Even if you have kids, it’s a gamble that they will be anything more than an occasional visitor.
At 70 years old, your kids will be fully formed adults with their own families and lives taking priority and they don’t have time for some senior citizen’s problems or diaper changes. womp womp
> Even if you have kids, it’s a gamble that they will be anything more than an occasional visitor.
It’s hardly a gamble when your actions and life choices tip the scales.
People who complain about their kids not being a part of their life in their old age should spend their idle time considering how they raised said kids. If you do it right, they want to see you.
> At 70 years old, your kids will be fully formed adults with their own families and lives taking priority and they don’t have time for some senior citizen’s problems or diaper changes.
Having someone who cares about you is more than just listening to rambling stories and wiping your ass. It’s everything from a second pair of eyes watching out for your well being to a sense of connection to the future.
It's worth noting that this is very much not true for many people, especially ones who come from cultures which don't simply abandon their elderly relatives. No one in my family has ever been simply left to their own devices to sink or swim.
Chances are you only complain why they hardly ever visit or call. But even that is far from having nobody at all except for your last surviving generational peers.
Parents and grandparents perceive their descendants' life as if it was a third person view game. Much of it happens of-screen and the controls are terrible, often worse than absent, but it still keeps them interested in the next day/month/year. If you only have your own remaining years to look forward to you have much less.
Precisely. The study looks to be a cross-sectional (snapshot) representation of a population. A more interesting study would be a longitudinal study to understand how an observer's opinions change on the matter over time. Those are unfortunately more expensive.
What is your comment meant to convey, except the fact you believe that, despite the available data, childfree people must really be going to regret not having children?
They do not express desire to have children. They do not have children. They do not regret that, even as their peers deal with theirs. What reason could possibly there be to believe that they would suddenly start regretting their decision after 70?
If it comes down to the fact they "won't have anyone to take care of them in their old age", I posit that their situation is not going to be very different from that of many bechilded people (modulo any money the childfree people might have saved by not having to provide for another human being), which will - and should, if having a "free" caretaker in their old age played a part in it - regret their decision.
And then, if that happens to still hold, after they're 80? There's something funny about human psychology that people can't just accept that there are people who genuinely do not have the same tendencies. Sure, sure, something about biology here, but I imagine the struggle must've been the same for asexual and homosexual people trying to explain why their apparent sexuality didn't follow what people biologically expected of them. I feel the same way about "child-free" life.
The better question to ask wouldn't be continuing to ask "Really???" with increasing intensity, it would be to ask exactly why more people feel content with a child-free life. Is it something about changes to perception of meaning in life, religion and faith, society as a whole? Seems like a more interesting path to go down.
The rampant fecundity of the third world will keep us childless hedonists with a full stock of cheap and cheerful worker bees if we can no longer manage our basic physical needs.
This shows no sign of slowing or correcting that I can see.
If that doesn't work out, we are properly spoiling our nephews and nieces as a backup plan. :)
Now in my late 30s, I have spent the past 5 years cornering childless elders and asking them about their decision to not have children. Despite my skepticism, I still haven't found one who didn't convince they are happy with their decision. However, they still have not convinced me to not want children myself.
“In this study, we compared how much adults age 70 and older said they’d want to change something about their life — in other words, whether they had any regrets about how their life had gone. We didn’t see any difference between childfree people and parents. This suggests that childfree people are similar to others in terms of life satisfaction and often don’t regret their decision later.”
Based on people I know, especially with women, there's this weird duality of broadcasting to the world how absolutely perfect and happy their childfree life is while privately crying ugly tears about how nobody loves them and they're going to die alone.
I guess knowing a couple of people like that, it makes it difficult to believe that everyone really is all that satisfied with their life.
Admittedly, the selected sample is biased towards seemingly responsible people, and it strikes me as recklessly presumptuous to assume that otherwise responsible people tend to make such decisions with anything less then tremendous consideration. However, I have learned that HN is an extremely cynical and misanthropic forum.
>The fact you are asking should tell you something.
What should it tell me? That I want children but know I can't afford to have children? I already know that, and it's why I'm asking in the first place.
>The fact no one admits regret means someone is fibbing or you have not been looking very hard.
Two have admitted failure, which is to say they simply never found a person they wanted to have kids with. I don't consider this a decision subject to regret and neither did they.
At 70 years old, your kids will be fully formed adults with their own families and lives taking priority and they don’t have time for some senior citizen’s problems or diaper changes. womp womp