[em-bee]

children will massively compromise your lifestyle

why though? if you feel that way then in my opinion there is something wrong on your expectation of your lifestyle. or rather, on what our society projects what our lifestyle should be like.

but in my opinion we are also doing it wrong. we delay having children for to long, and we spend our 20s either working to hard or enjoying our freedom, and then we have children in our 30s and 40s and then in our 50s we are to old to enjoy the rest of our life. if we had children in the early 20s then they would be grown up in our 40s and we would be able to enjoy our freedom then. get the hard stuff, including raising children out of the way first.

of course, in order to do that, we need a society that values and supports that. and that's what we messed up in the west. in china it is much more normal to have children early, and people are more supportive and tolerant.

[bigballsbjorn]

its true tho, basically all the time after working your 9-5 you have to invest into your children. i personally still want to have children in my mid 20s. i don't really care about the downside due to my ideological conviction. but even if you are a rational actor and respect the social contract you must bear the burden.

[em-bee]

yes, but this should not be seen as a compromise of your lifestyle. especially if, as you say, you actually want children. you are doing yourself a disservice. looking at children as a burden will only grow resentment.

sure, having children means that my freedom to do something else is limited. but i don't see that as a burden. it's a choice. and i don't regret that choice one bit. i wanted this experience, even if it went differently than expected. in that sense, expecting that you won't have time for something else is good. but make it a positive choice, not something that you only begrudgingly accept because you feel you have to. if your children feel that you felt forced to have children they will resent you for it. it diminishes your love for them, at least in their eyes.

children can be a challenge, they can demand sacrifice, but every minute i spend with them also enriches my life, and when they are grown up and have children on their own i will look at them as a challenge that i have mastered, not a burden that i took on to fulfill a social contract.

[bigballsbjorn]

i dont really have resentment toward having children. my only resentment is toward having to pay into a social system where the majority of recipients don't understand why having no children is breaking the social contract.