thanks for sharing this. you just 4x'd my own desire to have kids!

You have me googling the meaning of nihilistic. Now that you associate it with parenting, I don’t think I will ever forget the meaning of this word lol

there are many wrong assumptions re having children. thats all im going to say.

As I mentioned above my wife and I had fertility issues and had less than a 1% chance of conception and now have two miracle boys. We needed IVF which isn’t cheap and wasn’t covered by our insurance.

Also my grandfather had a perfectly normal daughter in his early 70’s and he lived to be 98.

If it’s a dream of yours keep it. Visualize it, if you are religious pray for it. Good things come to those who wait. They embrace and have tons more joy in it and don’t take it for granted!

God bless!

I think you'd be a great dad if you ever end up going that route.

have you considered adoption? just curious

Same

most of the best dads I know are the ones who think like that. Those who say "yeaah man I'm having kids easy stuff I will love them a lot" just aren't facing the reality and their partner does all the heavy lifting.

If you have kids we'll be here to open PRs for SN.

so happy for you that you persevered through the issues! Thanks for sharing this. God speed!

I fully intend to leave a cryptic treasure map to my keys to friends, who will be the only ones who could decipher it.

Amen

📠 tooo real.👊🏽😂

same!

I think that's just the mindset these people are led / curated to believe. I've always wanted children, but only wanted two, hard stop. My reason was that while it's good for them to have a sibling to help and support one another with the difficulties of life, it's too expensive to raise children, that they require a lot of money, which I don't have.

My wife, on the other hand, had always wanted 3 children and had been trying to convince me for years; even after we had our first two children back to back (separated by 15 months apart). It clicked for me when one day I realized I don't really need much money to raise a child. That the current financial shape I'm in can't be worse than my father's, who left China with only $100USD in his possession, settled on a foreign land where he don't speak the language, worked and earned everything with his own two hands, with no help at all. Now he is retired with 2 sons, owns his own house with no mortgage and living a modestly comfortable life. I certainly can't be in worse shape financially compared to my grandfather, a farmer, who lived through Chinese civil war, World War 2, communist Mao induced famine and chaos, and he still had 1 daughter and 5 sons. All his children grew up to have their own children and grandchildren.

It all depends on the lifestyle you choose to have, what kinds of tradeoffs you are willing to make, and how you want to raise your children. When I realized that it's alright to raise them cheap, raise them hungry wanting for more, my wife and I did quick work and had our third child. Took me a few years to come to that realization though, so our youngest is 6 years younger than our second.

To say that people can't afford children these days because of financial reasons doesn't make sense to me. We are living more comfortably than ever. I think people simply choose not to have children because they are not willing to make the required tradeoffs (provided that they have a partner to have the children with and are both able to have children).

For context the 50/50 part is yes I kinda wanna sorta be a father... But I dont wanna run the risk of being a bad one...

I've had similar thoughts before, but I've been working on myself for a few years and I feel more confident that I would become a good father when I have kids. I recommend that you be open to the idea of having kids, even though you think you'd be terrible right now. Your confidence could change if it's part of God's plan for you.

Good!

👀😘

how many do you have? What would you do differently if you had to start over raising them?

Disagree. I don't know anyone who regrets having kids.

But plenty who regret not having kids.