But at 22, nobody should be encouraging a person to have kids, man or woman....or settle down to a contract laden monogamous relationship. Enjoy yourself, you (likely) have plenty of time to have kids and get married. Between my 21 and 22 birthdays I got married, joined the Air Force and had a kid. I should have only done the middle of those things (if any of them). If it works for you (and it obviously does for many many people), that's great. For most of us, it doesn't.
Personally I think the idea of having this enormous lacuna in one's twenties when one doesn't have meaningful family responsibilities is perverse, but I'll admit that it's how most people are socialized, it's what most people are prepared for, and I'm shaping up to not really be able to avoid it myself despite really wanting to. This seems like one of those things where how things might ideally be or how one might want the world to be and the way most individual people are actually raised and what they're actually prepared for, at least these days, come into direct and almost irresolvable conflict. People have always wanted to at least have socioeconomic stability in sight before they get married and have kids, and that happens disgustingly late now, at a time in life where female fertility (for women who do want kids) is already starting to decline and, as you said, if one does succeed in having kids one will start to have bad joints and musculoskeletal diseases by the time they're grown.
I'll defer to DFB's analysis of/suspicions about the way the men in his community seem to think. That's definitely concerning.
Really? Not having children or romantic partners in ones twenties is
perverse to you?
Poll
