Financially, there's no good time to have kids. They might think they'll have kids later, but I'll take that bet.

Also, we seem to have missed discussing the 56 year old woman who had twins (unless I missed it). Just when I think you know how selfish people can be, they go ahead and show me that I'm an incurable optimist.

She's Curtis Sliwa's sister so what can you expect?

Financial issues do matter. I'm just about where I feel I need to be so I'll probably start pumping out the progeny in about 5 years. As my father, who was 40 when he had me, said 'It's not a popsicle, it doesn't melt.'

Bart:

The women of America await breathlessly.

Peter,

Given that over 50% of Jewish women in America between the ages of 30-39 are unmarried, I'm not terribly worried. Since I'm in a strong financial position, worldly travelled, skilled at gourmet cooking, a militant non-smoker, fastidious about my personal hygiene and know my way around art museums and wine lists, the fact that I look like the Di-Tech guy and have boxcars full of neuroses won't be the slightest hindrance. :)

--More than nine in 10 (93%) said that being a father was the most important role in a man's life, and more than four in 10 (44%) would like to spend more time with their child than their father did with them. --

Family values???

"I don't wanna grow up,
I'm a Baby Boom kid --
WAAH! WAAH! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!"

Having kids earlier is better. You need energy to handle children. Plus, you don't have to worry about paying for college at the same time you're tring to solidify your retirement nest egg.

Robert:

I don't know about that. I was 38 (49 now) when my first came along. And was by then sufficiently financially well off to chuck enough cash at a dedicated investment plan the day my first was born to make paying for college a done deal.

Jeff,

I'm glad to see you understand my concern.

Jeff,
I'm glad that you're well set to provide for their education. You are more the norm for our generation, waiting until mid to late 30s.

Part of the problem is that we baby boomers have made ourselves believe that we have to give our children the best of everything, that they have to be established financially before they can even think about having children. We've made having children expensive, so little surprise that we have less of them. We have this sense that if we bring children into a situation where they have to deal with struggles and hardships, that we've done a bad thing.

Children don't feel economic insecurity the same way that parents do. As long as they have a stable home life, they can have a happy and healthy childhood. My parents worried constantly about making ends meet as they raised the six of us, but it never affected me. We didn't have fancy vacations or expensive structured activities, and hand me down clothes were the norm. But I had no anxiety about being deprived.

We had my daughter just prior to my 30th birthday. This was late by my parent's standards, but pretty young by my neighbors and peers. I'm glad that we didn't wait longer. We had financial struggles and worries even without our daughter, adding her to the mix did not add to them significantly. By having children at a younger age, you have them in your life for a longer time, and also you get the benefit of the maturing effect that children have on your personality earlier in your life. Having children helps you to "put away childish things". Once you have gotten over the hurdles of early adulthood and marriage, there is a certain vacuum in your life that cries out for fulfillment, a purpose to bend yourself to. Children fill that vacuum much better than careers do, IMO.

Robert:

Very well said. Jeff, it's great that you were able to pay for college, but there are other ways to get through college. A child's educational needs are compelling reasons to save and sacrifice, but not to decline to have them in the first place. And what of the family of four children where the kids have to contribute heavily themselves to college as opposed to the family of two where they don't. Is the first an irresponsible mistake? It is only in well-off families that parents fret endlessly about how many kids they can "afford". In working class and even poor families, there is always room for one more.

Retirement? What's that?

Peter:

As you have implied, life is one long engineering problem--the balancing of competing requirements.

Unless women birth children to the point of physical collapse, everyone at some point makes the decision to decline having them in the first place.

The family of four is, in general no more irresponsible than the family of 6 or 1. They just balance the competing requirements differently.

In a post industrial society, each additional child represents a huge incremental increase in economic cost. It should come as no surprise that people take that into account.

Even Mormons have seen a huge decrease in fertility over the last 30 years, dropping by nearly 50%.

Robert,

You are wrong about a few things. First, when I was 4, we went through the NYC Oceanhill-Brownsville teachers strike. I saw my parents' concern firsthand as they were out for weeks. When I was 9, we had the NYC fiscal crisis where one suggestion was closing the schools for a year as had been done in Youngstown, Ohio in a similar period of economic distress. It felt like the world was coming to an end, and also taught me the utter stupidity of relying on anyone else for a job. Being an employee just plain sucks and the best and wisest course is not to be stuck being one. No one is indispensible and any company or BOE will throw you out on your spotty fat derriere at the first opportunity. Some people go nuts over possessions(I've had that argument with OJ), but my goal is complete freedom, the power to have total control over my own life. The ability to tell the rest of the world what to do with themselves.

Second, the bar for kids is being raised. If your kid doesn't have the Space Camp, Computer Camp, Language Camp, Music Camp, etc background today he's behind the 8-ball. The fancy prep school helps too. Some parents are spending $20-30 grand for kindergarten for their kids. To deny your kids anything he needs to compete is like putting a ball and chain on him and expecting him to run the 100 yard dash. Otherwise, in our increasingly stratified and closed-off society, you're condemning him to a second-rate life. That is especially true if you have the misfortune of being from an ethnic or racial minority with a history of academic success.

Third, I went through the 'having to work and go to college' thing and it just sucked. My college experience was work, study, eat, and get drunk occasionally to dull the pain. As I'm fond of saying, I've been rich and I've been poor and believe me rich is better.

Finally, some of us don't need companionship. I am an only child of two working parents, so I became comfortable at an early age with being alone for long periods of time. Dining out alone, vacationing alone, etc don't bother me at all. You don't have kids for companionship, if that's your issue buy a short Welsh herding dog with a taste for Beaujolais and lo mein and who loves to watch Jeopardy. No matter how rotten things are, when you get home there's always someone who loves you.