To have a kid or not?

Taiwan Parenting
61

[quote=“Indiana”]
On a side note, I really don’t understand how people can say it is selfish not to want children. How is that selfish? It’s a choice…you want them or you don’t. I don’t think it is selfish to stand your ground when you really don’t want to have them and your partner does, especially if there was an agreement prior to marriage.[/quote]I wouldn’t say not wanting kids is selfish, but selfishness is likely a common reason for not wanting kids.

And there’s nothing wrong with standing your ground, so long as it’s ground worth making a stand on. Denying your partner a deeply desired opportunity because you’re working towards being the first person walk on Mars is one thing; doing so to take your Starcraft II skills to the next level is another.

62

As always, thank you all for your insights, especially since most of you are parents. What I can take away from it is that having a child is clearly makes one’s life richer, happier and more meaningful. Even for those who did not specifically plan on having children or like me had an aversion to it. If I had a child I would certainly feel the same way. It would make my wife very happy too and as a couple we would become closer.

Nonetheless, I still find myself unable to get excited about the idea of having a child. The cost of bringing it up remains a massive deterrent. After the bills are paid at the end of each month I literally have only a few bob to spare. My salary will increase incrementally over the years, but even if I earned what my line manager does, I still don’t see how I could afford a child. When I look at my colleagues who have kids, I think they must either have a spouse who earns well, get support from their families or simply exist on credit. None of these things are an option for me.

If the matter of having a child or not becomes a strain on our relationship, I arrange to see a marriage councillor to get an objective opinion on how to move forward. I hope it does not come to that though. So far we have managed to overcome all the challenges that came our way and we have always come out stronger. I think that we both need to rationally consider of each other’s wishes.

Anyway, your comments have each given me a lot to think about. It is reassuring to know that some people feel the way I do, like Indiana, but that others like Bismark Jaboney, Divea have counter arguments that are so perfectly reasonable they have made me rethink my very feelings about having kids. I appreciate it.

63

[quote=“Jaboney”] [quote=“Indiana”]
On a side note, I really don’t understand how people can say it is selfish not to want children. How is that selfish? It’s a choice…you want them or you don’t. I don’t think it is selfish to stand your ground when you really don’t want to have them and your partner does, especially if there was an agreement prior to marriage.[/quote]

I wouldn’t say not wanting kids is selfish, but selfishness is likely a common reason for not wanting kids.[/quote]

Well, I’d agree if one also acknowledges that:

  • selfishness is a common reason for wanting to get a job
  • selfishness is a common reason for not wanting to get a job
  • selfishness is a common reason for wanting to attend school
  • selfishness is a common reason for not wanting to attend school
  • selfishness is a common reason for wanting to go out and get drunk
  • selfishness is a common reason for not wanting to go out and get drunk
  • selfishness is a common reason for wanting to play around on forumosa
  • selfishness is a common reason for not wanting to play around on forumosa
  • selfishness is a common reason for just about everything in life, including altruism

and certainly. . .

  • selfishness is a common reason for wanting to get married and have kids
64

I think the point here is selfishness in a marriage, all good marriages are built on compromise, it’s a neccessity. Of course if you compromise too much you may question the point of marriage. So when you get married you should have certain expectations of compromise built-in, a marriage is supposed to be a unit working towards common goals.
I know there are large number of people NOT getting married these days, I heard that in some countries most children are born out of wedlock.
In some countries it’s common to stay together while the kids are growing up and then get divorced, like Sweden for instance. I think that’s sad as it still damages the family integrity.
Kids don’t equal money…life doesn’t equal money…and you can always earn more money. I intend to have more than enough money to have kids and live our lives fairly well, don’t see why that’s not possible if we work hard. What are these huge costs people are talking about, is it 3rd level fees? If so there are many workarounds. If you are European/American you could all move back or send them back to be resident in your home country for a number of years. There are also scholarships and cheaper university options. Taiwanese education prior to junior high school seems fine to me, in fact it will give the kids VERY VALUABLE Chinese skills and good grounding in maths, it’s junior-high and high school that I would worry about (although personally I don’t intend us to be here for that but who knows!).

