“Why Do So Many People, Especially Older Folks, Refuse To Understand?”: People Discuss The Younger Generation’s Refusal To Have Kids
When someone close to you is having a hard time, the least you can do is listen to them and validate their feelings.
But when Reddit user u/AdSpecialist6598 realized what their friend was going through, they were so furious that they thought the platform’s r/antiwork community needs to hear about it, too.
The Redditor always viewed their buddy as a family man, and it’s something he would like for himself as well, however, the man simply can’t afford to have one.
u/AdSpecialist6598 admitted they really feel for him but added that the rage only grows whenever they hear people refusing to believe that a high-spirited individual cannot grow their household because of financial troubles. You know, because obviously only lazy members of society are short on money.
When this person asked their buddy why isn’t he starting a family, the man said it’s because he can’t afford one
Image credits: Patricia Prudente (not the actual photo)
And apparently, many people refuse to believe that anyone who’s a hard worker can end up in such a situation
Image credits: Karolina Grabowska (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Loume Visser (not the actual photo)
Image credits: AdSpecialist6598
This post is a clear illustration of the fact that more young Americans are planning to not have children
Image credits: Văn Thắng (not the actual photo)
In 2021, the Pew Research Center found that 44% of nonparents between 18 to 49 aren’t planning to start families — a jump of 7 percentage points from three years earlier.
Among parents and non-parents alike, men and women are virtually equally likely to say they will probably not have kids (or more kids) in the future, but as somewhat expected, adults in their 40s are way more likely than younger ones to claim this.
Some 85% of non-parents 40 to 49 say this statement is true, compared with 37% of those under 40. And while 91% of older parents say they probably won’t have more kids, 60% of younger parents say the same.
When it comes to the actual reasons behind their decision, things get a little blurry. 56% of non-parents younger than 50 who say it’s unlikely they will have children someday say it’s because they just don’t want to have kids.
However, among childless adults who said their choice was influenced by something else, money was one of the biggest factors, with 19% saying it’s due to medical reasons, 17% saying it’s for financial reasons, and 15% saying it’s because they do not have a partner.
And the cost of this decision is one of the biggest reasons behind it
Image credits: Tierra Mallorca (not the actual photo)
Americans who are thinking about starting a family have one important figure to consider: the cost of raising a child from birth to age 17 will set them back by about $310,000.
That’s according to a 2022 analysis from the Brookings Institution, which analyzed the Department of Agriculture’s 2015 estimate for the cost of raising a child and ran the numbers to account for inflation since then. Since 2020 alone, the higher pace of inflation has added as much as $26,000 to the cost of raising a child, according to the research.
The findings came amid a long-term trend of declining birthrates: the number of births in the U.S. dropped in 2020 to their lowest level since 1979. Advocates have pointed to a lack of family-friendly policies such as paid family leave. In fact, the country is the only developed nation without such a program. The Biden Administration sought to expand the Child Tax Credit and provide more support for childcare costs, but those plans fizzled with the failure of the Build Back Better Act.
The discussion that followed the publication of the story shows that it might be more common than we think
I can’t even begin to understand why some people call being childless “selfish.” What exactly does not having children cost other people?
It's ppl who think that it's everyone's social duty to reproduce. So by not doing so you're neglecting your social duty? To them, it's the equivalent of say driving a more polluting car or something. Something you shouldn't do. Which isn't the worst logic but the premise that reproducing is a social imperative is wrong for a start.
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$300,000 is the cost of raising a kid to the age of 18....and that's if you have a "normal" kid with no medical issues or disabilities. Also we're at over 8-billion people population-wise now and I seriously don't think we're in any danger of going extinct any time soon, so that's another factor in people skipping the kid-thing altogether.
I'm a 64 yo female. My husband and I chose not to have kids. Neither one of us wanted to be responsible for anyone else but ourselves. Call me (us) selfish. I(we)can take it.
Misery loves company. That's why others want you to have kids. They're jealous of the time and freedom childfree people have, and childfree people won't sit around b'ing and moaning about their kids with you. There are 4 of us kids in my family, the youngest now 57. Not a kid amongst us. We remember how we fought and gave our parents hard times. Why on earth would we willfully subject ourselves to what we put our parents through?
