[bootstrapper101]

Every year you delay having kids, you are reducing the amount of time you will spend with your kids and grandkids.

As you get older, the quality of time you spend with them will also get worse.

My wife went through lot of difficulties in her pregnancies. It would have been easier for her body, if we had kids earlier.

My drive to get out of the corporate slavery was the reason for the delay. So I regret the delay.

[herodoturtle]

Hey man, if it's any consolation, my folks had me when they were very young, and I barely spent any time with them whilst growing up. As immigrants we had it pretty tough financially, and they were always working long hours (always for someone else) to try make ends meet. They harbour significant regret about not being more present in my childhood.

These days they're of course much older, and I am in the lucky position to be able to look after them financially, but they're also filled with added regret about depending on me - they feel like failures because rely on me to cover all their expenses - despite my best efforts to assure them that it's ok.

So to your point, whilst having kids younger means you can spend more time with them when you're older, it's not necessarily the better solution if it requires a trade-off in terms of first establishing yourself financially - and from reading your other comments - it sounds like you and I both started off in life with relatively little, so I think the choice to first secure ourselves financially before having kids makes more sense.

I delayed having kids with my wife until relatively late (I was 37 she was 33), and whilst I know this will probably reduce the amount of time I'll get to spend with my children when I'm much older, the peace of mind that has come with having first established my SaaS before starting a family is immense.

In fact one could argue that the reduced stress alone will probably add 10 years on to my life :-)

Thanks for sharing your inspirational comments above and below. Enjoyed reading all of them. And congratulations on the success - I'm sure it is well deserved.

[bootstrapper101]

I know. We had kids around the same age.

In my case my big mistake was moving to US mid way in career. It disrupted by established life and I had to start over from scratch. If I had stayed in my native country, I would have been able to have kids earlier.

Thanks for sharing your experience!

[robertlagrant]

This is exactly right - I've had my kids in my mid 30s, and while there are upsides, there are downsides.

At a friend's wedding, his great grandmother was there. Hearing that, I realised there is an amazing upside to having kids a little earlier.

[xwdv]

Don’t get too hung up on it. While it’s cool to be a great grandparent, a great grandparent has tons of grand kids, and a lot of them don’t really give that much of a shit about you at the end of the day unless you’re some kind of interesting person. No descendants will care about you as much as your immediate children. I love my grandparents, but barely see them or talk to them even knowing the time is short.

Think of the advantage of having kids later: Your kids get to be born into a deeper and better future, and may some day enter the 22nd century, lucid and able.

[bootstrapper101]

This is a really good point. You can have at it all but you can definitely wish ;)

[raverbashing]

Well, what's life but not a sequence of "pick your own adventure" choices.

But live for yourself and what you think is good. It's always a tradeoff. Having your grandparents at your wedding is nice, sure, but you can't optimize for everything.

[brandonmenc]

My great grandmothers were alive until I was in my 20s, but they were like, practically in arranged marriages when they were 14.

I know this is an extreme example but, talk about downsides!

[blacktriangle]

Is it? Every study on arranged marriages I've seen points to lower divorce rates and higher general happiness. Assuming your parents aren't assholes they'll try and do right by their kids. And the nice thing about an arranged marriage is that it's two people not following some illusions of effortless love and happiness, but two people coming together to collaboratively build that love and happiness.

[brandonmenc]

Uh, yeah.

One of my great grandmothers was in an actual arranged marriage at age 14 to a man who was like 60 years old. She managed to get out of that one, but had to marry another man (my great grandfather, who I never met) to do it.

It was a different world back then, but compressing generations to the point where you are able to know your great grandparents usually requires some creative accounting that wouldn't fly for most people today.

[robertlagrant]

It was a different world, but it sounds as though the first marriage was irrelevant to the timeline of you knowing her.

[brandonmenc]

Perhaps, but possibly not - once she was "married off" she was no longer her parents' responsibility and had to marry again at a young age in order to survive.

My point is that multiple generations of people need to have children at very young ages - often under conditions where they lack agency - for you to know your great-grandparents. It was a great experience for me, but every generation before me had a hard life.

[jcims]

I'm looking at folks that are having kids when they are older than i was and they seem to have their shit together so much more. In looking back I feel like I squandered some of the time I had with my children by not really understanding how fast the years go by and focusing too much on being a provider vs. being present. My youngest is ready to leave the home and I still have these flickering day dreams of these things I'm going to do with my kids and I still see them as kids.

[alexyz12]

How did you have time to raise kids while working at your startup? It seems thats what corporate jobs are great for because you spend less time at work.

[bootstrapper101]

I had kids after my startup was successful!

[artemonster]

How old are you now, if I may? Were you having your kids in late 40ies?