65

How is it selfish to want to NOT have kids?

Why is that any different to fulfilling a desire to have kids?

There are many reasons that people don’t have children: some voluntary, some involuntary.

Judging someone’s success o otherwise in life on the basis of how many children they have is a little insensitive, surely. Maybe even rude.

66

I became a father right after I turned 24. I was nowhere near ready, and no it was not exactly planned.

However, the joy my oldest daughter has brought me and which she keeps bringing me has always been immense, and no I would not have had it any other way. Currently, any anguish regarding her is caused by her leaving home in 4 months - dammit, however there’s nothing I can do, she needs to go in order to get a better education than the one Taiwan can offer.

The only consolation is that at least some of her siblings will remain near me for several years to come, however my house and life will both be empty when the last one leaves.

Having a child changes you and your life in ways you cannot imagine beforehand, the same goes with your relationship with your partner. Overall, it has been somewhere between good and great, I would say.

I would go for it if I were the OP.

67

[quote=“headhonchoII”]
Kids don’t equal money…life doesn’t equal money…and you can always earn more money. I intend to have more than enough money to have kids and live our lives fairly well, don’t see why that’s not possible if we work hard. What are these huge costs people are talking about, is it 3rd level fees? If so there are many workarounds. If you are European/American you could all move back or send them back to be resident in your home country for a number of years. There are also scholarships and cheaper university options. Taiwanese education prior to junior high school seems fine to me, in fact it will give the kids VERY VALUABLE Chinese skills and good grounding in maths, it’s junior-high and high school that I would worry about (although personally I don’t intend us to be here for that but who knows!).[/quote]

I thought I’d reply to this as I was the one saying teenagers are expensive.

First off, you’re right, kids don’t equal money. I would gladly bankrupt myself or work myself to death for my kids. Gladly. As would most parents, and that’s the depth of bonding and love that the OP would miss out on by not having kids. I think we’re all agreed on that.

But there are a lot of costs involved in raising children once they get beyond the age where they notice they’re wearing second hand clothes. As I said before, take all the costs that you pay out as an adult then add some for each teenager. So, your rent/mortgage is higher because you need accommodation with another bedroom. Nearly all utilities will be higher as a result. Then there’s food. If you’ve ever fed a growing teenage boy you’ll know what I’m talking about. Then there’s all the usual costs involved with just living, e.g. transportation (running a car or an extra car may be necessary depending on where you live and where your child goes to school), holidays, presents, haircuts, clothes, going out to eat etc.

Your child might work from the age of fourteen or so to buy their own clothes, but you’ll be buying them up until then at least. Regarding part time work, lots of parents think they’ll encourage their child to work and pay their own way and so develop a good work ethic, but when the time comes it might not work out that way. My eldest didn’t try to get a job. It was hard for him to because he visited his dad every other weekend, and we live out in the sticks so it would’ve been hard for him to get to and from work. Here in the UK you can’t drive until you’re 17 and car insurance for a 17 year old is about £2000. To insure him to learn to drive in my car would have been about £1000. Also, he worked really, really hard at his school work and got great results, but that meant he was working most evenings. Having said all that, I was still a stingy parent and wanted him to get a job, so wouldn’t buy him clothes etc. (what a cow am !?!) All of this assumes that part time jobs are available in the first place. At the moment jobs are scarce for everyone in the UK.

My second son’s in his last year of school. Currently, as well as the general costs I outlined earlier, I pay for his school bus, lunches and school trips. I’ll also pay for any additional study books the school says he needs. Come September, I’ll be paying his and his brother’s uni tuition fees. In total, I’ll be paying out roughly £25,000 over the years they’re both at uni. This is in addition to the loans they’ll have to take out. There’s a limit to the maximum loan amount allowed so they’ll have to work too.

