NYTimes: "women delay having kids until it's too late"

I’m a 33 year old woman. I earn roughly 2x my husband’s salary (currently I’m at 130k), but more importantly, my ceiling is much higher than his with the potential for more flexibility and work-life balance. (I can top off around 200k in the next few years with somehow flexible time off.) We have jointly made the decision to prioritize my career over his in order to have children now. He is willing to be he primary caretaker and work part time. For this, I am hugely, unbelievably grateful. Not just because I know he will be just as good if not a better parent than I will, but because with his sacrifice we can have the most possible family time and use very little help from day cares etc.

Those saying women wouldn’t date a lower earning partner don’t know what they are talking about. Smart people of both genders understand that there are many valuable ways to contribute and sacrifices from all parties must be made at times. If my husband weren’t willing to do this it would stall my career and earning potential badly and also create less stability as a family. For this I will always be grateful.

I had my kids when I was 38 and 41 (wife was 32 and 35). I have zero regrets about being an older dad.

My wife and we’re married for 10 years before having our first kid. We both were getting professional degrees / in early stages of our careers in our mid to late 20s. Both my wife and I came from divorced homes and relatively poor households (her family was more middle class, mine was poor). We had a lot of fun and worked out a ton of $hit in those first 10 years of marriage.

With the stress of our professional training I think trying to have kids at that point in our lives would’ve possibly led to divorce. Plus, during training we were living in major, very expensive coastal cities that would’ve added additional financial stress at the time.

By delaying kids I think our marriage, relationship and bond grew much, much stronger. We were able to travel and do a lot of fun stuff as a young married couple. Plus, we were able to save a ton of money and put ourselves (and now our kids) in a very, very good financial position—which admittedly isn’t everything but is a huge stress relief.

I understand the concerns about waiting “too long” and I think to a certain extent we got lucky with fertility and kid health issues. Being older for me hasn’t been an issue as a dad as I’ve been a life long runner and have stayed in good enough shape that I have never felt like I didn’t have the energy to keep up with my kids.

Back to the point of the thread.

Women can't wait until they can afford to have kids. You never can afford them.

If you don't have the right guy by age 30, look at over 40 guys.

If she does have the right guy by then, time to procreate.

We are closing in on 8 billion earthlings and you think there is a fertility problem? Duh, of course there is! Women are TOO fertile!!

Interesting , how black females don't have a problem at a young age getting impregnated by Nubian studs without nuptial agreements .

When I used to go on Tinder I was amazed by how many single moms there were. But maybe single moms try to use any tools that they have in order to find somebody. "I have my sh!t together. No hookups." Sure.

mellow seeds wrote:

Bread Face wrote:

Totally different here.

I had kids at 27, 30, 32. They turned out great but raising them while trying to move up in the world was pretty challenging.

Then I had kids at 54 and 56. It is so much easier this time around. I have no career concerns. Still working but the level of flexibility that I have now is 100x greater and everyone in the household benefits.

Does it bother you that there is a good chance your kids will be fatherless in their teens/early 20s?

Not in the least. Given my health and family history the odds are very low that that will be the case.

Further, without going into too much detail, my living situation is not from the cookie-cutter textbook that you are undoubtedly referencing, even if subconsciously, when you raise this concern. I could die tomorrow and I would be 100% confident that my kids would be very well raised by multiple immediate family members.

They would not be in any sort of sad situation that exists in your mind but does not exist in my family's reality.

Getting Old wrote:

It is my experience that men who are willing to shoulder the burden of childcare and household duties at least equally with their partners are more desirable to professional women all else equal, and professional women with such partners are more likely to want to have kids. Not sure how you can argue that.

Um, data can argue with that. Data shows that women marry across or up economically. Period. Check out Jordan Peterson on Youtube who has published peer reviewed studies on this subject.

Your anecdotal evidence can't compare with tested data.

Also, like Chris Rock says, aint nothing that shuts down a woman's libido like a man asking for her to pay.

Bullet_Proof wrote:

Getting Old wrote:

It is my experience that men who are willing to shoulder the burden of childcare and household duties at least equally with their partners are more desirable to professional women all else equal, and professional women with such partners are more likely to want to have kids. Not sure how you can argue that.

Um, data can argue with that. Data shows that women marry across or up economically. Period. Check out Jordan Peterson on Youtube who has published peer reviewed studies on this subject.

Your anecdotal evidence can't compare with tested data.

Also, like Chris Rock says, aint nothing that shuts down a woman's libido like a man asking for her to pay.