Can we not make this a generational issue? I grew up in the 70's (born in '71) and I don't have kids. There are a lot of us out there. Kids are expensive and high maintenance. That certainly doesn't stop dirt poor people from having them today if they want them. The world was f'd up back then and it's f'd up today. It's just that they're f'd up in different ways from each other. I think people have just started realizing that kids aren't actually a requirement and they have a choice to have them or not. That mentality wasn't mainstream back then, but lots of us knew it. I sure did.
Also these older folks don't want to help with childcare at all, because they are retired and "did their time". Things are so expensive now you have to have two invoices and childcare is so expensive now it takes most of a average person's paycheck. If these people want grandchildren perhaps they need to provide or pay for childcare themselves or support government funded childcare for all.
My parents financially abused me and now took custody of my son and don't let me see him. I wish they were absent. I tried to go no contact and gota court summons in response. 5 family members have done this to their kids now. They have the money and knowledge and purposely kept me ignorant and under their financial control until my 20s now have my son to use in my place
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Everything in our culture is changing very quickly and that includes the idea that everyone should have kids. Everyone should NOT have kids. If parents, family or friends cannot understand the decision not to they do well to at least respect the person's judgement. We have three sons. the oldest and his wife have one daughter. The middle one absolutely does not want kids. The youngest and his partner want to..eventually. As parents, we put our desires aside and trust our kids judgement. Makes life a lot easier too!
My dad bought his house in the early 90s for $55,000. That same house is worth about $350,000. He was a car mechanic and my step mom was a vet tech. We were able to go on vacations every single year with 5 kids. At 45, I haven't been on a vacation in nearly 15 years. My ex husband takes my sons on vacation, but he makes over $150,000 yr. I do okay as a healthcare professional, but I live in a very expensive city, whereas he lives in a very rural farm area.
I have a child, it’s awesome being a Dad because I wanted and still want to be a Dad, I’m lucky! I have friends who are in happy, stable relationships who don’t want children, they go to more gigs than me (I do love a gig 😀), they have more disposable income than me, they have more free time than me, they are lucky. It’s not about right / wrong, it’s about life choices and where will YOUR path go, I chose mine and my friends chose theirs, they love my daughter, they love spending time with her, they also love not being responsible for a child 24/7. Why would I tell them they’ve got it wrong?
As much as I would have loved to have children, it wasn't practical for me. For one thing, I never married. Another thing, I can barely support myself; bringing a child into the world without the proper support would have been no less than abusive. Also, I watched my sisters struggle with single parenthood, courtesy of their deadbeat husbands who paid little to no child support. (One of these jerkwads abandoned his wife and their two sons in a rescue mission.) In the case of raising children, I have no choice but to be painfully practical.
I'm 32 and have no interest in getting married or having kids. That lifestyle has no appeal to me at all. If I'm going to be called selfish for wanting to sleep in or do whatever I want without dealing with tantrums and shrieking, then I guess I'm selfish...and a lot less stressed.
I'd say you're smart. Nobody should be forced to have children if they do not want them. I never did, and I don't give a flying f what anyone thinks about it! You do you!
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I'm 50 and I totally get it. People who say they don't are being willfully obtuse.
I worked part-time when I had mine 30 years go and that was sometimes tough but now both have to work full-time to stand a chance. People complain about government handouts to families but in the end, without the contribution of children (when they're grown up), the standard of living for the next generation of retirees will not be good at all.
Just an anecdote about the standard of living for current retirees. My parents are in their 70s, in a town of about 2500. The local nursing home / assisted living has had to stop taking patients. There's rooms for more patients, but they can't attract enough staff to safely care for them... because there isn't affordable housing (or high enough wages) in town. The town is in a mountainous valley, so commuting in from surrounding towns (that may be slightly more affordable) is dangerous in the winter. Dad definitely has dementia, so it's worrying what the future looks like for him (and my mom, as a lot of his care falls to her).
Load More Replies... My husband and I have two kids. We would love another and may bite the bullet because we’re both getting older. I know it will put a strain on our finances but that’s temporary. I think I would look back tens years from now and regret it if we didn’t. However, there’s a part of me that’s scared to have a third. I think we can make it but then again, daycare is a a huge cost… twice our mortgage. Then there’s formula, diapers, doctor visits, etc… I hate that the decision is economic only. I have a masters and my husband is in the IT field. We both work at least a full-time job. Something has got to change.