So far I’ve just covered the basics. Lots of parents end up spending out lots more. I’m stingy compared to many of my son’s friends’ parents. Lots of parents help their children with getting their own transportation, especially daughters who they would rather see driving their own car than trusting to taxis and friends for their transport. Lots of parents will buy their children mobiles and pay the contract so that they can contact them and know where they are. I won’t pay for these but one thing I will do for my kids is pay for additional activities like swimming lessons and musical tuition (which of course isn’t just the cost of the lesson but also the instrument, books, transportation). I think learning to swim is essential for every child and a musical education is very enriching, so I’m happy to pay for these, but there are many other opportunities available to children and even if you don’t think they’re essential it’s hard to refuse your child something that all their friends are doing.

These are just off the top of my head. There are probably several other things I haven’t thought of (like, come to think of it, all the childcare costs if you both work), but basically in my experience my children are easily my single highest expenditure at the moment, and that’s speaking as a tight-arse. You routinely go without in order to pay for something for your kids. It’s very easy to economise while they’re young but very difficult when they get older. You love your kids and it’s natural that you won’t want to deny them opportunities or things that will benefit them.

It’s also easy to say that you’ll (I mean ‘you’ generally, not you in particular hhc) return home for your children’s high school education but there was a thread a while back discussing the fact that it might not be so easy to do that in practice. Here in the UK things are looking very, very bad at the moment. People are losing their jobs left, right and centre. Even if you were able to land a job there’s no guarantee you’d get your child into a good state school. Places are oversubscribed and people move (or lie to pretend they’re living in the catchment area) in order to get their child a place in a good school. You really wouldn’t want to send your child to a bad school here. Whether here or in Taiwan, if you can’t get a good free education for your child most parents will pay through the nose for a better one. If your child does go to a private school the costs don’t stop at the fees either.

So I think it’s easy to be sanguine about the costs of raising children when they’re young. Once reality bites you may find that things don’t work out as well as you thought they might. If university scholarships were that easily available all students would be on one. And you won’t want your child to go to a cheaper university because that’s all you can afford. You’ll want to enable them to fulfil their potential to the utmost because that’s what a loving parent does.

Sorry if this is a bit of a downer after all the mostly upbeat posts about the joys of being a parent. I agree with all of that. But to say that kids needn’t be a drain on your finances just isn’t realistic in my opinion. You probably can raise kids really cheaply throughout their childhood but you’ll also probably find that you don’t want to.

68

[quote=“urodacus”]How is it selfish to want to NOT have kids?

Why is that any different to fulfilling a desire to have kids?

There are many reasons that people don’t have children: some voluntary, some involuntary.

Judging someone’s success o otherwise in life on the basis of how many children they have is a little insensitive, surely. Maybe even rude.[/quote]

That is so true. It’s just as selfish to want children as it is to not want them, if selfishness is defined as thinking of oneself and doing what is best for said person.

Saying a person is selfish for deciding not to reproduce is also like saying one is selfish for reproducing (especially more than 1 or 2 kids) when they are aware of the strain that overpopulation puts on our Earth (that is set to worsen dramatically in the coming years).

My life is very fulfilling and I have a very loving, emotionally rewarding relationship with my husband. We have our independence and love our life together. The way we see it, children would change our lifestyle and we have no desire for that…we’re very happy with the status quo. Neither of us have ever felt the need for children, but if he changed his mind and wanted a family, I would give him my blessing to leave and find a person who wanted the same thing.

To the OP, I’m not so sure that counseling is the answer if you really don’t want kids. A counsellor wouldn’t be able to change my mind on children, that’s for sure. In my mind, to have or not to have kids is a major enough issue to end a relationship if both partners don’t feel the same way.

