children after 40

[Rad Hatter]

Originally posted by nostatic
Red, my g/f made some similar comments. She was born in Singapore but is Chinese. US citizen though, educated in Singapore through middle school, then came to the US. She made the comment (mostly in jest, but to illustrate the differences) that if we moved to China with a kid, life would be quite a bit different due to all the excellent help we could afford.

Beautiful wife and kids btw...

Your wife is right, and its true Asian wives(educated in the Far East) have a totally different view of the husband's role in the family. What's great is Jenny mu wife gets on fantastically with the children from my first marriage,
As far as she is concerned when we married it was unconditional.
When the wife starts dictating what you can and can't do she is applying conditions to the marriage.
Having a helper is fantastic, I have lived overseas, grew up myself as a kid in Singapore, East + West Africa, went to boarding school in England and we always had helpers, I too had a nanny as a kid as did my two brothers - its not a foreigner thing many local families here have helpers too there are 300,000 Filipino maids and what I like to call family assistant's here in Hong Kong.
Our helper is treated like one of the family she eats with us and even comes to the Private Club we are members of. None of that us and them thing.
It makes life much easier.'
I have worked overseas for 25 years and would never live in England for all the tea in China ....

[nostatic]

well, the g/f made it clear that she would want me involved in the child rearing...guess she's too westernized

Her main point was that with live-in help, things are much different. With my son, we had zero help, no grand parents around, no friends with kids, and I could count on one hand the number of times we had a babysitter during the first couple years. Combine that with my ex going to law school then working 80 hour weeks leaving me to do all of the shuttling between home and daycare/school, and its no wonder I am gunshy about having another kid.

[Rad Hatter]

Originally posted by nostatic
well, the g/f made it clear that she would want me involved in the child rearing...guess she's too westernized

Her main point was that with live-in help, things are much different. With my son, we had zero help, no grand parents around, no friends with kids, and I could count on one hand the number of times we had a babysitter during the first couple years. Combine that with my ex going to law school then working 80 hour weeks leaving me to do all of the shuttling between home and daycare/school, and its no wonder I am gunshy about having another kid.

Don't get me wrong ,,,Frankly speaking I do enjoy taking the baby for a walk when I get back from work after dinner at 8pm virtually every night...when Im in town.
I do feed the baby in the evening sometimes
I do bath the baby at weekends
I change daipers on Sundays
(My work means I travel allot - Sabah this week Monday to friday - Fiji next wek Sunday - back friday) you get the picture
What I dont do is get up at night - I need my sleep to enable me to work properly (Im in Five Star hotels and its very demanding)

[Rad Hatter]

Maya (the baby said her first proper word tonight -she's 11 months tomorrow) the word was DaddY!
My other two kids flew back to the States to go to school (out of London UK one hour ago) Thank God they caught those %$#tards in time - or who knows ....hmmm

[jyl]

Okay, I am going to offend people here.

Some people don't want to ever have children, and that is fine. For the couples who do want to someday have children:

1. If they could afford to raise a child by giving up some lifestyle perks:

-> to me, that means some hard thinking about what's lasting and important. Vacations, restaurants, clothes, cars, flat-panel TVs - these things have little/no long-term value, and it seems pretty shallow/short-sighted to make this sort of thing the constraining factor in major life decisions.

2. If they genuinely can't afford to raise a child even with lifestyle adjustments:

-> to me, that suggests they should think about whether they're actually on the right course in life. If you have two intelligent, hard-working people in their mid-30s with professional/college educations, who genuinely cannot now (or in the reasonably near future) make ends meet without both of them working full-time, then I think a change in job, career, location, or something is urgently needed. Because, regardless of whether they ever have kids, they're headed nowhere from a financial perspective. Simply choosing to not have kids isn't the answer.

Does that sound too harsh? Basically, I'm saying if by the time you're 35-ish, your college education and hard work don't enable you to make enough money to support 3 people living modestly, you need to fix that - and fast. Your status quo is, bluntly, a financial failure.

[Edit - I think I came off as a jerk here - sorry about that, probably could have found a more diplomatic way to say it.]

Reactions, responses? Am I out of touch?

[charleskieffner]

mr mom was the hardest,thankless,dirty,nasty,sleepless, caring job i have ever had in my life.......................and i wouldnt trade it for NOTHING!

[widebody911]

Originally posted by jyl
1. If they could afford to raise a child by giving up some lifestyle perks:

-> to me, that means some hard thinking about what's lasting and important. Vacations, restaurants, clothes, cars, flat-panel TVs - these things have little/no long-term value, and it seems pretty shallow/short-sighted to make this sort of thing the constraining factor in major life decisions.

I think the problem is, they don't want to give up the perks. I know I don't, and I don't have most of the stuff on your list.

[jyl]

Yeah but AFAIK you don't want children anyway?

No reason to give up anything to get something you don't want in the first place.

I was talking about people who do want children but feel they can't afford to.

[widebody911]

Originally posted by jyl
I was talking about people who do want children but feel they can't afford to.

They just don't want them badly enough...

[bivenator]

For me jyl it wasn't so much the stuff as it is the time. We can trim the fat and be able to have another. I like some fat though. In a 2 to 3 year period I will probably be in a better spot financially and can have my fat and wife can have the baby. Somebody posted that I can use the baby as a negotiating chip. Not a bad thought since I have been on the short end of negotiations since the Pcar came along.

[Overpaid Slacker]

Originally posted by widebody911
They just don't want them badly enough...

Ezzzackly.

JP

[jyl]

Originally posted by bivenator
For me jyl it wasn't so much the stuff as it is the time. We can trim the fat and be able to have another. I like some fat though. In a 2 to 3 year period I will probably be in a better spot financially and can have my fat and wife can have the baby. Somebody posted that I can use the baby as a negotiating chip. Not a bad thought since I have been on the short end of negotiations since the Pcar came along.

Yeah, I didn't get the feeling that affording it was the real issue for you.

I don't see that adding an infant to a 2 1/2 y/o is a financial issue, anyway. Your wife is staying home anyway, if I read the thread right, and you already have all the baby stuff, not that it's expensive to begin with. That's what we did and the extra cost was pretty trivial - and I was just starting a new career, fresh out of school, we didn't have much money.

My impression is you're being held back by something other than money, even if you don't or won't recognize it. There's something not right going on between your wife and you, I speculate.