I’m too young to have kids but I really do want them but I don’t think I will be able to at this rate. My dream job sounds like it wouldn’t make me enough money, and in order to have kids in the first place I either have to adopt or do IVF things which is so expensive. How would I make it work in this economy and I hardly believe it could get much better.
Fostering is a great option too and can lead to adoption without all the thousands in fees
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I really can't bear the thought of bringing a human into this world in its current state. I used to want kids but now I say no. I have thought about adopting though, to help kids get through this miserable world until/if it gets better.
I'm a married 51 yo female. With no kids! I never wanted them. There are a ton of reasons why. But I am very happy in my life and have absolutely no regrets. If any of you are seriously thinking about having a kid, I highly recommend that you get a dog first. Dogs are a lot of work, but kids are a lot more. If you can't handle the dog, don't have a kid.
If you want kids, you “manage” financially, which most do. The bigger issue (in my opinion) is that we are not meant to live the chaotic lives we currently live. Men and women now both work, manage a home and deal with financial struggles. Adding kids on to that is a ticking time-bomb. It is a result of the world we now live in.
I'll start be saying, it's every persons choice whether they have kids or not. With that out of the way, I don't understand his justification. If he's earning upper 5 figures, that would imply $80,000 maybe $90,000 annually. That's way over average wage. So unless his partner is either not working or in a really low paying job claiming it's too expensive seems like an artificial justification. Maybe because he doesn't want to tell his friend "we just don't want kids because they'll cramp our lifestyle". Which again, is a perfectly valid reason not to have them.
I'm 63 and decided when I was 9 I was never having kids. Never had any, never missed having any. It's not just a younger generational thing.
I wouldn't have kids even if I was super rich. Not my thing. My parents (boomers) always taught me it was bad to deliberately have kids you couldn't afford or couldn't care for in other ways. But my mom grew up in poverty so there's that. It's too bad this guy can't afford them, since he might be a decent parent. I think the "selfish" line is dumb, but it shows how people value imaginary people over anyone who already exists. You can't be selfish towards something that doesn't exist, so that argument makes no sense. You never really see anyone seriously say everyone must foster needy kids from the foster system. No, it's always about making a whole new human and f*ck them kids who are already here. As for the tax base, I suggest something that doesn't involve letting a handful of people hoard all the money and is an unsustainable pyramid scheme. Even though they are called "baby boomers", us millennials actually outnumber them because there are 8 billion people.
Sometimes I wish I didn't have kids. I genuinely fear for their futures cause I cannot provide the security I want them to have and the world is so uncertain so much suffering and meanness and they are practically living online. I feel like I just bore children into a world that destines them to live a hellish existence. I thought growing up would be like the 90s sitcoms I grew up with not the dystopia horror movies
Hubby and I put our feet down with our families that our one child would be it. They've been respectful of that decision since, so yay for that. There is no winning when it comes to the topic of children. Besides them not believing why younger people don't want to have kids, there's no f*****g pleasing them with what younger people do end up doing about children. You're judged for not having any, but if you only have one, you must have another. But f**k you straight to hell if you have more than one child and have the audacity to complain about the difficulties of raising multiple children.
Is anyone noticing that the Gen Z'rs are almost as irritating as boomers with their "Anti Children" comments/post?? I saw a video on IG the other day where a family was showing a newly constructed bathroom with the title "do you see what's wrong?"...and many of the comments where, "yea, there's kids", "the kids will ruin your bathroom then your lives"...I get it, you don't want kids but I came to the comments because I wanted to really see what was wrong with the bathroom! I also seen a few live videos on AMA, I don't want kids... All the Anti Child pushing is starting to get as obnoxious as boomers pushing to have children...
Ashley, you’re right. If someone doesn’t want to have kids, that’s fine, no one should be expected to, but if someone wants to have kids, that’s fine too. I too have seen far too many anti children posts.
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I (58F) knew that if I had a kid, I would be a single mother. I knew I couldn't handle it financially or emotionally. I wasn't going to screw up some poor kid's life because of my mental issues.