69

Well the way I figure it is by the time the kids are a certain age my wife can work and that balances everything out. I get what you mean by costs increasing in teenage/college years. I was lucky as my fees were almost all paid for by the state, it might not be so easy in the future. The UK is following the American path now…I don’t think that’s going to work out too well. You can see how the public system there will become ghettoised.
Interesting you said it costs 25,000 GBP to put them through college not including loans. Well that’s not too bad to be honest, you can save that over a few years (easier when you don’t have kids, only one or two I guess). When I was in college I hardly got a cent off my folks, chose a university near my folks house as I wasn’t entitled to any grant aid. It was fairly tough at times but I didn’t even take out a loan nor get grand aid nor much money from my folks, worked during the summers and some weekends. If there were fees I would have had to get a loan but everything else would have been the same.
I’ve seen the American college system, if you are in anyway academically/atheletically gifted you can easily get a scholarship.

70

[quote=“headhonchoII”]Well the way I figure it is by the time the kids are a certain age my wife can work and that balances everything out. I get what you mean by costs increasing in teenage/college years. I was lucky as my fees were almost all paid for by the state, it might not be so easy in the future. The UK is following the American path now…I don’t think that’s going to work out too well. You can see how the public system there will become ghettoised.
Interesting you said it costs 25,000 GBP to put them through college not including loans. Well that’s not too bad to be honest, you can save that over a few years (easier when you don’t have kids, only one or two I guess). When I was in college I hardly got a cent off my folks, chose a university near my folks house as I wasn’t entitled to any grant aid. It was fairly tough at times but I didn’t even take out a loan nor get grand aid nor much money from my folks, worked during the summers and some weekends. If there were fees I would have had to get a loan but everything else would have been the same.
I’ve seen the American college system, if you are in anyway academically/atheletically gifted you can easily get a scholarship.[/quote]

Yes, well, we’re comparing unalike systems, but FWIW UK tuition fees are set to double at least from next year onwards. We plan to return to the UK at least three years before my youngest son turns 18 so that he’ll qualify as a home student, but the way things are going it might not make much difference to the cost of going to uni anyway. Putting the cost aside, the fact is that our son’s prospects are forming the basis of decisions we make about our lives, which, coming back to the original question, is another example of the impact of children on their parents.

71

If it was that accurate, wouldn’t you be, like, deceased? Just pulling yer plonker.

72

I just would like to give the OP a reality check - when you listen to parents saying that they are much happier now they have kids and that their lives are much richer for it, then you are listening to a self-selecting sample.

Those people who do regret having kids will not generally admit to this because this is a big taboo.

Conversely it is not a taboo for those who have never got kids to say they regret their decision.

From articles I’ve read about scientific papers that measure happiness, people with kids are about equally happy as those without kids - when all other variables are taken out. Of course, this has to be taken with a pinch of salt given the difficultly in measuring happiness. Nevertheless, taken all the known unknowns into account, it seems that you’re just as likely to have a happy life with as without children.

73

[quote=“Petrichor”][quote=“headhonchoII”]Well the way I figure it is by the time the kids are a certain age my wife can work and that balances everything out. I get what you mean by costs increasing in teenage/college years. I was lucky as my fees were almost all paid for by the state, it might not be so easy in the future. The UK is following the American path now…I don’t think that’s going to work out too well. You can see how the public system there will become ghettoised.
Interesting you said it costs 25,000 GBP to put them through college not including loans. Well that’s not too bad to be honest, you can save that over a few years (easier when you don’t have kids, only one or two I guess). When I was in college I hardly got a cent off my folks, chose a university near my folks house as I wasn’t entitled to any grant aid. It was fairly tough at times but I didn’t even take out a loan nor get grand aid nor much money from my folks, worked during the summers and some weekends. If there were fees I would have had to get a loan but everything else would have been the same.
I’ve seen the American college system, if you are in anyway academically/atheletically gifted you can easily get a scholarship.[/quote]

Yes, well, we’re comparing unalike systems, but FWIW UK tuition fees are set to double at least from next year onwards. We plan to return to the UK at least three years before my youngest son turns 18 so that he’ll qualify as a home student, but the way things are going it might not make much difference to the cost of going to uni anyway. Putting the cost aside, the fact is that our son’s prospects are forming the basis of decisions we make about our lives, which, coming back to the original question, is another example of the impact of children on their parents.[/quote]

I went back to the UK a few years ago after many, many years of living abroad; the big thing that I noticed was that if you didn’t mention you’d been living abroad, they kinda never noticed it. NHS requires you to have been in your area for three months before you can register with a GP, but if you don’t tell them they never check and never ask to see proof.

