Participating in a democracy, going to school, paying taxes, having a job… Hell, visiting a new country, going camping, climbing a boulder — all of these things involve discomfort and cover a spectrum of ‘mandatory’ to ‘100% chosen’.

‘Complaining’ is part of human discourse. Generally it’s acceptable to share the full range of day-to-day gripes, elation, full tragedies (e.g., deaths), and emotional heights with other humans.

You don’t want to hear constant griping about raising kids. I get that. I might not want to hear griping about national politics or Apple doing something or other. Cest le vie.

Your parents no doubt griped about raising you. You don’t have to have kids but someone has to! We’re going to gripe mate. No one is forcing you to listen.

You’re getting downvoted because having children is a lifelong commitment, and health problems can come on fast. Raising children while dealing with parental health issues isn’t a choice people make, it’s something that life throws at them. Suggesting otherwise is deeply unempathetic.

I'm not even referring to that. I'm talking about basic stuff that anyone should research before having a kid like "childcare is too expensive" or "I don't get enough sleep"

I thought that was obvious

You should say this out loud to the people in your life who have kids!

The people in my life who have kids had them by accident, none were planning for it to actually happen.

You should do some basic research yourself. Childcare is too expensive for almost everyone. Is your idea that only the relatively wealthy should have children? You're not worried about the consequences of a .03 fertility rate?

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/child-care-expenses...

I think the solution is to make childcare affordable with government intervention. But that's not going to happen if people keep having kids. There needs to be an actual demographic crisis

You'll be surprised to learn childcare is free in Germany

So, your argument is “don’t have kids because your parents might develop health problems”?

The argument is there's not much life training for having kids before you start, and even less for dealing with elderly parents.

So a lot of people are blindsided by the reality of either, and both together can be unimaginably difficult.

Aside from cash and life stability issues - both very real - I suspect that one of the reasons for the drop in birth rates is that because of the Internet, more people are seeing what parenting involves before they start.

Previously it was more of a rosy and aspirational "Let's have kids!", now it's "You mean I'll be severely sleep deprived for years?!"

Robots could help with all of this just by doing basic chores and automating daily bureaucracy.

In the best of all possible worlds that would free up more time for personal relationships, which can get very stressed by unavoidable demands that are basically a full-time job.

The point that you're missing is that nobody knows at what point their parents will experience severe health decline. That can happen at any time, people have strokes in their 50s or in their 80s.

unfortunately, this isn't one of those things you can plan your way out of. It's just part of dealing with life. if you're lucky, your parents will start having health problems once your kids are in school and don't need round the clock care at home. If you're unlucky, well, good luck lol

No one brought up it being mandatory but you