#vanlife is a great concept as a several year lifestyle choice if you don't have kids. If you do, then the #vanlife is more like RV life and even then, it's not a permanent lifestyle suitable for kids IMO. There's a great TAL episode about a family of 5 that circumnavigate the globe on a sailboat for several years, not by choice, by because the parents were pot farmers back in the 80s/90s and had to escape the law. It's a cautionary tale. Some people can make it work, but for 99% of humanity it's fantasy.
Mentally balanced people with strong moral backbones and enough time and wealth to afford to support them until they reach maturity, and oftentimes after.
A culture which fails to reproduce enough children is going to either die out or put social pressure on women (and men) of childbearing age to get on with it, contribute their share, etc.
Expecting die out to be everyone's option is not rational. So we should expect increasing social pressure to be a future trend.
I don't disagree. It's just that, in today's climate, it's increasingly more likely that people who want to have kids will be the ones experiencing the stigmatization. That's ok?
"A woman quoted in the Krueger piece says, “The character is just so determined to live the life she wants, the best, most interesting life she can…. We all toasted to that.” That’s nice, honey. But no one lives the life they want. No one lives the best, most interesting life they can."
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Too many people have it in their heads that young = progressive = good, and old = conservative = bad. That's why you see this endless slurping by 50-somethings online about how The Kids Will Save Us.
Chris Rock scoffed at the idea that your friends will visit you in the hospital when you are old and dying. It's a fundamentally unpleasant process, so unpleasant that only family (your kids) would feel compelled to undertake it anyway.
I mean that typically people leave an inheritance to their children. Maybe there is some minority that's wealthy enough to spread the wealth around to their friends as well but that's clearly a minority.
If the formulation is that only self interest motivates people to show up to do the unpleasant work of tending to the dying then aren't you just agreeing with Chris Rock that your friends won't visit you in the hospital at the end?
I think this is very dependent upon the relationships one has with family and friends. My sister opted to not involve herself or help me when our mother suffered from Alzheimer's and passed right before hurricane Ida. My sister has essentially excommunicated herself from our family as a whole. I think if you're lucky enough to have close personal friends who will visit you in the hospital, count yourself very lucky indeed.
My elderly father is in the hospital right now, and he is getting regular visits from his friends (who are also helping out by ding things like picking up his mail for him)l. So, yes, GOOD friends will visit!
It's ridiculous bc Chris Rock would have a line out the door of visitors, if he was in the hospital. I've been to 5 funerals the past two years. The two for childless (oldish) people were out the doors overflowing, with multiple people speaking and giving incredibly poignant, no dry eyes left in the house, a-legend-has-passed type speeches of deep friendships and wild stories. The three for parents/grandparents were sparsely attended by anyone other than family members, not particularly emotional or inspiring, and filled with pathetic speeches indicating that no one in the family even really knew much about dad/grandpa, based on the level of superficiality and chat-gpt level generic blather...one got the sense it was just a duty and the funeral was something to get over with quickly. I'm not saying it's always this way...I'm sure there are some childless people where no one at all attenda their funeral, if they even have one. But the idea that family care or like you or even love you more if you're a parent versus not is so false as to be preposterous. People invest their time and energy into different things...childless people naturally have more time to invest in friendship. If they do, it turns out that friends...who like you merely bc they actually like you...often have stronger attachments and fondness than the people who are bonded to you solely out of some genetic duty.
The problem with depending on friends is that typically your social circle is other people of about your own age. If you're 80 years old and need somebody to drive you around your friends are probably going to be about the same age and in the same condition. Your kids or grandkids on the other hand?
There are always exceptions but by and large we expect family to be closer and have a stronger bond than friends and acquaintances. I suspect that's based on real world experience.
As for Chris Rock, he was talking about his father. When his health started to go the guys from the bar didn't show up. His wife and kids did.
Yeah I understand how these things happen, but people really should not only have friends their own age. At least, I don't think it's advisable. The funerals I've been to that I referenced were all non-relatives (friends and neighbors) who were 15 to 35 years older than me, FWIW. Intergenerational friendships are a good thing, as is family.
*Old. We are fortunate to grow old. Think of all the people lost to war and untreatable illness. Growing old is not a bad thing.
*Infirm. Many are infirm out of the womb. We cope. It may be a surprise to those who never had a disability. The good news is that the world accommodates the infirm in a way it never did before.
*Unattractive. If you mean unattractive to someone in their 20s-30s--probably true, but as we age that's not whose approval is needed.
I think ageism is the only base of discrimination no one feels like they have to police themselves about. We police ourselves about race , gender, disabilities, being fat or not but older people, they get all sorts of abuse from everywhere and out in the open. Ageism is the most acceptable prejudice. The fact is, many women after 40 are hot as f and can afford to live the way they want. As someone else here noticed, they are not a representative sample, thou, so let's punish them for it by reminding them their uterus is getting out of use.
Instagram, social media in general, Hollywood, Madison Avenue and much of the mainstream media are consistently selling the myth that age is just a number, and you can be hot well into the senior years, no problem, if you really work at it and really want to be.
That, coupled with the culture that worships youth, is a powerful combination. A culture which dislikes old-ness and sees nothing positive about it (no wisdom, only retrograde hate, no useful advice, only atavistic hateful out of date expectations, etc), and which in turn glorifies youth, coupled with a media that tells people that, if they work and want it badly enough, they can maintain a youthful appearance well into their later years ... well you're going to get a lot of people, especially women (who have been, and continue to be, more judged on their physical appearance than men), bending over backwards to remain young looking, and young acting, for as long as they can, even to the point of resetting their lives in midlife to adopt "younger" looks and behaviors than what they were doing 10 years ago, behaviors which made them feel "old".
I don't see how this gets reversed easily. Social media has made our culture easily the most superficial it has ever been, in the sense that personal physical presentation has never been as powerful as it is now, due to the ability to project it effortlessly at scale. That's ... a big thing, and it will result in this worship of youth and an emphasis on the maintenance of youthful appearance and behaviors for as long as possible by those who can manage to do so. Yes, this is cruel to those who cannot (which turns out to be most people outside of a certain set), but those aren't the people driving the trend.
I wish I had the power to ban social media, entirely, no exceptions, banned forever. Sadly I don't have this power but I am going to fight as hard as I can to keep my soon-to-be-born daughter as far away from those trash factories as I can for as long as I can.
