Among my age group (mostly early 30s), I've heard of more baby showers since the pandemic started than at any other point in my life. This is utterly baffling:
Finances - how the hell do you afford kids? I'm making more ($75K/year) than most people my age, and I feel like I'm barely scraping by in a moderate cost of living area. My laptop is 10 years old, my car has 150,000 miles on it, my house is less than 1100 square feet, and my retirement savings is close to nonexistent.
Time - who has the time or energy for kids? I don't have a long commute, rarely work more than 40 hours a week, don't have a manual labor job, and haven't run over 40 MPW since college. Sunday evenings are my only consistently free times, and then it's back to work on Monday before I know it. I'm tired more often than not, and every day is packed with home/car maintenance, cooking, grocery shopping, laundry, cleaning, and so on.
Future - who wants to bring in kids to a world like this? Pretty much everyone agrees we're heading in the wrong direction. Liberals worry about climate change, conservatives worry about immigration, and the threats of nuclear war, worse pandemics, and resource depletion aren't getting any smaller.
I don't get it. Are these all unplanned pregnancies or something?