Saturday, November 27, 2010

Would women want kids if there was no age limit?

Imagine that age 45 (hence 40 and stress starts at 32) would not be there, and kids could be made at any age. 
How much of the want for children comes from the fear that the time will be too late. 
When talking to women, i hear this theme again and again
Then there is the fear of later regret. "i will sure regret it later", and horror stories about women who later regretted it. (there is a little bit of research claiming that this is not so). What a point is theree to decide according to the fear that may e later it will be regretted. Clearly any decision can be regretted, but the only consideration should be those pertinent to the issue. Do i think children will be good for me? Etc. Not whether I will regret etc.

Another fear drive is the imagination that those without children are lonely and sad at old age. A fear factor. There is research showing that are not entirely lonely do not earn much from the contact of the children at old age. It is mainly those who are entirely lonely who earn much from weekly visits of their children (let alone the fact that many children do it visit their aging parents.....)

A strong missing point here is the stupidity of how we think about decisions. At age thirty one considers having or not having kids. Assume that for the next twenty years it is wish not to have children, but for age 60-70 it has some use, but much lower than the cost imposed in age 30-50.
Our guy decides logically to avoid the disadvantageous deal. Times moves and he is now 60, and now he misses having kids. Should he regret it? Not if he has some common sense. He did exactly what reasons says, he won many years of no interruptions etc. Yet now he does get what he would. Have got for a supreme inflated price of many years. 
It is very human pain this. But this is stupid.
Calculating is later stupidity when deciding and going therefore for a bad deal is doubly stupid.  

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

In my opinion, young people (20s and 30s) want kids because they want what they lack, and because others have them, but once they have them they see that isn't an easy task like to take care of them etc, but I will go further, usually people are not conscious of the terrible sadness they could find, like a premature dead, cronic illness, be lame etc, if in spite of this you would go ahead would be fine, but not me. In conclusion my opinion is to strong for everybody else but my problem is I am to conscious of life, and to have children is like to have a big debt or to have a big leverage.....From Mexico.

Jazi Zilber said...

hello

great point on leverage. kids are a hard to cancel obligation..... and a gamble. (since many marriages do not work, it is an additional gamble, as kids after divorce are both costlier and less useful). Send me your email yzilber at gmail