'Why one child is enough for me - and might be for you, too'

I would imagine that the battle ground would be over what constitutes "able."

 

I didn't write "dumb." I wrote "probably shouldn't be buying a house with all new stuff, either."

The essential problem facing American economics is, on the one hand, the desire of young middle class Americans to keep living as they always have/parents did without a market producing those kinds of jobs and wages vs. a government strapped and split by warring factions within it on how to take care of the people who still vote in droves; i.e. the Boomers.

 

Having children definitely can change your political opinions. Actually, it should make people MORE politically active because they have more at stake, right?

Usually the opposite happens (and yeah, I'm a bad example too, because I work at a daily paper and can't attend public rallies/events for that reason. But I'm also more apathetic than I used to be).

When I was between newspaper jobs for a few months, I attended several "don't invade Iraq" rallies in early 2003. I recall my wife and I pulling the kids along in a wagon and getting more stares because of that than because of whatever lefty, anti-G.W. signs we were carrying.

 

OK. But I don't see how that has anything to do with the Apple engineer who just moved in across the street from me, who very much can afford his lifestyle; or the cop and schoolteacher next door who are having their first child any day now and who were very well-prepared to take care of the market dip and buy when the time was right. There are millions of people like that all over the country. That's the problem in your reasoning, you post that link about what the median twentysomething/thirtysomething is going through and think that's what ****alll**** twentysomething/thirtysomethings are going through.

I'm 41. I know a lot of people my age who are struggling. It sucks that they can't take vacations or go out to a nice dinner. But you know what? I can take vacations. I can go to dinner. I can take my kids to Iron Man 3. So I do. Based on what you're saying, I'm not being smart with my money because the statistics say a lot of people in my age group are having a rough time.

Anyway, I think we're threadjacking off the topic at hand, although the financial considerations certainly are part of the discussion of how many kids to have.

 

We'd probably agree on what constitutes truly "able," actually.

 

You sonofabitch. But that's pretty funny. I didn't even recognize that.

 

Buy yourself a tape recorder. Record yourself for a whole day. I think you're gonna be surprised at some of your phrasing.

 

I think folks have fewer kids because, to raise a kid the middle class way in America is enormously expensive. Another, IMO, is that the quality of modern parenting seems to be defined by how great of a bond you have with your child, which, them being emotionally immature children, takes an enormous amount of time to create.

 

We have one son who is 13. My wife was 37 and I was 35 when he was born. We decided to only have one and have never regretted it. Huggy Jr. has mentioned maybe a handful of times in his life that he wishes he had a younger brother or sister but he has plenty of cousins (my brothers each have two kids as do my wife's brothers) and he is always up for playing with the younger kids in the neighbourhood. Some of his baseball teammates have two or three siblings all around the same age, I have no clue how those parents do it.

 

We have two kids, my daughter when I was 35 (and my wife 34) and my son when I was 38 (and my wife 37). My son wasn't planned, but he wasn't not planned, if that make any sense.

We waited four years of marriage before having kids because of our work schedules and because we wanted to enjoy our life together. Having the first one changed that life in so many ways, but I was surprised just how hard two kids has been. I could not fathom a third.

They get along really well, but I do find that my weekend is almost exclusively focused on the kids from 7 in the morning (if I am lucky) until my daughter goes to sleep at 9. I think that we've committed to 8 activities this weekend for the kids, plus running errands and doing chores. We take pains to make sure that both kids have enough individual attention -- but that probably has lead to some of our headaches. It has helped that we force ourselves to go out with adults at least every other weekend.

 

My cousin has 8-year-old twins, a 6-year-old, a 4-year-old and a 3-year-old.

They both work full-time.