I watched this awhile ago and it came up in my mind again recently after having some future planning talks with my fiance

I’m 26 and she’s 23, with me planning on going into a heavy hour/travel intensive industry like consulting while she’s an ICU nurse — planning for kids to be a priority is obviously tricky.

We both agreed having my parents involved in helping raise the kid while we both earned income would be an ideal situation. Grandparents who appreciate family and prioritize time for it are more than happy to help out raising another toddler. It seems to make a lot of sense right?

We both agreed that for us to afford the best place for the kids we need to prioritize earning in our early 30s but didn’t want the kid to suffer from absent parents. The American economy really forces ones hand in this and makes people pick between kids and career. If you do try to tackle both this is usually to the detriment of either the relationship with your kids/spouse or one’s career.

It makes sense that extended family or older generations who don’t work lend a hand during the early child care years. During early human history the younger adults would be preoccupied with providing food while the older generation stayed with the young children. Nothing foreign to humans at all in terms of family dynamics

I feel like America has continuously moved away from this — more and more older Americans are continuing to work into elderly years and younger people have given up on having kids at an increased rate. It’s worrying what impact this has on the kids who are being raised now with overworked parents, along with the aging work population and declining birth rates.

As long as the kids are taken care of financial wise they’ll be fine. It’s the deadbeats who don’t even send money that need to be held accountable

Getting married in your early-mid 20s always sounds nuts to me but yeah OP what you are describing is pretty regular in America.

I honestly believe the choose between work and kid s*** is massively overblown by my generation. Same with the whole “100k a year isn’t enough” mentality

Eh I disagree

Absent parents lead to emotionally stunted kids and resent — this can lead to a lot of lack of development and poor social behaviors as the kids become young adults.

I’ve seen it a lot with my coworkers and old college peers who came from pretty high income households but never saw their parents.

Nah kids need guidance and attention from people who care about them

I know kids who grew up waaay more financially stable than me but turned out worse bc their parents didnt care and even though my mom struggled financially she still was very attentive and taught me a lot

Realistically the ideal set up for kids is financially stable parents who are attentive and caring

It depends on area and standard of living but a lot of people have to make hard decisions.

If you look at the highest paying white collar jobs most of them require way above the typical 40 hours or so of work. Additionally, it isn’t sustainable to have a 1 income household for regular people. So both parents have to end up working which becomes a detriment to the quality of life of the family/child. Most data and studies support this along with a lot of anecdotal cases.

Having a set of retired grandparents for my son is amazing, they get to watch him everyday while we work. My girl gets to WFH so at least she is there with them.

Don't live in HCOL area, that s*** is a SCAM

Exactly this.

The rich/upper middle class kid being off the rails, depressed, and poorly functioning adult stereotype comes from what you’re describing. It’s very much the truth, you can’t have kids raised with daycare, nannies, and non-close relatives without issues.

If this becomes more and more of a prevalent case in American households, that very arguably becomes a huge societal/cultural issue.

Bless man

I’m praying my parents stay healthy enough over the next decade or so atleast to help raise our new family, I’m very lucky already to have parents who are caring enough to want to do that

These MFs are getting rid of WFH though

declining birth rates is common to almost every developed country

I’d say marriage if done right is a very good financial decision by itself without all the other reasons to do it even

Two incomes and the split of household costs let’s people save at a much higher rate early on — you can maximize time value of money/compound interest

So if anyone is ready to get married on a personal level — it’s probably one of the best financial decisions you can make in your 20s (or the worst if you marry the wrong person and don’t do the prenup)

Thanks brother

Good luck in this journey its worth it

And most developed countries are pretty individualistic and facing increasingly higher living costs

Sound like excuses to me. It all boils down to the parents. If spending time with your kids and being emotionally available to them is valuable to you you’re not gonna let an office job get in the way of that lol.

Also I’m not understanding where
the “there’s no more village” take is coming from. Most people I know who have kids have utilized an older relative who’s willing to help out. And even beyond that you can find examples of different programs that are free/inexpensive for kids in pretty much every area. After school programs, sports, arts, tutoring etc

And yeah maybe if you’re like a manager or a C suite employee you’re working over 40 ours but your average office job worker isn’t putting in much more than that

Didn't read op

But

If u want a kid have a kid

Just make sure u can at least support the kid
U don't gotta be rich

Just be there for them
Spend time
Feed them
Make sure u can afford massive amounts of diapers, milk, and wipes

And you'll be fine

Don't have a kid if u plan to say ur life could've been better or easier if u didn't have a kid or something the moment u hit them road bumps

In this regard, America is really f***ed, very individualistic mindstate we have here. No one has the time, energy or money to worry about anything outside making sure they're good.

Now when kids come into play, you get put into that whole family or career dilemma. Even when you have Village, as a parent you still don't want to miss out on those moments with your kids.

So instead of doing that, looks like people are opting out of having kids untill they're financially secured, but that may never happen. So it's all around bad

capitalism.

F*** no lol. Stop lying. So many families are in the red and just shoveling the debt to their kids. I work with so many families and they all have the same budgeting issue

Yes

Most people live with some type of debt whether they have kids or not.

When you have the case where average American is priced out a typical single-family home in their area, the average monthly payment on car being ~1000 USD, and extremely high debt burdens from college/medical expenses plus stagnant wage growth in many industries — you’re gonna incentivized pretty quickly to work more than 40 hours a week to support a family and really, both parents will be. This again comes back to it being a issue for the quality of life for the children. Not every household will have an elderly parent available and daycare costs are very high expensive. You’re gonna face big trade-offs with taking lower pay 40 hour a week job and being able to afford raising a family with an acceptable/same as 10 years ago average standard of living.

It’s becoming increasingly more and more the case too as wages have not kept up with cost of living whatsoever — especially when you take high-value industry wage growth in which most Americans aren’t employed in.

Btw you’re talking to someone right now who earns double the average of household income of where they live at 26 and who does their own budget

When I look at living costs, average student loans balances, and what most people make in this area and THEN add on the costs of children — yea this isn’t sustainable and the standard of living is becoming increasingly worse for the average American. You’re losing more and more flexibility of options between prioritizing working to work earn a good living versus having time to invest in family well.