What you write is true - and the worst aspect of it is (IMHO) that it leaves people unprepared for the realities of aging, which can only be denied for so long. And all too often that results in what could have been avoidable mental and financial hardship, and an unhappy old age.
You can choose to opt out. I have Instagram and only use the messages feature which is only my kids. No Facebook or any of that other crap. Twitter...I'm no Mark Twain who can come up with funny, insightful things in a line or two. Not many people can. The whole Twitter thing to me screams, thoughtless and superficial. There is nothing that says you have to partake in Social Media for fun. If it's needed for your work, put it on like a uniform, then take it off.
I agree on the personal level, but Freddie is talking about the broader trends, which gets into what lots of other people are doing. Any individual can opt out of that, and I think it's wise to do so, but many people do not want to do that, which is what drives the trend.
"The trouble is that as fewer and fewer people have children, the difficulty becomes even more acute, as we have an increasingly-stressed public benefits system and more and more seniors who have no familial support in their golden years."
I think you're underestimating how much the knowledge that people in this country just dump their parents in retirement homes plays into a lack of trust of having kids turning into a social safety net when you age. When I've lived in Asia and the topic of aging in Asia vs. the US comes up, one thing that always gets mentioned is how cavalier Americans are about just locking away their parents to whither away. As a kid, I volunteered in a community center for the elderly. You would see Asians and Latins spending time with their elderly parents there, but not white people. When you frame having kids as a form of self-protection against dying infirm and alone, the fact that a lot of parents still die infirm and alone undermines the whole narrative, especially since parenting is so time-intensive that working more to pay for better elder care can be a better economic tradeoff.
I have a Hispanic friend whose mom is 101. She has lived with her daughter and son-in-law for 30 years. The family feels blessed she is with them and not burdened. The grand children and great-grandchildren never miss her birthday or other life events. I have been with them many times and all I see is sincere affection.
I mean in traditional cultures where people took care of old people the totally disabled phase was pretty short. It is a new development that people get to the diaper-wearing can't recognize their own kids phase and medicine keeps them alive for another 20 years. 30 years of round the clock intensive care-taking is a huge burden on people who are also probably at the age where their taking care of their own kids and have jobs.
It still IS pretty short, on average. There's a commonly cited stat that the average life expectancy at a nursing home is less than 6 months. While the psychological and material conditions at such facilities is miserable and probably doesn't help, the main reason is that residence at such places is nearly always precipitated by an acute medical incident that triggers a rapid decline or a 2nd incident follows like an aftershock that finishes you off.
I acted as GAL on numerous indigent elderly people who had suffered an acute incident and wound up in nursing homes under the legal authority of the public administrator, because of lack of any family in the area even willing to be a legal guardian -- a position that doesn't even require directly providing care. It was reasonably common for the ward to die before the public administrator had cut my check (a modest little $125 that I rarely got in such cases, it's quasi- pro bono work in all but name.)
While I'm sure some people do hang on 20 years in a diminished capacity, that's just not very common even with all modern medicine has to offer. The things that diminish your capacity that much tend to kill you in short order.
Hmm I guess it's anecdotal but I know a ton of people who just kind of hung on indefinetely while barely recognizing their own kids, eating mush etc. Especially dementia seems to really allow you to go on.
Yes, but the last 6 months of being in a nursing home are normally preceded by a (likely longer) period where people are cared for by their family. Despite the trope, people don't generally dump their families in a home the moment they need any sort of care, in many cases, families make the decision to switch to residential care when home care is no longer an option.
Not at all and you have a very strange idea of aging. The lady was widowed and lonely when her husband died so she moved in with her children. Her other adult children have her visit as well.
Years ago, got pulled over by some redneck cop on New Years Eve, we set to talking. This was in a small rural town where the main industry was a meat packing plant. Consequently, of the town's population was increasingly Latin, and a lot of them were probably not entirely legal.
Anyway, the cop told me of many things pertaining to his OJT education in All Things Mexican, one of which was that, unlike in Mexico, if you call the police, they will come. Even if you live in a trailer park, they will come. This was mystifying to many fresh out of Mexico.
Another was that he had never seen or heard of a Mexican in an old folks' home. The idea of putting Abuelita in a home to be cared for by strangers was unthinkable.
Folks F.O.B. from a lot of traditional cultures express similar shock at the way we treat our elders.
When I was living in Central America, there was a common refrain that Americans pick up their dog's shit everyday but put their parents in a nursing home where strangers take care of them.
This issue is currently hitting close to home. I tend to agree that aging is better in the context of a multigenerational household, or at least in close proximity. But so many interconnected problems.
In these multigenerational households, it is almost always the wife and mother who is tasked with the lion share of the caregiving of both the kids and the parents. Adding that burden onto many women who are also earners just isn’t realistic. Maybe when more men are ready to step up and take their turns with the bed pans and the doctor visits.
There’s also a difference between assisted living and skilled nursing. Back in the day, once a person took to their bed, the end was usually in sight. Now, modern medicine can keep people alive but in a debilitated state for quite a long time. The care giving required is intense and exhausting. Kudos to those who are able to provide that kind of extended care at home to their parents. Many are simply not up to that challenge.
Working to pay for better elder care can be a better tradeoff at first. If too many people do it though, who is going to work at all those elder care places?
True, but experts have been pointing to elder care as a major growing sector for future growth for a while now. Assuming we are willing to build enough facilities and finance Medicare, people will self-select into growth sectors.
Also, if parenting is increasingly time-intensive, then if your adult children also have children, they'll have less time and money to invest in elder care, thus making hiring professionals more important.
I think the self-centeredness and selfishness isn't a recent phenomenon. Somehow it's built into the DNA of many Americans (mostly WASPs I might add) are imbued with the idea of leaving the nest and make something of themselves from our early start as a Nation with Manifest Destiny. That coming back home to the parents is a sign of failure or living in multi-generational houses is also not fully supported either. Somehow, several generations being raised on the idea of Rugged Individualism and Boot-Strapping have convinced many they don't need a family or a village. Not sure how we turn that boat around.
But I would argue this is also a class thing, something middle and upper-middle class Americans do more. Having grown up in a diverse working class neighborhood in Philly, folks (including my family) lived in multigenerational houses with their aging grandparents and great-grandparents.
Sure, I'd agree with you that there are cultural groups that no matter their class are inclined to not use nursing homes, senior homes, etc., but my original point still stands.
