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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   4009 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 9, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Question for mainly parents of motte but anyone can answer.

Would you have more or less children if you knew for sure that:

  1. Your children will be very good to you when they grow up but they won’t have offspring of their own.
  2. Your children will be awful to you when they grow you but they will have many offspring of their own.

I am wondering what motivates people when choosing how many children to have. If neither of these would affect your decision but you have another important factor in mind, please share as well

I hate to do this, but I have to half-hijack the thread:

When is it actually "too late", for a male, to have children? Please don't give me the sunshine and rainbows "it's never too late!" nonsense. I'd like the informed and unvarnished truth that the Motte is (in)famous for.

I ask this as a mid 30s male in great shape with FAANGy levels of income in a non-FAANG job who's just a little too surly about marriage, but has accepted the moral imperative for reproducing and being a good parent.

We have a family acquaintance (doctor earning lots of money, tall, handsome etc) who stayed single until late 40s despite the entire very large social and family network around him mobilising to find him a wife. I am not super sure what was the issue but he would just reject any candidates for decades. I guess he was either somewhat gay or was having too much fun being single.

Anyway eventually he married some 21 year old gorgeous redhead nurse and immediately proceeded to have 3 sons. So perhaps it wasn’t a bad life strategy after all.

You are considerably older than me so I can’t give any real advice. Just an anecdote.

It’s not a terrible strategy if tall, handsome and rich, but it does come with the downside of (in all likelihood) fewer years with one’s children, and a lower chance of meeting (and certainly raising) the grandchildren.

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