Schooling might be harder if their marks are from an overseas school, however.

74

[quote=“tsukinodeynatsu”]
I went back to the UK a few years ago after many, many years of living abroad; the big thing that I noticed was that if you didn’t mention you’d been living abroad, they kinda never noticed it. NHS requires you to have been in your area for three months before you can register with a GP, but if you don’t tell them they never check and never ask to see proof.

Schooling might be harder if their marks are from an overseas school, however.[/quote]

Thanks. I lived abroad too, and came back to find that I had a whole load of National Insurance contributions paid for me because they assumed I’d been a stay at home mum. :laughing: My mum resides permanently in Spain but comes back to England for her NHS treatment. :unamused: As does my stepfather, come to think of it. I think from an educational point of view it would show up too easily though. The uni application process requires you to show your GCSE results, and if they’ve been done them abroad they’d be IGCSEs (International). With the cost of fees going through the roof, home and overseas student fees might be similar by then anyway, though.

75

I like this thread coz there so many POVs - all illuminating. And it makes me ask myself, why am I happy with the kids? Or how badly do I need them. I don’t. They don’t fill a part of me that is incomplete or fill a void in my life. I did not imagine myself in this role, and neither did my family. Sure they hoped, I would have kids but they worried that I’d be ‘burdened’ by a kid. No way they thought I’d have 2. And yet, I am really happy. ANd it’s not coz “I got what I wanted”, but more coz the kids just bring in light, and joy, by just being, they don’t have to do the belly laugh to make me happy. I don’t want to use the word lucky, but I think I am fortunate, to be able to bond so intimately with another human.

Nice thread!

76

I was a lot of trouble for my folks, in just about every way imaginable. I almost died at birth, had cancer at 15, did poorly in school, was into all sorts of trouble and vices, etc… When I finally started to slowly mature in my early 20s, I remember talking to my Dad about kids. I was thinking about all of the pain, heartache and worry that I put my folks through and commented that I didn’t think that I wanted to have kids. To my great surprise, my Dad remarked that if I didn’t have kids, I would be missing out on one of life’s greatest pleasures. My boy is 18 years old now, and I have understood what my Dad meant from the moment my son came into this world.

77

That’s my firm belief, too.

78

I must say that although my gut instinct tells me not to have a child, I would probably be very happy if I did. There is no doubt in my mind that a child enriches ones life immeasurably, even if it meant making you poorer financially.

My wife and I are the midst of talking seriously about what it would mean if we went ahead and had a child. As I mentioned before, how we would afford a child is our greatest concern. Dressing the child in cheap clothing and the like would certainly save us money, but not (sadly) the kind of money that would make having a child affordable to us.

Unless I suddenly come into money somehow through an inheritance say, or by winning a lottery, I won’t be much better off than I am right now in five years time. As a teacher I know more or less what I will be earning year on year. I pad it up with art on commission and some commercial work, but that is not stable or enough to warrant the added expense of a child. I actually find having a dog a financial strain some months (like last month when I had to get her spayed).

Anyway, I do appreciate your comments. Many of them are heart-warming.

79

I found the same thing with a cat I was looking after for a few months. Thinking about it, I realised I don’t mind forking out 5000 a month for kindy (15 000 every six months), but I didn’t appreciate the 200 a week for cat sand and food etc.

But you are right to be considering the financial implications very seriously. It is part and parcel of having a kid, and as another poster said, it does increase as they get older. You are wise for considering all the pros and cons.

80

Bump