According to this, white people are the least likely racial groups studied to live in a multigenerational household. In addition, " a previous analysis found that median adjusted household income was slightly lower in multigenerational households than other types. However, the reverse was true for homes headed by Black, Hispanic, and foreign-born householders: Incomes were higher in multigenerational homes for those groups. Even multigenerational households with unemployed residents had higher adjusted median incomes than other types of households where unemployed residents lived."
The class issue with multigenerational households is thus largely applicable only to white people.
The desperation behind the #vanlife movement—and the many, many other ‘alternative’ lifestyles of that ilk—lies in the belief that existing is something you ‘do’. Existing is being, and if you aren’t satisfied with who you are, in the day-to-day, no lifestyle descending from on high will save you. I think the people who insist that having children is ‘too hard’ or ‘too expensive’ are more afraid of having to exist for someone else, a role in life that is not front and centre, and therefore incredibly uncool. But the coolest thing about that role is that it forces you to reckon with the actual existence as being thing, and you don’t care as much whether you live in a van, or an apartment, or a condo, but whether or not those people you’re now responsible for are happy and healthy and kind. And that’s so much more rewarding than sex with strangers on a Saturday night when you’re pushing sixty.
Depending on where you live, and your circumstances, having children doesn't mean the end of your existence as an independent person, particularly beyond the first few years.
That said, having children is obviously a huge commitment, and lots of people do a piss poor job of parenting, and I don't think that people who are unsure about having kids choosing not to have kids is a bad thing.
I would hazard to guess that if you’re worried about doing a good job as a parent, you will not be one of those who do a piss-poor job of it. No parent is perfect, and the commitment level is yours to decide. I don’t want to proselytize, but I think the idea of having kids has become somewhat removed from the actual experience. It’s not that hard, if you care.
The hard parts are the exhaustion of raising several young kids and the slow-bleeding of one's bank accounts. Aside from that, having kids isn't that difficult.
I think the key to these alternative lifestyles is that most of our time being is spent in front of a desk for some mega corporation and just leaves us empty. Most of the best things in life are cheap or free (relationships, enjoying nature, going for a walk, etc…)… and working robs us of that time. I wish there was a serious push for lowering the full time working hours. The environment and our mental health could both use an America happy with a simpler and slower lifestyle.
I’m not sure less work is the answer. Though I’m in the enviable position of working for myself, in order to make a living, I have to work a lot! And if you look back to the so-called halcyon days of the past, people worked more than today. The key is fulfillment and finding the fun wherever you’re at. That might be a lot tougher at a corporate gig, though.
But I would guess that people waste more time on screen time for things like Netflix and gaming than they spend doing the truly fulfilling parts of life. I know I spend more time on those things than I probably should.
I think a key point is the discrepancy between someone’s “desired career work” and their “real relationship with labor.”
You’re absolutely correct that leisure activities like you mentioned have supplanted time-fulfilling labor like parenting, and I think a crux to that lies in how the insistence/emphasis of postsecondary-educated careers and rugged individualism has affected the perception and distribution of time for younger people when they must work jobs that lie outside their educated career prospects to survive.
If people are focused on their *desired* labor conditions when they don’t match up to their interests or expectations, and not their *real* labor conditions (complaints regarding those notwithstanding), they may feel forced to triage their family/social/leisure time more than if their concerns only regarded devoting time to their current labor and family prospects, with social and leisure time falling alongside.
The people not devoting time to family are the ones who are unwilling to sacrifice their desired career prospects, leisure, and social life alongside the real labor they must maintain on top of that. The people with families who want them are likely comfortable with their current labor, along with their social life and leisure allowances.
They did a study of aborigines (in Australia, if memory serves) and found that they worked one or two 8hour days at most per week.
Methinks if we had a more equitable distribution of resources, one 8 hour workday would be all that would be required of us in the modern developed world, as well.
I am with you! Most of my waking hours spent doing stuff for a paycheck and not because they’re interesting or fulfilling to me. Working on tasks that have been prioritized by people who do not communicate well why they matter or why I should care. Reporting to people with bad management skills. It’s soul destroying shit!
Last year my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 esophageal cancer and passed away within 6 months. Since then my dad, who’s almost 80 and has a lot of his own health issues, has needed a ton of help. I mention this because it has underscored the importance of kids to me— I worked really hard to make sure my moms last 6 months were as full of love as possible, and I’m working my ass off for my dad now, and I want more than anything to have that level of support when I get old. Im kinda shocked more people don’t recognize this “selfish” reason for having kids.
People I've talked to about it dismiss it. They say there's always the chance your kids will still ignore you anyway. I pointed out that, since nothing in life is certain, that is a fully general argument against doing anything. That didn't seem to phase them.
As a single gay male 64-year old, I would like to think I am capable of a life beyond mindless hedonism without having to force myself to marry and bear children with a woman. However, to judge from the attitudes in the pro-natalist camp--including, I am afraid, some expressed in this article--this does not seem to be the case; simply by not marrying and having children, I have condemned myself to a life of mindless hedonism, caught in the clutches of late but not late enough capitalism, a mere epiphenomenon of a decadent secularist society without dignity or honor. Is there any hope for the likes of me other than mass conversion/reparative therapy?
So are choosing to ignore the very explicit point that this is a question of societal health, and that individuals can make whatever choice they want, for a particular reason? I mean what I say and I say what I mean.
Societal health depends of the health of the individuals within it. If I choose to be unhealthy (by not marrying a woman and having children), I am making society unhealthy. In order to keep society healthy, people like me must renounce our particular desires and abilities, and conform to the demands of society. Anything else is the merest self-indulgence, succumbing to the forces of a decadent capitalist regime. I have seen nothing whatsoever anywhere to counteract that argument.
It might be a cliché, but "society" is not some sort of monolith will a well defined set of expectations. Indeed, one of the striking things about contemporary socio-cultural discourse is how incoherent it is.
Freddie isn't saying that you owe it to society to have children, but rather that people in general (not you specifically) owe it to themselves to consider that they might be happier having children rather than pursuing eternal youth.
Does the same apply to single, fit, childless independent women over 40 who chose to follow a new path ( within their means, of course) because their spouse is a massive disappointment? I hope so.
Of course there is. Even if conversion therapy worked, it would be totally unneeded in this day and age. You can marry another dude, then fertilize a donor egg and get a surrogate to carry it to term for you. You can even skip marrying a dude if you are pressed for time, although it will make caring for kids easier.
