• Orbituary@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    I’m Gen X, but cusp with Millennial. I said at 15 or 16 I’d never have kids & stuck with it. I’m more resolute than ever & feel like I would have massive guilt if I had caved. I felt the world was too fucked up back in the 90s. I wonder how my younger self would deal with the world today.

    • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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      46 minutes ago

      I’m on the other side of the generational gap (nearly gen x, but millennial), and I was terrified during my late teens/early 20s of becoming a parent. I could not imagine raising a child the way I was living paycheque to paycheque, if I had a paycheque at all…

      That feeling never went away, and I still wouldn’t know how I could possibly afford that. I decided in my mid 20s that children would be a decision I would leave up to my wife (wherever I had a wife to make the decision). I was/am instinctually driven to want them (a feeling I mostly disregard), but given the state of the world and my own financial situation, I can’t say that I want to force any intelligent being, especially one that is my offspring, to suffer through a lifetime of this shit like I have been forced to so far.

      I didn’t ask to be here. If someone had given me a choice, I would have probably opted out of gestures all of this.

      I’m currently in a long term relationship, and we’re planning on signing the papers next year, so soon I’ll have someone I can legitimately call my wife. She is very much on the side of “never have kids”. So that’s my decision as well.

      Instinctual drive isn’t enough to cause me to overlook how things are going. I love my (non-existent) children too much, than to force them into living a life in these circumstances. Fuck no.