I've never had a job because I'm worried what it would be like to be unemployed.

I can only offer my perspective - I take on those burdens because I want what my fathers had. I want a stable family, a wife who is able to stay home and care for and teach our children, a comfortable retirement, and the ability to help both my extended family and my community at large.

Still, I don't disagree with your comment overall. It seems that I am a bit of an outlier among my peers to want those things. I don't blame people for deciding that this path in life isn't worth it to them, and that they'd prefer to walk another.

For that matter, if hadn't met my wife so early in life, I'm not sure I'd be looking to get married and start a family now. I'd probably be living a minimal existence in a van or small RV in California, working at FAANG, and putting back as much of my pay as I could. A few years of that and I'd be financially able to move back to rural America to live a comfortable life and never have to work again.

I'm 100% on board with this. You can make a lot of mistakes in your life and still pull yourself up if you're unencumbered by marriage and kids. I know from personal experience. I was deep in debt and making poor life decisions in my twenties. It took until until my thirties to get my act together. It was hard, but would have probably been impossible if I had kids to worry about providing for. I'd even say that if you are financially able to support a family, I'd still wait until I get through my twenties before starting. With life expectancy up, there's no reason one can't wait.

> It needs to be the norm and not the exception to have zero children.

I get where you're coming from, and I don't look down on anyone who chooses to never have children, but I don't agree on this point. I know quite a few people who have chosen this lifestyle. I thought for a long time I'd never have kids as well. But now that I do, I couldn't imagine not having any. I think it's more important to wait until you're emotionally mature and financially secure enough to do it. If it's not for you, by all means, don't have kids. Being on the other side of it now, though, I can say that it's quite a transformative experience.

This line of thinking just seems juvenile to me. Do you really believe the pinnacle of human achievement (and the only one that matters) is being in a long term relationship and having children?

I should give up my dreams in order to have kids ?

Two years ago, I had an idea ( that failed but that's not the point here ), I wanted to finish it so I simply walked into the office and quit.

I worked 6 months on my project, I didn't care about someone else, just me and my project.

I value your opinion and if you think that you should have kids, do it but for me, right now it would be like a prison.

So do I. Unfortunately I don't have any and most likely never will (the wife can't). Combined with an unfulfilling job, this makes most days quite pointless and hard to bear.

Personally I try to distract myself, not think too much about these things and just wait for it all to be over.

I'm the same way, and spent many years of my twenties living a very lonely existence. Getting a family was the best decision I ever made. I'm absolutely certain I'd be in a miserable place otherwise.

It's not selfish not to have kids. And in western countries, spouses/parents can take care of themselves financially.

What an irresponsible advise, given that you factored out the importance of the relationship with the significant other.

"Just find the love of your life!"

"Just live happily ever after!"

I mean, you don't even care if someone's personality and mental state allows for that. A family is not a retinue waiting on you to fullfil your every need, is it?

If starting a family was a silver bullet then we wouldn't see such a high rate of divorce and so many kids screwed up because their parents divorce sucked.

Stay single and childless ;-)

As someone that's childfree in his thirties and is planning to not have any children; I live for myself, my own aspirations, philosophy, love and exploration. Career certainly does not come first, but its not hard to see how having a family would stop me in my tracks of progress in life. Being around peers with children does bring me joy, but it would be a personal experience I could not handle. And I figure, for someone like me its probably best to embrace the child free life with my partner rather than put someone into this world and raise them as unhappy and unmotivated parents. What exactly is wrong with that?

> They are, in the truly biological sense of the term, drones.

Does it really matter what makes another happy?

> They are drones, by choice.

And you're not a drone by choice? Just another side of the same coin. You're not exactly coming of as happy and fulfilled either, more as a someone with a ingrained world view of kids being a necessity for ones happiness in life.

> I don't understand why they even bother without love and laughter to look forward to at the end of the day.

There's enough love and laughter in my life, I don't have a deficit of it at the end of my day. Instead there are other long term goals, career and non-career wise which are indeed very important to me, but which absolutely do not leave any room whatsoever for children.

Where in the hell did you get that from? I wish I hadn't wasted 20+ years of my youth working so hard.

>I guess it fits nicely with the declining notion that having children isn’t worth it either.

Dunno where you got that from either. My kids are the best thing that happened to me. Are you projecting or something?

For emotional reasons. People function better when they are under the impression that there exists another human being that gives a shit about them, that respects them, that will listen to them and actually care what they say. People without spouse sometimes find hard to convince themselves that this is the case.

If you are emotionless person maybe you really don't need a wife. Cooking and cleaning services are cheaper than wife. You also don't need a child because they are expensive and give no benefit. If you have them as an "old age insurance" you might get very disappointed because support from your child as you get old depends on how much emotional connection with you they had and that might be lacking if you are a person that finds money more important than emotions.

Why not? We are many people who don't want to start a family, ever.

I legitimately do not care if people "feel sorry for me". I have good reasons for choosing not to have kids, and I hate the attitude that I'm somehow selfish or missing out on the "true meaning of life". Life is ultimately meaningless with or without kids. That allows you to make your own meaning, and kids are not a requirement for that.

There's this attitude that people who don't have kids are in some way selfish, but in my experience, the act of having kids can be the selfish one, especially if you are not in the position to be a good parent, for whatever reason. Many people have kids in that attempt to find meaning for themselves, not to actually be a good parent.

As a society, we need to be much better at not pushing every single person into being a parent. It just doesn't work for many people. And that's okay.

> The world does not revolve around single people...at all

Plenty of single people have kids, though?

This view won't be well received on a forum with a lot of millennials and Gen-z, but as a millennial myself (late 30s, though) without kids, I would actually agree with you to an extent.

I've already lived and travelled the world. I've volunteered a bit. I've worked and saved money and can afford what I want. And none of these things really do matter the older I get. And I notice that amongst my friends, those with kids, seem to go through life with more of a purpose than us without any kids or even long term partners.

Life seems kind of pointless with or without kids to me, but I think that kids give individuals something to occupy their time, and without that time sink, life becomes boring.

Nonetheless - and this won't go over well - I would like kids and a family - but I've already seen several male friends and relatives utterly destroyed by the US family courts / divorce initiated by their wives, and I'd rather be bored but financially and emotionally 'safe' than completely ruined.

Some men have their first child well after 50. It's not gone. And I know several men who have been very happy marrying a woman with kids and raising them as their own.

That seems to be the root of the problem. Do you have children?

Isn't this a major reason people start families? Having kids and people and things to take care of gives life a lot of meaning to many people. So much so that the vapid trivialities of the everyday modern life are mere amusements we gratefully accept rather than the daily struggle most people that ever lived before us had to endure.