Just wondering how that is possible. Or how it could mean what you appear to think it means.

Since almost everyone gets married, how can "women marry across or up economically" unless basically women's economic statuses are shifted to the left of that of men? And if that is the case, wouldn't these results simply mean that both men and women tend to marry their economic equivalent (after factoring in the male/female displacement on the economic well-being scale)?

Bullet_Proof wrote:

...

Also, like Chris Rock says, aint nothing that shuts down a woman's libido like a man asking for her to pay.

So, what you are saying is that women are whores?

I just can't picture having kids that late. In most cases if you take care of yourself you'll probably be okay in your 50s, but most people in their sixties are slowing down to some extent and certainly in their 70s. Which means that for my kids prime years athletically and physically I'd be trying to keep it together. I just can't see things like playing ball, wrestling with your kids, etc. working very well by that point.

There will be those that are genetically lucky and hold it together well, but that's certainly not the norm.

The other big issue for me is the whole dying thing, assuming we don't figure that out. Average life expectancy is what, around 75 or 80? That means there is a 50% chance you'll be dead before your kid is even done with college. Certainly, the vast majority of the formative raising will already be done, but at least as someone in their mid 20s right now...the thought of my parents being gone already is a little tough for me to think about. I'm not sure I personally would be comfortable having kids knowing there is a high chance I could be dead before they finish school.

I appreciate your sincere post.

As I hinted, my situation is substantially different than what most might picture. I will not go into detail there. But suffice it to say that I am extremely confident that the odds that my young kids will be very well cared for in a stable loving home of direct family are better than they are for someone having kids at 30 in a classic nuclear family.

That said, I will address a few points you brought up.

1) I have brothers substantially older than me (in their 70s) who currently wrestle around with my young ones and play catch etc. I am considerably more athletically capable than they were at my age. So I am pretty confident that I will be playing sports with my kids while they are in high school. I won't have any delusions of being quite as agile as them. But for horsing around I think things will work out great.

2) You seem to be misunderstanding life expectancy and the implications regarding chances of being alive when my kids are done with college. If the life expectancy of a male is 78 years at birth then it is considerably higher than 78 years when he is 60. As I am typing this I just used the official SS calculator which shows a 28 year life expectancy for me from this point. That is before accounting for the fact that I am of a race which tends to live longer, have never smoked, am in excellent physical health and am much, much more fit and active than average. All things considered there is nowhere close to a 50% chance that I will be dead before my kids finish college. If you want to get to that 50% number then it is likely that my kids will be well into their 30s.

Shoot. My wife never gave me the option of being the breadwinner. But then again she made $40k and I made $250k when we had our first so I guess I wouldn’t have accepted her offer either.

All you guys saying your woman is a saint by letting you stay at home with the kids are losers who don’t make snot for income. Period.

older women shouldn't be having children, But worse old guys --like trump-- shouldn't be fathering children. It's part of the reason birth defects like Asperger' s have skyrocketed.

not a guy wrote:

I can assure you that for most professional single women I know, the single biggest barrier to them having kids is finding a quality partner. Perhaps the bar is too high, but then again; looking at the marriage rates, is it surprising that women (who often end up raising the kids in the case of divorce) aren't jumping at settling down? Most if not all of the single women I know have begun looking in earnest for partners around age 27ish. I've never heard a woman at 35 say that she was not in a rush.

I think you've got it backwards. The single biggest barrier to being a professional is having kids. So women who want to be professionals delay having kids.

Thanks for the thoughts. Sounds like you have some pretty good genes in the family as well :)

Definitely a big difference in my mind between potentially passing away wit kids in their early twenties versus into their thirties. Definitely something I wrestle with, as I certainly would like to have kids eventually; and I can see some benefits to having kids earlier, but then other benefits, such as the ones you stated, to having them later.

Appreciate the thoughts.

You skipped all the way to the relationships part. My point is that in most large US cities, unless you're making 100K+, you're not even getting the second date.

Bigger than bullets wrote:

Bullet_Proof wrote:

...

Also, like Chris Rock says, aint nothing that shuts down a woman's libido like a man asking for her to pay.

So, what you are saying is that women are whores?

No, just paraphrasing one of Chris Rock's stand up performances. Skip to 3:09

NahSon wrote:

You skipped all the way to the relationships part. My point is that in most large US cities, unless you're making 100K+, you're not even getting the second date.

Current generation is also having a lot less sex. Standards these days are indeed high