the new sample.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I don't think there is survivorship bias here. If you simply
| track the percentage of people having children over their
| lifetime you can build stats like this as a type of ground
| truth in relation to census data etc.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| The issue is not the veracity of the statistics. The
| statistic is correct (I have never implied otherwise by the
| way - no idea why I'm downvoted so much as what I wrote is
| perfectly true, the proportion of people who don't want
| kids is higher once you remove people who already had
| kids).
|
| The issue is in the interpretation. Your sampling is biased
| so the immediate conclusion is false. If you want kids and
| are over 30, your chances are better than 50%.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Related to this, the delta between those who want kids
| but will end up never having them is about 15% at the
| moment, which is a surprisingly large % of the
| population. You aren't guaranteed what you want,
| especially when it comes to kids.
|
| The society that figures out how to properly overlap
| child rearing in an educational environment will survive.
| I'm fascinated with how much the world is going to change
| in the next century with most of the world set to shrink
| and be dominated by the elderly.
| vparikh wrote:
| I have been think about this also. I am about to turn 50
| in six months, and probably will not have the opportunity
| to have children (I am not dating 20-30 year olds).
|
| I see more of the population in the US going the way of
| Asian cultures (I am first generation Indian) where you
| have multi generational house holds being more common. It
| is going to be a painful cultural shift, especially for
| the highly individualistic American culture - but that is
| the only way I see future generations surviving.
| DrThunder wrote:
| For one, welfare and retirement programs won't work.
| Those require at least an equal replacement population.
| Either the younger generation will be paying a lot more
| in with no return in later life, or they just won't be
| able to support the system.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The system collapses in a dark way if Japan is any fore-
| bearer: Old people dying alone/of starvation in their
| apartments, etc.
| jhbadger wrote:
| That's only because Japan doesn't want to bring in
| immigrants. There isn't a problem in countries like the
| US that have always been based on a culture of
| immigration.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The source of immigrants is going away, they are starting
| to experience the same demographic shift.
| paxys wrote:
| Maybe technically correct but societal changes happen so
| rapidly that any such collected data is useless after a decade
| or two.
|
| A bachelor at 30 in the 60s or 70s was likely to stay a
| bachelor their entire life. Today the _average_ age of marriage
| for men has risen beyond that.
| jedberg wrote:
| Your (or their) conclusion from that data is wrong. You could
| just as easily say that if you aren't a parent at age 30, there
| is a 50% chance that you decided you wanted to be childless at
| 20.
|
| There isn't enough data to conclude one way or another. We need
| to know how many of those people over 30 still desire children
| but tried and failed, and then tried IVF and failed (or
| couldn't afford it), and/or tried adoption but couldn't afford
| it or failed.
|
| You need a lot more data to come to the conclusion you did.
| dheera wrote:
| > how many of those people over 30 still desire children but
| tried and failed, and then tried IVF and failed (or couldn't
| afford it), and/or tried adoption but couldn't afford it or
| failed
|
| You're also missing some big ones:
|
| - people over 30 who have overly busy work schedules that
| prevent them from dating even though they want a partner and
| possibly kids
|
| - people over 30 who really want a romantic partner but can't
| find anyone who likes them, or lack the skills to engage in a
| healthy romantic relationship
|
| - people over 30 who for career reasons are stuck in a place
| that likely does not have any compatible partners within
| reasonable distance
|
| - people over 30 who want kids but aren't financially ready
| and voluntarily not having kids until/unless ready (but would
| if they suddenly make bank at 35).
| tbihl wrote:
| In the US? Genuinely curious who the dataset is for that.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I'd guess in the US, where the average age at first birth is
| 27. This is rather early by developed world countries; in
| most it's closer to 30, and in some it's above 30.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| there is no average US citizen, it makes no sense to assert
| based on that. Demographics are fundamentally groups of
| groups, that are different. People here on YNews would
| recognize quickly "overfitting" or other statistical
| errors, but this demographic human quality somehow eludes
| public conversation.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| There is an average age that an American has their first
| child. No amount of 3+ syllable words negates that
| obvious fact...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| no - in real life, each person has a child at some age.
| An aggregate of those numbers is still showing individual
| lives. Similar reasoning for "2.5 children" .. that is
| "average" but exactly zero people out of millions have
| 2.5 children in reality.
| dekhn wrote:
| So what? You're just saying the mean of a list of
| integers can be a rational number.
|
| There are a number of other ways to synthesize "Average"
| people from summary statistics, but none of this is worth
| being pedantic about.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| no sorry, its a beginner mistake to think that there are
| average people at all. For example, people who are not
| adults.. there is no meaning to "average" for children at
| 2 years, 6 years, 8 years, 12 years.. they are different.
| Its not an average.. it is a collection of groups.. Human
| populations are collections of groups that overlap in
| characteristics.. there is no "average" person
| BizarreByte wrote:
| I've been quite successful in work so far and I've hit most of
| the traditional milestones like owning a car, buying a house, and
| what not, but love? Haha, I am so comically behind my peers that
| it has stopped hurting and almost become funny at this point.