If for some reason you can't do that you could always outsource! There's tons of people who have trouble having kids and have crowdfunding to pay for IVF. Just throw a little money their way!
Me and my super gay husband did this. It cost 90 grand 15 years ago. Factor in the $250k "they" say it takes to raise a kid these days and you are talking some serious scratch. I'm a bit baffled by how grumpy and defensive Brian Newhouse is here but surrogacy is not simple.
FWIW, we have a pair of incredibly snotty teenagers we’d be happy to “lend” you so you can get some of the child raising experience for free, so to speak. ;-)
There is something distinct about American culture, where we like to hide the unglamorous, tedious bits of things - we fast forward through the long base mile workouts, we zip through the paint drying, forget about how long it takes to tend a garden. And there is nothing so slow and tedious as raising a child or taking care of a slowing elderly person, who’s conversation runs in fewer and fewer paths, all of which you’ve heard literally a hundred times before.
There is no fast-forward button in life, but we’ve been conditioned to expect one.
i do love hearing the same stories over and over again from elderly people :) like a legendary rock band that only plays the greatest hits. i have a 90-year-old friend, a widow, no blood relation of mine, and every time she tells me the story of how her late husband took her on a spontaneous trip to paris i feel like a kid at the front row of the eras tour
I don’t have any illusions on the headaches that come with kids. I just think people forget that if they live to be 80-90 years old, the vast majority of their experience with their kids is going to be as adults. It takes a while and it’s not guaranteed but the return on investment is there long term.
Is there a broad-based kid index fund we can more safely invest in? I’m afraid we’ve got all our assets in just two specific ones, and I’m told that’s a risky strategy!
Actually, one of the most interesting things is watching our kids interact with our parents. It’s a bit like watching the same movie again, but half a century later… you see, much more clearly, many tactics and values and philosophies your parents used on you… but that you didn’t notice at the time, but just absorbed like air.
I don't think it's just people not wanting to have kids.
I think it's people in Westernized, industrial nations not wanting to have SEX—at least, not with each other. True, it is possible to have children without sex in the contemporary era (and vice versa, of course.) Still, the two DO seem to be connected.
According to a 2024 survey by the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP), 24% of French adults aged 18 to 69 said they hadn't had sex in the past 12 months—a significant decline in the past decade. In Korea, that number is one in three. The U.S. National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior and the UK National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles have found similar trends.
As to why sex is losing its popularity as a pastime... Honestly, I think it has something to do with (forgive me!) overexposure. We're all just sick of sex being the ultimate carrot and stick in the supplier-induced demand matrix that is late-stage capitalism.
I really want to understand what the hell is going on in South Korea. This sexless thing, the childless thing, these are all just statistics, but South Korea is starting to fall of the map on them such that they don’t seem like minor variations. It feels like a very different, very new societal form.
I read a compelling study that pointed to alienation between young women and men as a big factor. According to the study, South Korean society is markedly patriarchal; younger people have grown up seeing the role of husband and wife that is pretty sharply hierarchal.
A lot of you women don't want that role, and openly say they find the prospect of a single life much more attractive than the life they anticipate as a wife and mother (in which physical abuse is not uncommon). The young men expect and want the role their fathers had, so they aren't inclined to adjust expectations in a way that might make more women inclined to marry.
Makes sense, but what is everyone doing instead? If I hadn’t gotten married and started a family I’d probably be retired by now. That would have its charms, but I haven’t heard that South Koreans are enjoying an early and work-free retirement. So they’re just working and then not hooking up or raising children and then going back to work?
Basically, yes. Women who don't marry are using their income to design a single working life (travel, shopping, friends) that they want more than marriage. In that context, having to work is part of a life they prefer to their mothers' lives.
But one of the problems, in addition to the plunging birthrate, is that single women are creating social lives for themselves with friends, but many single men are not. There is a lot of concern about young men who are socially isolated.
That's what I've been reading as well. The same is happening in China. Women don't like the role they're expected to play if they marry, so they choose not to.
I think sex has broken down because most (not all, I’m aware) women only or primarily want to have sex within an emotionally committed long-term relationship, while most (again, not all, I’m aware) men are proportionally much more interested in sowing their oats, so to speak
so that with the breakdown of sexual mores and norms, for the most part a minority of men (the most attractive ones) have sex with a smaller minority of women (the interested-in-casual-partners) ones. The less attractive men want casual sex, but they lose the competition for the small number of women willing to provide, so they end up not having sex. And the women who don’t want casual sex struggle to find men who are willing to wait to have sex until there is some degree of commitment, so they end up not having much sex, either.
I’m 37 and have 2 kids, and before we had kids my husband and I did it all - or at least enough of it. I’ve been to enough cool restaurants and beautiful hotels and lazy vacations and parties that I can give them up for 18 years or so and not miss much.
Dare I suggest that plenty of people who have kids still go out to eat (with or without their kids), on vacation (generally with their kids) and to parties (generally without)...
Interesting piece, thanks. I’m not going to buy a van. Never was, but now more so.
#vanlife is a great concept as a several year lifestyle choice if you don't have kids. If you do, then the #vanlife is more like RV life and even then, it's not a permanent lifestyle suitable for kids IMO. There's a great TAL episode about a family of 5 that circumnavigate the globe on a sailboat for several years, not by choice, by because the parents were pot farmers back in the 80s/90s and had to escape the law. It's a cautionary tale. Some people can make it work, but for 99% of humanity it's fantasy.
It's not only that people don't want to have kids, it continues to be a problem that the wrong kind of people have them, and plenty.
And who are the right kind of people?
Mentally balanced people with strong moral backbones and enough time and wealth to afford to support them until they reach maturity, and oftentimes after.
This possibly rules everyone out.
I would have added “within reason,” but he’s right about that
Good question. And who gets to decide who the right kind of people are?
Panels of respected community peers and leaders of the same race as the prospective parents, so it doesn’t get all eugenics-y
Anyone who puts people into "right people" and "wrong people" categories is in the...aww, shit.
So is taking frustrations on women who opt out from child-bearing.
A culture which fails to reproduce enough children is going to either die out or put social pressure on women (and men) of childbearing age to get on with it, contribute their share, etc.
Expecting die out to be everyone's option is not rational. So we should expect increasing social pressure to be a future trend.
I don't disagree. It's just that, in today's climate, it's increasingly more likely that people who want to have kids will be the ones experiencing the stigmatization. That's ok?
I wish this weren't true, but I used to do a lot of work in Family Court ...
