[Delmania]

Having felt the way the author expresses in this article, I can honestly say the sentiment expressed here has nothing to do with the suburbs, the Midwest, or having a corporate job. It has everything to do with settling and accepting the status quo. I could list a number of things the person here could do, but seriously, this reads like someone who is not happy with his current situation but does not want to put the effort into changing it.

[ArkyBeagle]

It's easy to get in a rut. It's especially easy when you have a lot of distractions.

Kids are a big distraction. One of the magical things about my wife is that she handles a lot of distractions for me. Most women just won't. It's slightly unfair to her, but she's a Professional Mom and extremely good at it. As has been noted in literature, it's all but impossible to price this.

The downside is - one stream of income. And it's been pretty scary when I've gotten laid off.

[Delmania]

> Kids are a big distraction.

I understand the sentiment, but this lines has always bothered me. I try to find ways to incorporate my children into the things I enjoy and want to do...

[Grishnakh]

There's only so much you can do with this. When children are really young, you just can't bring them a lot of places, such as nice restaurants, because they're too disruptive, so that means that for the first 5-7 years, you have to hire a babysitter if you want to do anything "adult".

I like to go hiking and road biking on weekends. You can't do this with kids; they just can't keep up. A 6-year-old isn't going to be able to do a 10-mile hike or a rock scramble with you, nor will she be able to ride 40 miles. You can do really easy hikes or bike rides, but those are pretty boring and do little for physical fitness (which is the other reason I do them, so I don't have to spend hours a week at the gym to avoid health problems). When the kids get to be teenagers they can probably handle that stuff, but that means there's 12+ years where you either don't do that stuff at all and get fat, or you hire a babysitter.

If you have other interests like listening to classical music concerts, or rock concerts, you can't bring kids to that stuff either; at one they'll be a disruption and at the other they'll be miserable. Again, when they become teenagers, they may be interested in those things (maybe, doubtful though because you're interested in them), but again that's a long time to wait, and now they're almost in college!

Honestly, having kids would be fun if it weren't such a huge time-sink, and you actually had help doing it instead of having to do it all by yourself (as with most parents I see these days), or if you're really lucky, with one partner who's also really busy with work.

It's no wonder the birthrate is so low these days in developed nations. I really think society needs to rethink its social norms and customs if it wants to reverse this, unless they can figure out how to greatly increase lifespans so it becomes normal and feasible to have kids at ~50-75 years old after you've established yourself financially and can afford to take off 5 years or more and only work part-time or not at all without ruining your future career. Also, polyamory would be a lot more sensible for raising kids; having adult time is easier when there's, say, 4 adult people in a household so one of them could volunteer to be babysitter for the group's kids, and there's more hands to share chores, and more incomes to share among the family.

[ArkyBeagle]

I just mean that I was not going to get a lot of calls at work where I have to go get the kids, that sort of thing.

[swalsh]

Sometimes changing your life doesn't mean putting in extra effort, but taking extra risks. If you have a family and a mortgage taking those risks might not be palatable.

[Delmania]

You can still find risks that are palatable. The person described in this article mentions a desire to work for a Silicon Valley startup. That's not possible, but why not look for local startups? Or ones that offer remote positions? I did just that.

[Grishnakh]

Because startups are inherently risky to work at, and when you have a big mortgage and credit card bills and you're not saving anything (as with many Americans in suburbs), you can't afford the risk of a temporary loss of work.

Also, startups are infamous for demanding very long hours, in exchange for the vague promise of your stock becoming valuable. Parents don't have that much extra time.