|
| I've stopped believing it'll happen, hope just leads to
| suffering. I'm far too broken and messed up as a person.
| missedthecue wrote:
| How many hours per day do you spend outside the home?
| BizarreByte wrote:
| Now that the weather's nice? I try to spend a fair bit of
| time outside the house.
| bckr wrote:
| Are you in therapy? How are your other relationships?
| BizarreByte wrote:
| No, I've tried it and didn't find it helpful. My
| relationships are good with my family and I have a small
| handful of friends I get along with well.
|
| This is unfortunately more complex than simple, easily fixed
| social issues and the like.
| throwing_away wrote:
| You're not crazy.
|
| The older you get, the harder it is to make new romantic
| relationships.
|
| You can sort of make up for this by having extensive
| experience younger in life, so you can more aptly navigate
| the fewer opportunities you'll have as you age.
|
| If you don't have that skill, good luck.
|
| I don't think therapy is capable of really teaching this
| either. You can read a book about how to play soccer, but
| you actually need to spend ten thousand hours with the
| ball. If you start playing soccer at 3yo, you'll be a
| natural. If you start at 30yo, well, it can be done but
| it's not going to look very traditional and it's going to
| be much harder.
|
| I think the "pickup artist" movement and the rise of people
| like Andrew Tate illustrate the problem well. Applying a
| deliberate strategy to engineer romantic relationships
| usually ends poorly, but I can see why so many men are
| attempting it.
| matwood wrote:
| I thought a lot like you and ended up meeting my partner when I
| was 30. I was way behind pretty much everyone I knew. But, now
| it seems I'm the most happy out of all those people. It took
| that long for me to figure out who I was, know what I wanted,
| and find someone who matched up.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| At least when it comes to love and marriage I definitely think
| settling that in yours 20s is best, or being on course to settle
| it. I think dating becomes very hard after 30 and there are big
| generational gaps and I think the fertility industry is not a
| good solution. I think its sub-optimal trying to find a partner
| as you get older.
|
| Ideally, the numbers Stanford listed (married at 26...) would
| have been preferable to me at least. It might be good to figure
| out why people miss that and figure out how to improve it rather
| than counting on the last resort of fertility treatments in your
| 40s.
| duderific wrote:
| > It might be good to figure out why people miss that
|
| In Western societies at least, often it is women working on
| their careers, which may take at least into their 30s before
| they've reached the desired level. It is a choice that these
| women make, so I don't think it can be "improved" unless
| different choices are taken.
| neilv wrote:
| > _At least when it comes to love and marriage I definitely
| think settling that in yours 20s is best,_
|
| Careful to read it as "settling _that_ " -- no one should feel
| like they're "settling", for something other than what they
| want. :)
|
| (This can involve changing your mind about what you want,
| though.)
| jprete wrote:
| I understand the sentiment, but I think plenty of people do
| in fact need to "settle", because they have unrealistic
| expectations and are very unlikely to get what they want.
| lilboiluvr69 wrote:
| I wish I realized this sooner.
|
| I spent years and years comparing myself against imaginary
| milestones, putting off my happiness for some constantly shifting
| goal instead of focusing on trying to cultivate daily moment to
| moment experiences that make me happy.
|
| I had a recent shro trip that really gave me perspective for how
| much of my life I've spent just being anxious, thinking I
| couldn't be happy because I wasn't living the /right/ life.
|
| There is no /right/ life. And you don't one day reach an
| expiration date on fullfilment.
| bradlys wrote:
| Neocon wsj writers decide that "waiting until you can afford to
| have kids when you're old" is normal because they want you to
| slave away at your jobs all so that capitalists can accrue more
| and more. If bullshit like this becomes mainstream then they can
| justify extracting more and more out of you indefinitely until
| you die empty handed and completely unfulfilled. They'll raise
| the retirement age, lower your benefits, and make sure you have
| no way to pass down any generational wealth. Forget your kids
| having grandma and grandpas!
|
| I'm on a plane across the country because my mother just died
| from a stroke at the age of 61. I'm 32. She'll never see
| grandchildren from me (her only child) and she'll never see what
| I amount to fully. There'll be no reconciliation for the terrible
| childhood and whatnot. I figured maybe when I had kids that maybe
| things could be more fixed. It won't happen now. My father will
| likely die soon because he doesn't have a strong will to live on
| his own and is in much worse health than my mother. He should've
| died three years ago when he had a heart attack but he got very
| lucky that the ambulance came when it did.
|
| I would've had kids already but due to the insane market we've
| had going on in the USA - I couldn't afford to start a family and
| had to divorce my ex wife due to financial issues. I'm an
| exceptionally well earning person - in the top 1%. But my wife
| wasn't and so we couldn't afford to start a family in the Bay
| Area and decided to move on. We didn't want to be stuck with
| dealing with greedy landlords and no privacy.
|
| I hate articles like this because it tries to normalize what
| _isn't_ and should never be normal.
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