This strikes me as the wrong framing of right and wrong for the context.
Ignoring forced pregnancies and denial of abortifacients, those who don't want to reproduce get bred out of the species.
And in that sense, there can never be the 'wrong' kind of people reproducing.
"A woman quoted in the Krueger piece says, “The character is just so determined to live the life she wants, the best, most interesting life she can…. We all toasted to that.” That’s nice, honey. But no one lives the life they want. No one lives the best, most interesting life they can."
I gotta be me!
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Too many people have it in their heads that young = progressive = good, and old = conservative = bad. That's why you see this endless slurping by 50-somethings online about how The Kids Will Save Us.
Hear hear.
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/4125661-high-school-boys-are-trending-conservative/
They think it makes them young
Chris Rock scoffed at the idea that your friends will visit you in the hospital when you are old and dying. It's a fundamentally unpleasant process, so unpleasant that only family (your kids) would feel compelled to undertake it anyway.
Being in the will makes kids and friends much more likely to visit. That’s how it has always worked.
For the vast majority of the population there's enough cash to for the kids and nobody else. Unless you count pocket change.
Why would you give the cash to the kids if they aren’t the ones at your bedside?
I mean that typically people leave an inheritance to their children. Maybe there is some minority that's wealthy enough to spread the wealth around to their friends as well but that's clearly a minority.
Why would they if the kids aren’t willing to help them in their old age?
If the formulation is that only self interest motivates people to show up to do the unpleasant work of tending to the dying then aren't you just agreeing with Chris Rock that your friends won't visit you in the hospital at the end?
Indeed, some of them magically appear after a long time of continuous absence upon hearing a word 'inheritance'.
I think this is very dependent upon the relationships one has with family and friends. My sister opted to not involve herself or help me when our mother suffered from Alzheimer's and passed right before hurricane Ida. My sister has essentially excommunicated herself from our family as a whole. I think if you're lucky enough to have close personal friends who will visit you in the hospital, count yourself very lucky indeed.
My elderly father is in the hospital right now, and he is getting regular visits from his friends (who are also helping out by ding things like picking up his mail for him)l. So, yes, GOOD friends will visit!
It's ridiculous bc Chris Rock would have a line out the door of visitors, if he was in the hospital. I've been to 5 funerals the past two years. The two for childless (oldish) people were out the doors overflowing, with multiple people speaking and giving incredibly poignant, no dry eyes left in the house, a-legend-has-passed type speeches of deep friendships and wild stories. The three for parents/grandparents were sparsely attended by anyone other than family members, not particularly emotional or inspiring, and filled with pathetic speeches indicating that no one in the family even really knew much about dad/grandpa, based on the level of superficiality and chat-gpt level generic blather...one got the sense it was just a duty and the funeral was something to get over with quickly. I'm not saying it's always this way...I'm sure there are some childless people where no one at all attenda their funeral, if they even have one. But the idea that family care or like you or even love you more if you're a parent versus not is so false as to be preposterous. People invest their time and energy into different things...childless people naturally have more time to invest in friendship. If they do, it turns out that friends...who like you merely bc they actually like you...often have stronger attachments and fondness than the people who are bonded to you solely out of some genetic duty.
The problem with depending on friends is that typically your social circle is other people of about your own age. If you're 80 years old and need somebody to drive you around your friends are probably going to be about the same age and in the same condition. Your kids or grandkids on the other hand?
There are always exceptions but by and large we expect family to be closer and have a stronger bond than friends and acquaintances. I suspect that's based on real world experience.
As for Chris Rock, he was talking about his father. When his health started to go the guys from the bar didn't show up. His wife and kids did.
Yeah I understand how these things happen, but people really should not only have friends their own age. At least, I don't think it's advisable. The funerals I've been to that I referenced were all non-relatives (friends and neighbors) who were 15 to 35 years older than me, FWIW. Intergenerational friendships are a good thing, as is family.
Ideally, yeah. But I see a ton of old people who are lonely and alone because all of their friends have died off.
"Old, Infirm, and Unattractive."
*Old. We are fortunate to grow old. Think of all the people lost to war and untreatable illness. Growing old is not a bad thing.
*Infirm. Many are infirm out of the womb. We cope. It may be a surprise to those who never had a disability. The good news is that the world accommodates the infirm in a way it never did before.
*Unattractive. If you mean unattractive to someone in their 20s-30s--probably true, but as we age that's not whose approval is needed.
I think ageism is the only base of discrimination no one feels like they have to police themselves about. We police ourselves about race , gender, disabilities, being fat or not but older people, they get all sorts of abuse from everywhere and out in the open. Ageism is the most acceptable prejudice. The fact is, many women after 40 are hot as f and can afford to live the way they want. As someone else here noticed, they are not a representative sample, thou, so let's punish them for it by reminding them their uterus is getting out of use.
Great comment
Instagram, social media in general, Hollywood, Madison Avenue and much of the mainstream media are consistently selling the myth that age is just a number, and you can be hot well into the senior years, no problem, if you really work at it and really want to be.
That, coupled with the culture that worships youth, is a powerful combination. A culture which dislikes old-ness and sees nothing positive about it (no wisdom, only retrograde hate, no useful advice, only atavistic hateful out of date expectations, etc), and which in turn glorifies youth, coupled with a media that tells people that, if they work and want it badly enough, they can maintain a youthful appearance well into their later years ... well you're going to get a lot of people, especially women (who have been, and continue to be, more judged on their physical appearance than men), bending over backwards to remain young looking, and young acting, for as long as they can, even to the point of resetting their lives in midlife to adopt "younger" looks and behaviors than what they were doing 10 years ago, behaviors which made them feel "old".
I don't see how this gets reversed easily. Social media has made our culture easily the most superficial it has ever been, in the sense that personal physical presentation has never been as powerful as it is now, due to the ability to project it effortlessly at scale. That's ... a big thing, and it will result in this worship of youth and an emphasis on the maintenance of youthful appearance and behaviors for as long as possible by those who can manage to do so. Yes, this is cruel to those who cannot (which turns out to be most people outside of a certain set), but those aren't the people driving the trend.
I wish I had the power to ban social media, entirely, no exceptions, banned forever. Sadly I don't have this power but I am going to fight as hard as I can to keep my soon-to-be-born daughter as far away from those trash factories as I can for as long as I can.
Follow After Babbel blog.