I want to know why anyone wants to have a child at this point period, considering climate is well in it's way to extermibmnating us. Yes, one needs to believe CC is real, but for those that do I am scratching my head. I am 53, no kids in part economic stability, the atate of the world and just not being up to the task.
There are a lot of people who don't want kids for a variety of reasons, but much of the "too expensive" perspective is based on providing what they perceive as a certain quality of life, while the kids themselves couldn't care less as long as they have a loving family. I know many people who grew with little to nothing but had a very happy childhood. Kids don't need all the stuff we think they do.
If you feel being 2-3 major problems away from being broke is preventing you from having children that's an excuse, just say you don't want any and fine. Friends who had a combined income of 1100€ in central Europe with the flat costing them 600€ managed to raise 2 healthy children. Then again when I look over to Hungary where having children gets great support by the state many families chose to have 3-4 children. For the 3rd child there is a big bump in benefits so many couples decide that "hey the first 2 were fun, we can afford it with the mother staying at home and the father not working himself to death... let's have a 3rd one" so of course stability does help a lot in the decision but if you earn 5 figures there is absolutely zero financial problem in raising a child.
Those two locations have historically had exceptionally high infant/childhood mortality, and large parts of the population depend on subsistence agriculture. It is also very common to correlate women having large numbers of children also having little to no education.
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OverPopulation is a worldwide and possibly universal issue. Issues like this run the same throughout humanity regardless of country.
Load More Replies... I can’t even begin to understand why some people call being childless “selfish.” What exactly does not having children cost other people?
It's ppl who think that it's everyone's social duty to reproduce. So by not doing so you're neglecting your social duty? To them, it's the equivalent of say driving a more polluting car or something. Something you shouldn't do. Which isn't the worst logic but the premise that reproducing is a social imperative is wrong for a start.
Load More Replies... $300,000 is the cost of raising a kid to the age of 18....and that's if you have a "normal" kid with no medical issues or disabilities. Also we're at over 8-billion people population-wise now and I seriously don't think we're in any danger of going extinct any time soon, so that's another factor in people skipping the kid-thing altogether.
I'm a 64 yo female. My husband and I chose not to have kids. Neither one of us wanted to be responsible for anyone else but ourselves. Call me (us) selfish. I(we)can take it.
Misery loves company. That's why others want you to have kids. They're jealous of the time and freedom childfree people have, and childfree people won't sit around b'ing and moaning about their kids with you. There are 4 of us kids in my family, the youngest now 57. Not a kid amongst us. We remember how we fought and gave our parents hard times. Why on earth would we willfully subject ourselves to what we put our parents through?
Can we not make this a generational issue? I grew up in the 70's (born in '71) and I don't have kids. There are a lot of us out there. Kids are expensive and high maintenance. That certainly doesn't stop dirt poor people from having them today if they want them. The world was f'd up back then and it's f'd up today. It's just that they're f'd up in different ways from each other. I think people have just started realizing that kids aren't actually a requirement and they have a choice to have them or not. That mentality wasn't mainstream back then, but lots of us knew it. I sure did.
Also these older folks don't want to help with childcare at all, because they are retired and "did their time". Things are so expensive now you have to have two invoices and childcare is so expensive now it takes most of a average person's paycheck. If these people want grandchildren perhaps they need to provide or pay for childcare themselves or support government funded childcare for all.
My parents financially abused me and now took custody of my son and don't let me see him. I wish they were absent. I tried to go no contact and gota court summons in response. 5 family members have done this to their kids now. They have the money and knowledge and purposely kept me ignorant and under their financial control until my 20s now have my son to use in my place
Load More Replies... Everything in our culture is changing very quickly and that includes the idea that everyone should have kids. Everyone should NOT have kids. If parents, family or friends cannot understand the decision not to they do well to at least respect the person's judgement. We have three sons. the oldest and his wife have one daughter. The middle one absolutely does not want kids. The youngest and his partner want to..eventually. As parents, we put our desires aside and trust our kids judgement. Makes life a lot easier too!
