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This tugs at a thread that I wanted to bring up in response to @DoktorGlas and @Botond173's earlier posts on fertility and gender-dynamics but was struggling to find a way to do so without it being immediately dismissed as being uncharitable, or drawing broad generalizations about the outgroup.
I think there is a very real sense in which the post-modern liberal ethos of emancipation, self actualization, and the maximization of one's earthly/material material conditions and status is simply incompatible with forming healthy relationships and families. Having a family means accepting that you are no longer the main character in your own story and that is bridge that a lot of people today are hesitant to cross, a painful truth that many recoil from.
As I mentioned in one of those earlier threads, our first child was not planned, and if you had asked me at the time if I was ready I would have said "no", but in hindsight if my partner and I had waited till we we ready, we may never have had children at all, never mind enough children to justify multiple car seats. Both my partner and I have had friends and family who asked us why we didn't just get an abortion? What they were really asking is "Why would you (a presumably rational and intelligent person) willingly accept an inferior quality of life?". I never really had a good answer to that question, at least not one I could articulate, beyond "I choose to". But I feel like there is the outline of an answer in your last two paragraphs.
The future belongs to those who show up. So if you want to have a future, be one of the people who shows up.
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