What you write is true - and the worst aspect of it is (IMHO) that it leaves people unprepared for the realities of aging, which can only be denied for so long. And all too often that results in what could have been avoidable mental and financial hardship, and an unhappy old age.
You can choose to opt out. I have Instagram and only use the messages feature which is only my kids. No Facebook or any of that other crap. Twitter...I'm no Mark Twain who can come up with funny, insightful things in a line or two. Not many people can. The whole Twitter thing to me screams, thoughtless and superficial. There is nothing that says you have to partake in Social Media for fun. If it's needed for your work, put it on like a uniform, then take it off.
I agree on the personal level, but Freddie is talking about the broader trends, which gets into what lots of other people are doing. Any individual can opt out of that, and I think it's wise to do so, but many people do not want to do that, which is what drives the trend.
"The trouble is that as fewer and fewer people have children, the difficulty becomes even more acute, as we have an increasingly-stressed public benefits system and more and more seniors who have no familial support in their golden years."
I think you're underestimating how much the knowledge that people in this country just dump their parents in retirement homes plays into a lack of trust of having kids turning into a social safety net when you age. When I've lived in Asia and the topic of aging in Asia vs. the US comes up, one thing that always gets mentioned is how cavalier Americans are about just locking away their parents to whither away. As a kid, I volunteered in a community center for the elderly. You would see Asians and Latins spending time with their elderly parents there, but not white people. When you frame having kids as a form of self-protection against dying infirm and alone, the fact that a lot of parents still die infirm and alone undermines the whole narrative, especially since parenting is so time-intensive that working more to pay for better elder care can be a better economic tradeoff.
I have a Hispanic friend whose mom is 101. She has lived with her daughter and son-in-law for 30 years. The family feels blessed she is with them and not burdened. The grand children and great-grandchildren never miss her birthday or other life events. I have been with them many times and all I see is sincere affection.
They have been charging her diapers for 30 years? Cleaning the shit out to her vagina after a blowout?
Why not?
Do it for a couple of years and get back to me.
Is doing something unpleasant so unimaginable to you?
I know what you’re going to do when the time comes and don’t delude yourself to thinking you do any different.
I mean in traditional cultures where people took care of old people the totally disabled phase was pretty short. It is a new development that people get to the diaper-wearing can't recognize their own kids phase and medicine keeps them alive for another 20 years. 30 years of round the clock intensive care-taking is a huge burden on people who are also probably at the age where their taking care of their own kids and have jobs.
Breaking concrete for a living when you're 12 years old is probably pretty tough too.
It still IS pretty short, on average. There's a commonly cited stat that the average life expectancy at a nursing home is less than 6 months. While the psychological and material conditions at such facilities is miserable and probably doesn't help, the main reason is that residence at such places is nearly always precipitated by an acute medical incident that triggers a rapid decline or a 2nd incident follows like an aftershock that finishes you off.
I acted as GAL on numerous indigent elderly people who had suffered an acute incident and wound up in nursing homes under the legal authority of the public administrator, because of lack of any family in the area even willing to be a legal guardian -- a position that doesn't even require directly providing care. It was reasonably common for the ward to die before the public administrator had cut my check (a modest little $125 that I rarely got in such cases, it's quasi- pro bono work in all but name.)
While I'm sure some people do hang on 20 years in a diminished capacity, that's just not very common even with all modern medicine has to offer. The things that diminish your capacity that much tend to kill you in short order.
Hmm I guess it's anecdotal but I know a ton of people who just kind of hung on indefinetely while barely recognizing their own kids, eating mush etc. Especially dementia seems to really allow you to go on.
Yes, but the last 6 months of being in a nursing home are normally preceded by a (likely longer) period where people are cared for by their family. Despite the trope, people don't generally dump their families in a home the moment they need any sort of care, in many cases, families make the decision to switch to residential care when home care is no longer an option.
Not at all and you have a very strange idea of aging. The lady was widowed and lonely when her husband died so she moved in with her children. Her other adult children have her visit as well.
I have a very accurate view of aging. Hence my point.
Years ago, got pulled over by some redneck cop on New Years Eve, we set to talking. This was in a small rural town where the main industry was a meat packing plant. Consequently, of the town's population was increasingly Latin, and a lot of them were probably not entirely legal.
Anyway, the cop told me of many things pertaining to his OJT education in All Things Mexican, one of which was that, unlike in Mexico, if you call the police, they will come. Even if you live in a trailer park, they will come. This was mystifying to many fresh out of Mexico.
Another was that he had never seen or heard of a Mexican in an old folks' home. The idea of putting Abuelita in a home to be cared for by strangers was unthinkable.
Folks F.O.B. from a lot of traditional cultures express similar shock at the way we treat our elders.
When I was living in Central America, there was a common refrain that Americans pick up their dog's shit everyday but put their parents in a nursing home where strangers take care of them.
(litter boxes were not mentioned but I imagine the theme would be the same)
This issue is currently hitting close to home. I tend to agree that aging is better in the context of a multigenerational household, or at least in close proximity. But so many interconnected problems.
In these multigenerational households, it is almost always the wife and mother who is tasked with the lion share of the caregiving of both the kids and the parents. Adding that burden onto many women who are also earners just isn’t realistic. Maybe when more men are ready to step up and take their turns with the bed pans and the doctor visits.
There’s also a difference between assisted living and skilled nursing. Back in the day, once a person took to their bed, the end was usually in sight. Now, modern medicine can keep people alive but in a debilitated state for quite a long time. The care giving required is intense and exhausting. Kudos to those who are able to provide that kind of extended care at home to their parents. Many are simply not up to that challenge.
Working to pay for better elder care can be a better tradeoff at first. If too many people do it though, who is going to work at all those elder care places?
True, but experts have been pointing to elder care as a major growing sector for future growth for a while now. Assuming we are willing to build enough facilities and finance Medicare, people will self-select into growth sectors.
Also, if parenting is increasingly time-intensive, then if your adult children also have children, they'll have less time and money to invest in elder care, thus making hiring professionals more important.
Charges that Western culture are self centered and selfish are pretty common.
I think the self-centeredness and selfishness isn't a recent phenomenon. Somehow it's built into the DNA of many Americans (mostly WASPs I might add) are imbued with the idea of leaving the nest and make something of themselves from our early start as a Nation with Manifest Destiny. That coming back home to the parents is a sign of failure or living in multi-generational houses is also not fully supported either. Somehow, several generations being raised on the idea of Rugged Individualism and Boot-Strapping have convinced many they don't need a family or a village. Not sure how we turn that boat around.
