I am a parent, but it is not who I am as a person. You sound sad that not everyone is bought into the idea. Many are not. That’s okay. The goal (imho) is to live one’s best life, which is up to each individual. Always ignore those who would foist uncompensated labor on you out of ideology. That is theft of your time and energy.
Global fertility rate decline speaks for itself. Women were not empowered to make fertility choices. Now that they are, different choices are being made than that historically. These trends will continue as global TFR settles at 0.5-1 over the next several decades.
It‘s quite hard to believe that a person is a parent who at the same time states that parenthood doesn‘t make up a huge part of a parent‘s life and personality for a very long time (if not forever). Sure, children are not the only thing to define one‘s personality, but it‘s a tremendous change.
Also, decreasing fertility rates have more reasons than just female empowerment. Look it today‘s societies … many people can‘t even stay together with their partner for more than a couple of years.
With all due respect, your disbelief of my position is a you problem. Parenting is just one of my many roles, it isn’t who I am. It is a temporary obligation as a guardian with some permanent long tail time commitment once they are adults. It was not a tremendous change for me, but likely because I have sufficient resources to make it so.
If all one can say about their life is they were a parent and had/raised kids, in a world with 8-10 billion people, that is nothing special in my opinion. Congrats on your checkbox achievement sort of thing.
TLDR Kids are optional, life can be meaningful without having them, and they are very expensive in most of the world. Happiness is reality minus expectations and no one is coming to save you, it’s just you. Don’t drag others down with advice from a place of emotion versus facts. Willful ignorance and arrogance deserves no sympathy.
Global fertility rate decline speaks for itself. Women were not empowered to make fertility choices. Now that they are, different choices are being made than that historically. These trends will continue as global TFR settles at 0.5-1 over the next several decades.
https://lindynewsletter.beehiiv.com/p/will-world-look-like-l...
https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/mapped-countries-by-fert...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...