'With nearly half of the women in the US never reaching their maternity goals, there is an urgent need for innovation' - did they just describe having children like a KPI?
It is! If ~50% of the population feels unfulfilled because they haven’t been able to have the children they wanted, we should fix that. But clearly it would be better to look at the root cause than to rely on this specious invention.
If you look at the other "personal goals" comment in this subthread, which lists "buy house and get married" before children, I think you can see what the real barrier is.
I agree. I think happiness and “well-being” are not actual realities. There is only the pursuit of happiness. And that pursuit can be manipulated for financial gain. I think the very best you can achieve is being a child or failing that contentedness and absence of suffering. Otherwise loss and grief will strip away any possibility of happiness. The only fleeting happiness/joy I often see in myself or other adults is in nostalgia - and that’s pure manipulation.
It certainly could be. There’s the old Greek myth of Pandora’s box - the last entity to emerge is ‘hope’. Is that the worst monster or greatest gift to humanity? I feel like I fall in the former camp. But that’s OK - I still move forward in life and engage in the pursuit of happiness.
When you talk to people who are successful in their personal lives, that's how they treat life goals. Sounds over-formal but that's life.
1. Get married
2. Buy house (by 30)
3. Have kid 1 by 32, to allow 2 year birth spacing for X children
etc.
People like to be wishy-washy and romantic about finding partners, settling down, having kids... but the people who end up where they want to be are usually far more intentional about it.
Many of our "heroes" speaking about having children the same way. Steve Jobs said having children was far more important than the work he did at Apple. While he's going in a different direction with it, Elon Musk has focused on a lot on declining birthrates and what that means.