But I would argue this is also a class thing, something middle and upper-middle class Americans do more. Having grown up in a diverse working class neighborhood in Philly, folks (including my family) lived in multigenerational houses with their aging grandparents and great-grandparents.
When you have upper middle class Asians living in multigenerational households, is it really a class thing or a culture thing?
Sure, I'd agree with you that there are cultural groups that no matter their class are inclined to not use nursing homes, senior homes, etc., but my original point still stands.
According to this, white people are the least likely racial groups studied to live in a multigenerational household. In addition, " a previous analysis found that median adjusted household income was slightly lower in multigenerational households than other types. However, the reverse was true for homes headed by Black, Hispanic, and foreign-born householders: Incomes were higher in multigenerational homes for those groups. Even multigenerational households with unemployed residents had higher adjusted median incomes than other types of households where unemployed residents lived."
The class issue with multigenerational households is thus largely applicable only to white people.
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/03/24/the-demographics-of-multigenerational-households/
In poor places, they’re dependent on grandma’s social security check for the whole family’s survival
100%. Though I think Freddie's parents are both dead? So this may be a bit hypothetical for him.
The desperation behind the #vanlife movement—and the many, many other ‘alternative’ lifestyles of that ilk—lies in the belief that existing is something you ‘do’. Existing is being, and if you aren’t satisfied with who you are, in the day-to-day, no lifestyle descending from on high will save you. I think the people who insist that having children is ‘too hard’ or ‘too expensive’ are more afraid of having to exist for someone else, a role in life that is not front and centre, and therefore incredibly uncool. But the coolest thing about that role is that it forces you to reckon with the actual existence as being thing, and you don’t care as much whether you live in a van, or an apartment, or a condo, but whether or not those people you’re now responsible for are happy and healthy and kind. And that’s so much more rewarding than sex with strangers on a Saturday night when you’re pushing sixty.
Depending on where you live, and your circumstances, having children doesn't mean the end of your existence as an independent person, particularly beyond the first few years.
That said, having children is obviously a huge commitment, and lots of people do a piss poor job of parenting, and I don't think that people who are unsure about having kids choosing not to have kids is a bad thing.
I would hazard to guess that if you’re worried about doing a good job as a parent, you will not be one of those who do a piss-poor job of it. No parent is perfect, and the commitment level is yours to decide. I don’t want to proselytize, but I think the idea of having kids has become somewhat removed from the actual experience. It’s not that hard, if you care.
The hard parts are the exhaustion of raising several young kids and the slow-bleeding of one's bank accounts. Aside from that, having kids isn't that difficult.
It's a much smarter choice than having them due to peer/family/ a guy on the internet pressure.
I think the key to these alternative lifestyles is that most of our time being is spent in front of a desk for some mega corporation and just leaves us empty. Most of the best things in life are cheap or free (relationships, enjoying nature, going for a walk, etc…)… and working robs us of that time. I wish there was a serious push for lowering the full time working hours. The environment and our mental health could both use an America happy with a simpler and slower lifestyle.
I’m not sure less work is the answer. Though I’m in the enviable position of working for myself, in order to make a living, I have to work a lot! And if you look back to the so-called halcyon days of the past, people worked more than today. The key is fulfillment and finding the fun wherever you’re at. That might be a lot tougher at a corporate gig, though.
But I would guess that people waste more time on screen time for things like Netflix and gaming than they spend doing the truly fulfilling parts of life. I know I spend more time on those things than I probably should.
I think a key point is the discrepancy between someone’s “desired career work” and their “real relationship with labor.”
You’re absolutely correct that leisure activities like you mentioned have supplanted time-fulfilling labor like parenting, and I think a crux to that lies in how the insistence/emphasis of postsecondary-educated careers and rugged individualism has affected the perception and distribution of time for younger people when they must work jobs that lie outside their educated career prospects to survive.
If people are focused on their *desired* labor conditions when they don’t match up to their interests or expectations, and not their *real* labor conditions (complaints regarding those notwithstanding), they may feel forced to triage their family/social/leisure time more than if their concerns only regarded devoting time to their current labor and family prospects, with social and leisure time falling alongside.
The people not devoting time to family are the ones who are unwilling to sacrifice their desired career prospects, leisure, and social life alongside the real labor they must maintain on top of that. The people with families who want them are likely comfortable with their current labor, along with their social life and leisure allowances.
They did a study of aborigines (in Australia, if memory serves) and found that they worked one or two 8hour days at most per week.
Methinks if we had a more equitable distribution of resources, one 8 hour workday would be all that would be required of us in the modern developed world, as well.
I am with you! Most of my waking hours spent doing stuff for a paycheck and not because they’re interesting or fulfilling to me. Working on tasks that have been prioritized by people who do not communicate well why they matter or why I should care. Reporting to people with bad management skills. It’s soul destroying shit!
Last year my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 esophageal cancer and passed away within 6 months. Since then my dad, who’s almost 80 and has a lot of his own health issues, has needed a ton of help. I mention this because it has underscored the importance of kids to me— I worked really hard to make sure my moms last 6 months were as full of love as possible, and I’m working my ass off for my dad now, and I want more than anything to have that level of support when I get old. Im kinda shocked more people don’t recognize this “selfish” reason for having kids.
People I've talked to about it dismiss it. They say there's always the chance your kids will still ignore you anyway. I pointed out that, since nothing in life is certain, that is a fully general argument against doing anything. That didn't seem to phase them.
After reading your take on the Miranda July thingee, Freddie, tell us the truth - do you have a sideline writing erotica?
As a single gay male 64-year old, I would like to think I am capable of a life beyond mindless hedonism without having to force myself to marry and bear children with a woman. However, to judge from the attitudes in the pro-natalist camp--including, I am afraid, some expressed in this article--this does not seem to be the case; simply by not marrying and having children, I have condemned myself to a life of mindless hedonism, caught in the clutches of late but not late enough capitalism, a mere epiphenomenon of a decadent secularist society without dignity or honor. Is there any hope for the likes of me other than mass conversion/reparative therapy?
So are choosing to ignore the very explicit point that this is a question of societal health, and that individuals can make whatever choice they want, for a particular reason? I mean what I say and I say what I mean.
