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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.

I know several people whose fathers were in their 50's and mothers were ~40 when they were born, some of them being the youngest sibling of a large number and others being the only child. The latter sort might be a bit more socially awkward than normal, but that seems to be more from similarity to their parents than anything else. I would say the main concern in such a situation is the child having to care for their elderly parents earlier than the norm, but apart from that there are no major issues.

I am one of those people, and think there are serious issues with being somehow even more autistic than my dad.
It really screws with your life in lots of little ways, and even as an adult I regret missing the opportunity to do fun stuff with my dad when he was still in decent shape. We wanted to go sailing together, go hiking in Europe again, build another house together... That's not happening in his 80s.

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