1: Kids. My wife and I waited to get married, and then were part scared after we got married, and part selfish and wanted freedom to play and travel, so we waited more. I don't regret our adventures at all, but after we had kids, I realized my fear was unfounded and we still had a lot of freedom to play and travel.
2: Startup. I wanted to start my own business my whole life, and I waited to try until I had enough of a plan, enough personal savings for a runway, and until the kids weren't toddlers anymore. I wish I had done it a lot sooner, before having kids, and with someone else's money.
Yes, those two kinda contradict each other. :) I don't know how I'd resolve it, were I to do it again. Not sure I would do it any different, my takeaway is just that in both cases I waited because of fears that turned out to be only fear.
>my fear was unfounded and we still had a lot of freedom to play and travel.
Be careful generalizing - this really depends on your life situations (including income/savings) and preferences.
For example, out of both our sets of parents there is only one (my MIL) that I'd ever want my hypothetical children to be around for any more than maybe an hour visit once a year, and she lives a 4 hour drive away. So there is pretty much zero family support for childrearing for us, which is a big factor in our choice to avoid childbearing.
I feel I have to preemptively defend my choice to keep my hypothetical children from their hypothetical grandparents - they are domestic emotional and physical abusers, substance abusers, mentally ill, reckless and drunk drivers, conflict seekers, emotionally unstable, behave socially inappropriately, don't respect boundaries, and create a toxic environment to be in. I grew up with that shit - I would only subject my worst enemy to it.
That's awful, in your situation I'd be afraid to have kids too. You can live far away from them or not have kids or both. I hope you can find peace and not feel like you need to defend your choice to anyone, you have all the right in the world to deal with the family that was inflicted on you in any way you see fit and without worrying what other people think.
To be clear, the question was about personal experience, and I'm only sharing my own experience and not suggesting mine works for anyone else. Clearly your personal experience is very different from mine, and different choices are in order.
FWIW, I was a 12 hour drive from all grandparents when my first was born, and living in San Francisco. We didn't have any grandparent support, and even after moving closer, we haven't had a lot. What we have done is hire babysitters now and then, and also play and travel with our kids a lot. The realization that my fears about freedom before kids was unfounded didn't really depend on having family support.
You misunderstood my comment, I'm not afraid to have children, we choose not to and fear is not a factor in that choice. Practicality is, as well as personal preferences. A lack of family support is only a single factor, I was just giving it as a single example.
There's a reason I included income/savings specifically in life situations.
>not feel like you need to defend your choice to anyone, you have all the right in the world to deal with the family that was inflicted on you in any way you see fit and without worrying what other people think.
We live in a very judgemental society when it comes to childbearing, child rearing, and parenthood. Parents always get the benefit of the doubt, pretty much no matter what. Denying access to grandchildren is considered extremely cruel. If I didn't give a good reason then people think negatively of me. That's just the society we live in and what we value as a society. Our culture of valuing parents to martyr themselves plays into it. Even the word you used in the GP shows this - "selfish."
Sorry about that. I understand your comment and your choice, my wording just wasn't sensitive to fear vs choice. I agree this is an especially touchy subject, and that many people are judgemental. I have several close friends who've chosen not to have kids and they also struggle with people judging them negatively. The friends of mine who best deal with it are the couple who just don't give a shit what people think of them. I aspire to be at peace that way with all my choices, but I am currently not. I hope you can find that peace too.
I see why you think so, but I hope you can accept that my use of "selfish" was not a judgement on parenting vs not parenting. I think a lot of the freedoms I want are selfish on their own without respect to my family. I am okay with being selfish, and most of what I do is selfish. My top point was I still get to be mostly selfish, with or without children.
You're absolutely right that there is some collective narrative around parenting, and even if my language was part of that narrative, I would encourage not framing it that way if you're worried about what people think. I don't think of myself as a martyr in any way, but it's a true fact that I do make some personal sacrifices to have kids. I also make personal sacrifices to have a job and to own a house. Each of my choices come with their own consequences. I was overly worried about those personal sacrifices with kids, and I'm saying that they were less burdensome than I anticipated. If anything, my experience supports the idea that society's narrative is over-stated.
Anyway, using fairly extreme language like "martyr" to push back on that subtle built-in prejudice I may or may not have seems designed to escalate feelings and unlikely to result in a cultural shift or to the kind of sensitivity you want. I'm absolutely not trying to hurt your feelings by sharing my experience, and so I hope you can give my language the benefit of the doubt rather than think my motivations are biased against you, intentionally or unintentionally.
For me it hasn't so much been that I can still travel, it's just that the source of life's deep joys has shifted. It's hard to describe. Kind of feels like telling an alcoholic that smoothies can taste just as good as a cocktail -- there's just no way to describe it until experienced.
It's just indescribable to be able to share something new with your child. Taking them to a local park or into the city brings me more joy than traveling the world once did. The joys feel less fleeting.
I still hope to get back to traveling, but I really don't feel like it's been a sacrifice as much as a trade where the thing I got was secretly worth well more than what it cost.
It's a mix of factors, but part of it was examining what freedom means to me. It was never a specific set of goals I had or specific things I wanted to do, it was a general idea that I still want to be able to go out on Friday night, or go hiking on a whim Saturday, or lounge around at night and hack on my pet project or record some music or something.
The answer came in many parts:
- We bring the kids with us a lot. Some of the fear was mental friction about the difficulty of hauling kids around. Yeah, it takes a little more work, but as long as I do that work, I bring them along and can still go where I want.
- We sometimes take turns parenting to allow each other some freedom. I can buy time to work on my hacking projects and music tomorrow by watching the kids today. For me, this didn't change that much from my relationship with my wife, where we would make similar choices to invest some time with each other.
- We hire babysitters sometimes. (But movie night did go from a very cheap date before kids to a very expensive night after kids...)
- I take more stock of how much time I waste. For example, watching TV/Netflix is fun, but I can choose to sacrifice that here and there and buy time to do other more meaningful things.
- My motivations changed after having kids, and I have the freedom to spend time with them. Certain kinds of socializing became less important to me, which frees up some time.
- We plan ahead more often. Not a bad thing, what freedom meant in some cases was the freedom to not plan, but if I plan ahead and commit to things, I can still do what I want.
Only if you don't like your kids. If you like them, having them around is a lot of fun. :)
Side note that kids start spending time away from parents when they become teenagers. That's happening to me now, and I am slowly gaining extra free time. Half the time I still want to spend my free time with the kids. But I'd assume that the younger someone is post-kids, the more energy and options they have for starting new things with that free time. I'm just entering my forties and glad I'm not starting to have kids right now. It might have been a little nicer to start earlier just so we could have hit this point while we were younger.
Thanks, that’s reassuring. For some time, I rather settled on not wanting children, but my SO is convincing me otherwise. It’s always nice to read that I won’t have to completely give my life up, or at least not forever. :) I understand that that depends a lot on the situation, but I think we might be financially stable enough, and also potentially moving to a country that gives much more support to parents, that it might be the case for us.
2: Startup. I wanted to start my own business my whole life, and I waited to try until I had enough of a plan, enough personal savings for a runway, and until the kids weren't toddlers anymore. I wish I had done it a lot sooner, before having kids, and with someone else's money.
Yes, those two kinda contradict each other. :) I don't know how I'd resolve it, were I to do it again. Not sure I would do it any different, my takeaway is just that in both cases I waited because of fears that turned out to be only fear.