I don’t see anyone here competing about whose life is better or what choice is better. In fact, it seems like both parents and childfree people are agreeing that what’s important is personal choice and refraining from judgement or pressure either way. It’s fun to talk about reasoning and how we (parents or not)…

From the outside, I think it’s actually important to delegate to the husband if he acts this way. I see it in most of my friends-with-kids’ marriages. It’s not that the husband is intentionally doing less work. It’s that he can’t take initiative because they honestly don’t understand how much it takes to run a…

Your bottom line here is so important. It’s really eye-opening to read the responses to this particular comment. For us, things that would change if we had a child include: personal finance, retirement plans, both of our jobs, our friend circle, our flat, the city we live in, the majority of our hobbies, our health…

No one has ever told me that. I was responding to someone else. And I have no problem contributing taxes to society, including for the health care and education of children. I have problems with paying taxes so that we can bomb Syria, but no problem at all with paying taxes for school, etc.

Maybe that’s the case FOR YOU. That just means that YOUR lifestyle didn’t change dramatically because you had kids. Great. It would turn mine upside down and shake every aspect of it to pieces. Maybe you’ve always lived in a more or less settled way and your routines, interests and work were not altered that much.…

I have the good fortune of knowing several happy parents. Our social circle and family are full of them. I know a lot like the ones you describe as well, and I think a lot of it is about expectations and support systems.

I don’t know what Up is, but I’m glad you avoided it if it distressed you.

My response to that is that having children IS selfish. Parenting is not. Parenting is selfless- a real sacrifice, and I’m amazed at the people who manage to do it well. But having kids is selfish. There is no non-selfish reason to do it. The world is shit, the kid did not ask to be born into it, and there are…

I’ve had people ASK, and usually it’s appropriate and I’m not at all offended. When you get to a certain age, it’s something women talk about, especially if you are involved in a social group or family that includes a lot of children and parents. I don’t mind being asked, and unless it’s some weirdo busy-body who has…

Whoa. Glad your wife is OK. I’m sorry you went through that. It is refreshing to point out that pregnancy is not a cake walk.

Yes, once my husband’s grand auntie (sweet old lady, but very traditional) did ask me if I were going to have a baby now that we’d been married a while. I responded that if I wanted a baby, I’d have to divorce her nephew first and find a new husband since he did not want children. That ended that conversation!

I’m not the person you asked, but it went swell for me. I just said “I don’t want kids” and any guys who wanted kids or showed the least bit of judgement/confusion about that, I immediately lost all interest in. Like, the “but... motherhood” or “one day, I’d like...” immediately caused my libido to take a nosedive, so…

Ha ha. I’ve talked about this elsewhere, but no one ever pressured me or encouraged me to have kids. I’ve heard this from other women as well, so I believe you. But it’s not something that ever happened to me. I think most people who know me feel relief when they found out I had no intention of becoming a mother. Now…

Alright, since this is hypothetical, I’ll play. Why doesn’t NK have the right to develop and test weapons of mass destruction in the first place?

Yes those are the fears I hear Americans expressing as well. The only thing that gives me comfort when I consider this scenario is that the US has never- since WW2- gone to war with a formidable enemy. War with China would be insane. What the US does instead is directly attack countries that are far less powerful as a…

Thanks.

That’s all true. Moreover, it’s not crazy to think the US might start a war in your country to remove a leader they don’t like since they literally do that all the time all over the world.

This is only anecdotal and I’m sure there is a huge range of opinions in SK, but my friends there basically take a long view- that they NK regime will eventually fall from internal interference and tipping point economics and that they will eventually be reintegrated into a unified Korea. So they try to proceed…

The only good thing about that is that Trump himself is not really that engaged in foreign policy decision making. He’s handing it all over to generals and intelligence. In the Middle East, this is actually scary because a lot of those guys have some crazy scenarios that they would love to carry out including war with…

That all makes sense, but I’d love to read the longer piece you would have written out.