My dad bought his house in the early 90s for $55,000. That same house is worth about $350,000. He was a car mechanic and my step mom was a vet tech. We were able to go on vacations every single year with 5 kids. At 45, I haven't been on a vacation in nearly 15 years. My ex husband takes my sons on vacation, but he makes over $150,000 yr. I do okay as a healthcare professional, but I live in a very expensive city, whereas he lives in a very rural farm area.
I have a child, it’s awesome being a Dad because I wanted and still want to be a Dad, I’m lucky! I have friends who are in happy, stable relationships who don’t want children, they go to more gigs than me (I do love a gig 😀), they have more disposable income than me, they have more free time than me, they are lucky. It’s not about right / wrong, it’s about life choices and where will YOUR path go, I chose mine and my friends chose theirs, they love my daughter, they love spending time with her, they also love not being responsible for a child 24/7. Why would I tell them they’ve got it wrong?
As much as I would have loved to have children, it wasn't practical for me. For one thing, I never married. Another thing, I can barely support myself; bringing a child into the world without the proper support would have been no less than abusive. Also, I watched my sisters struggle with single parenthood, courtesy of their deadbeat husbands who paid little to no child support. (One of these jerkwads abandoned his wife and their two sons in a rescue mission.) In the case of raising children, I have no choice but to be painfully practical.
I'm 32 and have no interest in getting married or having kids. That lifestyle has no appeal to me at all. If I'm going to be called selfish for wanting to sleep in or do whatever I want without dealing with tantrums and shrieking, then I guess I'm selfish...and a lot less stressed.
I'd say you're smart. Nobody should be forced to have children if they do not want them. I never did, and I don't give a flying f what anyone thinks about it! You do you!
Load More Replies... I'm 50 and I totally get it. People who say they don't are being willfully obtuse.
I worked part-time when I had mine 30 years go and that was sometimes tough but now both have to work full-time to stand a chance. People complain about government handouts to families but in the end, without the contribution of children (when they're grown up), the standard of living for the next generation of retirees will not be good at all.
Just an anecdote about the standard of living for current retirees. My parents are in their 70s, in a town of about 2500. The local nursing home / assisted living has had to stop taking patients. There's rooms for more patients, but they can't attract enough staff to safely care for them... because there isn't affordable housing (or high enough wages) in town. The town is in a mountainous valley, so commuting in from surrounding towns (that may be slightly more affordable) is dangerous in the winter. Dad definitely has dementia, so it's worrying what the future looks like for him (and my mom, as a lot of his care falls to her).
Load More Replies... My husband and I have two kids. We would love another and may bite the bullet because we’re both getting older. I know it will put a strain on our finances but that’s temporary. I think I would look back tens years from now and regret it if we didn’t. However, there’s a part of me that’s scared to have a third. I think we can make it but then again, daycare is a a huge cost… twice our mortgage. Then there’s formula, diapers, doctor visits, etc… I hate that the decision is economic only. I have a masters and my husband is in the IT field. We both work at least a full-time job. Something has got to change.
I’m too young to have kids but I really do want them but I don’t think I will be able to at this rate. My dream job sounds like it wouldn’t make me enough money, and in order to have kids in the first place I either have to adopt or do IVF things which is so expensive. How would I make it work in this economy and I hardly believe it could get much better.
Fostering is a great option too and can lead to adoption without all the thousands in fees
Load More Replies... I really can't bear the thought of bringing a human into this world in its current state. I used to want kids but now I say no. I have thought about adopting though, to help kids get through this miserable world until/if it gets better.
I'm a married 51 yo female. With no kids! I never wanted them. There are a ton of reasons why. But I am very happy in my life and have absolutely no regrets. If any of you are seriously thinking about having a kid, I highly recommend that you get a dog first. Dogs are a lot of work, but kids are a lot more. If you can't handle the dog, don't have a kid.
If you want kids, you “manage” financially, which most do. The bigger issue (in my opinion) is that we are not meant to live the chaotic lives we currently live. Men and women now both work, manage a home and deal with financial struggles. Adding kids on to that is a ticking time-bomb. It is a result of the world we now live in.
