Do you want to have kids?

[DC Al Fine]

Yes, (one on the way) hopefully 3-5ish.

[DC Al Fine]

Active dislike for children is one of those animuses that should be critically examined a lot more than it is.

What about a second side of the coin: "ZOMGZ I LOVE BABIES! THEY ARE SO CUTE AND I JUST LOVE THEM!"? Doesn't sound very healthy either.

From the point of view of evolutionary biology and species survival that sounds extremely healthy.

That's what I've always found puzzling about not liking children. It seems roughly equivalent to actively disliking food, especially among women. I wonder what causes the dislike to crop up. I mean, obviously people who like kids would tend to have more. Maybe its something to do with modernity?

[DC Al Fine]

The first two, twins, will be named James Tiberius and John Kennedy--Jim and Jack, for short. One after the greatest starship captain and the other after our greatest Catholic President.

You misspelled "Jean-Luc".

Burn the heretic!

[DC Al Fine]

The first two, twins, will be named James Tiberius and John Kennedy--Jim and Jack, for short. One after the greatest starship captain and the other after our greatest Catholic President.

You misspelled "Jean-Luc".

Well, you would say that, wouldn't you?

I would certainly say that the wise, eloquent, firm but kind authority figure makes for a better captain than the brash, impulsive gambler with an overinflated ego, yes. That's what you meant, right?

Sure, Picard is objectively the better captain, but that's not why most people I know watch Star Trek.

I watch it for the double fist punches.

[DC Al Fine]

in my area the hip-'n'-trendy thing is to be 'childfree'.

Well there are certain regions of the US where people (particularly women) who aren't married with children (the horror!) by their late 20s (if not earlier!) are often looked upon with suspicion, at the very least.  Because only an unrepentant sinner wouldn't be in a heterosexual marriage with 3+ children by age 30.

Obviously I'm generalizing like hell, and thankfully attitudes like the above have been starting to change more recently, but still...

It's good evidence for how polarized we are as a culture.

I live in a fairly progressive city, Mrs. DC got some crap when she got engaged at 19, and now she's getting even more now that she's having a baby in her early twenties. I'm sure there's a single thirty something woman in Texas getting the same treatment right now.

[DC Al Fine]

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.

The problem with the stability argument, is that, while it is technically true, one can always have more money/stability, so the definition of stability gets expanded as education/income rises. I get the impression that college educated millennials romanticize our grandparents era, and have been socialized to require a very, very high degree of stability before 'settling down'.

For example, the typical woman with a bachelor's degree is more likely to be childless compared to a woman with a high school diploma, and if she does have children, will have them ~4-5 years later than her less educated counterpart. Obviously there are some cases of couples with humanities degrees and massive student debt, but income statistics indicate that there are a lot of college educated couples requiring a level of stability that their high school-only counterparts will never have.

While I'd definitely agree that economic environment is less hospitable to having children than it used to be, there's also a cultural component that could/should be changed.