Societal health depends of the health of the individuals within it. If I choose to be unhealthy (by not marrying a woman and having children), I am making society unhealthy. In order to keep society healthy, people like me must renounce our particular desires and abilities, and conform to the demands of society. Anything else is the merest self-indulgence, succumbing to the forces of a decadent capitalist regime. I have seen nothing whatsoever anywhere to counteract that argument.
You are putting that on yourself.
It might be a cliché, but "society" is not some sort of monolith will a well defined set of expectations. Indeed, one of the striking things about contemporary socio-cultural discourse is how incoherent it is.
Freddie isn't saying that you owe it to society to have children, but rather that people in general (not you specifically) owe it to themselves to consider that they might be happier having children rather than pursuing eternal youth.
Does the same apply to single, fit, childless independent women over 40 who chose to follow a new path ( within their means, of course) because their spouse is a massive disappointment? I hope so.
Of course there is. Even if conversion therapy worked, it would be totally unneeded in this day and age. You can marry another dude, then fertilize a donor egg and get a surrogate to carry it to term for you. You can even skip marrying a dude if you are pressed for time, although it will make caring for kids easier.
If for some reason you can't do that you could always outsource! There's tons of people who have trouble having kids and have crowdfunding to pay for IVF. Just throw a little money their way!
Me and my super gay husband did this. It cost 90 grand 15 years ago. Factor in the $250k "they" say it takes to raise a kid these days and you are talking some serious scratch. I'm a bit baffled by how grumpy and defensive Brian Newhouse is here but surrogacy is not simple.
Yes of course there is. Live a life of service.
FWIW, we have a pair of incredibly snotty teenagers we’d be happy to “lend” you so you can get some of the child raising experience for free, so to speak. ;-)
There is something distinct about American culture, where we like to hide the unglamorous, tedious bits of things - we fast forward through the long base mile workouts, we zip through the paint drying, forget about how long it takes to tend a garden. And there is nothing so slow and tedious as raising a child or taking care of a slowing elderly person, who’s conversation runs in fewer and fewer paths, all of which you’ve heard literally a hundred times before.
There is no fast-forward button in life, but we’ve been conditioned to expect one.
i do love hearing the same stories over and over again from elderly people :) like a legendary rock band that only plays the greatest hits. i have a 90-year-old friend, a widow, no blood relation of mine, and every time she tells me the story of how her late husband took her on a spontaneous trip to paris i feel like a kid at the front row of the eras tour
I don’t have any illusions on the headaches that come with kids. I just think people forget that if they live to be 80-90 years old, the vast majority of their experience with their kids is going to be as adults. It takes a while and it’s not guaranteed but the return on investment is there long term.
Is there a broad-based kid index fund we can more safely invest in? I’m afraid we’ve got all our assets in just two specific ones, and I’m told that’s a risky strategy!
Actually, one of the most interesting things is watching our kids interact with our parents. It’s a bit like watching the same movie again, but half a century later… you see, much more clearly, many tactics and values and philosophies your parents used on you… but that you didn’t notice at the time, but just absorbed like air.
Nieces, nephews, and being an honourary aunt/uncle to your friends' children is the ETF of kids.
Just chiming in to confirm that grandkids are great.
I don't think it's just people not wanting to have kids.
I think it's people in Westernized, industrial nations not wanting to have SEX—at least, not with each other. True, it is possible to have children without sex in the contemporary era (and vice versa, of course.) Still, the two DO seem to be connected.
According to a 2024 survey by the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP), 24% of French adults aged 18 to 69 said they hadn't had sex in the past 12 months—a significant decline in the past decade. In Korea, that number is one in three. The U.S. National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior and the UK National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles have found similar trends.
As to why sex is losing its popularity as a pastime... Honestly, I think it has something to do with (forgive me!) overexposure. We're all just sick of sex being the ultimate carrot and stick in the supplier-induced demand matrix that is late-stage capitalism.
I really want to understand what the hell is going on in South Korea. This sexless thing, the childless thing, these are all just statistics, but South Korea is starting to fall of the map on them such that they don’t seem like minor variations. It feels like a very different, very new societal form.
I read a compelling study that pointed to alienation between young women and men as a big factor. According to the study, South Korean society is markedly patriarchal; younger people have grown up seeing the role of husband and wife that is pretty sharply hierarchal.
A lot of you women don't want that role, and openly say they find the prospect of a single life much more attractive than the life they anticipate as a wife and mother (in which physical abuse is not uncommon). The young men expect and want the role their fathers had, so they aren't inclined to adjust expectations in a way that might make more women inclined to marry.
Hard to square that circle.
Makes sense, but what is everyone doing instead? If I hadn’t gotten married and started a family I’d probably be retired by now. That would have its charms, but I haven’t heard that South Koreans are enjoying an early and work-free retirement. So they’re just working and then not hooking up or raising children and then going back to work?
Basically, yes. Women who don't marry are using their income to design a single working life (travel, shopping, friends) that they want more than marriage. In that context, having to work is part of a life they prefer to their mothers' lives.
But one of the problems, in addition to the plunging birthrate, is that single women are creating social lives for themselves with friends, but many single men are not. There is a lot of concern about young men who are socially isolated.
I only spent a week in Seoul but it seemed that all the young me did was chain smoke and get shitfaced every night.
That's what I've been reading as well. The same is happening in China. Women don't like the role they're expected to play if they marry, so they choose not to.
I think sex has broken down because most (not all, I’m aware) women only or primarily want to have sex within an emotionally committed long-term relationship, while most (again, not all, I’m aware) men are proportionally much more interested in sowing their oats, so to speak
so that with the breakdown of sexual mores and norms, for the most part a minority of men (the most attractive ones) have sex with a smaller minority of women (the interested-in-casual-partners) ones. The less attractive men want casual sex, but they lose the competition for the small number of women willing to provide, so they end up not having sex. And the women who don’t want casual sex struggle to find men who are willing to wait to have sex until there is some degree of commitment, so they end up not having much sex, either.
So here we are.
number of
In France, too? That’s wack
There are only so many movies, books, music, travel, types of food & sex you can consume before it gets repetitive.
If you want the full human experience before you inevitably die, have children.
I’m 37 and have 2 kids, and before we had kids my husband and I did it all - or at least enough of it. I’ve been to enough cool restaurants and beautiful hotels and lazy vacations and parties that I can give them up for 18 years or so and not miss much.
Dare I suggest that plenty of people who have kids still go out to eat (with or without their kids), on vacation (generally with their kids) and to parties (generally without)...