I'll start be saying, it's every persons choice whether they have kids or not. With that out of the way, I don't understand his justification. If he's earning upper 5 figures, that would imply $80,000 maybe $90,000 annually. That's way over average wage. So unless his partner is either not working or in a really low paying job claiming it's too expensive seems like an artificial justification. Maybe because he doesn't want to tell his friend "we just don't want kids because they'll cramp our lifestyle". Which again, is a perfectly valid reason not to have them.
I'm 63 and decided when I was 9 I was never having kids. Never had any, never missed having any. It's not just a younger generational thing.
I wouldn't have kids even if I was super rich. Not my thing. My parents (boomers) always taught me it was bad to deliberately have kids you couldn't afford or couldn't care for in other ways. But my mom grew up in poverty so there's that. It's too bad this guy can't afford them, since he might be a decent parent. I think the "selfish" line is dumb, but it shows how people value imaginary people over anyone who already exists. You can't be selfish towards something that doesn't exist, so that argument makes no sense. You never really see anyone seriously say everyone must foster needy kids from the foster system. No, it's always about making a whole new human and f*ck them kids who are already here. As for the tax base, I suggest something that doesn't involve letting a handful of people hoard all the money and is an unsustainable pyramid scheme. Even though they are called "baby boomers", us millennials actually outnumber them because there are 8 billion people.
Sometimes I wish I didn't have kids. I genuinely fear for their futures cause I cannot provide the security I want them to have and the world is so uncertain so much suffering and meanness and they are practically living online. I feel like I just bore children into a world that destines them to live a hellish existence. I thought growing up would be like the 90s sitcoms I grew up with not the dystopia horror movies
Hubby and I put our feet down with our families that our one child would be it. They've been respectful of that decision since, so yay for that. There is no winning when it comes to the topic of children. Besides them not believing why younger people don't want to have kids, there's no f*****g pleasing them with what younger people do end up doing about children. You're judged for not having any, but if you only have one, you must have another. But f**k you straight to hell if you have more than one child and have the audacity to complain about the difficulties of raising multiple children.
Is anyone noticing that the Gen Z'rs are almost as irritating as boomers with their "Anti Children" comments/post?? I saw a video on IG the other day where a family was showing a newly constructed bathroom with the title "do you see what's wrong?"...and many of the comments where, "yea, there's kids", "the kids will ruin your bathroom then your lives"...I get it, you don't want kids but I came to the comments because I wanted to really see what was wrong with the bathroom! I also seen a few live videos on AMA, I don't want kids... All the Anti Child pushing is starting to get as obnoxious as boomers pushing to have children...
Ashley, you’re right. If someone doesn’t want to have kids, that’s fine, no one should be expected to, but if someone wants to have kids, that’s fine too. I too have seen far too many anti children posts.
Load More Replies... I (58F) knew that if I had a kid, I would be a single mother. I knew I couldn't handle it financially or emotionally. I wasn't going to screw up some poor kid's life because of my mental issues.
I want to know why anyone wants to have a child at this point period, considering climate is well in it's way to extermibmnating us. Yes, one needs to believe CC is real, but for those that do I am scratching my head. I am 53, no kids in part economic stability, the atate of the world and just not being up to the task.
There are a lot of people who don't want kids for a variety of reasons, but much of the "too expensive" perspective is based on providing what they perceive as a certain quality of life, while the kids themselves couldn't care less as long as they have a loving family. I know many people who grew with little to nothing but had a very happy childhood. Kids don't need all the stuff we think they do.
If you feel being 2-3 major problems away from being broke is preventing you from having children that's an excuse, just say you don't want any and fine. Friends who had a combined income of 1100€ in central Europe with the flat costing them 600€ managed to raise 2 healthy children. Then again when I look over to Hungary where having children gets great support by the state many families chose to have 3-4 children. For the 3rd child there is a big bump in benefits so many couples decide that "hey the first 2 were fun, we can afford it with the mother staying at home and the father not working himself to death... let's have a 3rd one" so of course stability does help a lot in the decision but if you earn 5 figures there is absolutely zero financial problem in raising a child.
Those two locations have historically had exceptionally high infant/childhood mortality, and large parts of the population depend on subsistence agriculture. It is also very common to correlate women having large numbers of children also having little to no education.
Load More Replies... OverPopulation is a worldwide and possibly universal issue. Issues like this run the same throughout humanity regardless of country.
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