Millennial families with 3-4 kids and stay at home moms

I'm a millennial and am wondering where you live because I know no one like this.

They’re living off inheritance/trust funds saved up by their boomer parents/grandparents.

Thousand Oaks, CA, r1.

It’s a bit shocking because it’s supposed to be an upscale area and the demographics are.... not upscale.

Debt. Lots and lots of debt. And no savings.

As a millennial I can say everyone I know like that has at least one of four things going on -Massive amounts of debt -Hand outs from their families be it money, housing or otherwise -They’re actually making money as family bloggers somehow or hope to -They are mentally unstable and just can’t stop reproducing

How anyone can afford one kid let alone multiple kids is insane to me. I’m in an east coast suburb.

If you’re living in the Northeast U.S., cops are extremely well compensated. Where I live, many earn more than $200,000 per year with overtime, get a platinum benefits package, and can retire after 20 years (“20 and out,” they call it) with full salary and benefits intact.

In the New York Metropolitan area, blue collar contractors who specialize in renovating homes for wealthy Wall Streeters are also very well compensated. They hire from a large (cheap) immigrant labor force who are paid under the table, thereby allowing Mr. Contractor to keep more of the $$$$ for himself.

Does that answer your question, OP?

House prices in California have escalated to insane levels. If their parents sold the house they bought 30 years ago they have a good chunk of money to give to their kids for a down payment.

I live in suburban Denver, and none of the wives in my neighborhood work. Many of them are very well educated, as well. One was a corporate lawyer (which she hated) with a degree from the University of Chicago. One was an OB-GYN, and she quit to stay home with her autistic child (she also complained about the high cost of insurance). I suppose that if their husbands make enough to support them well, there is no point in working a high stress job. They also have the luxury of being able to find a decent paying job if they divorce.

In a wealthy Northeast suburb and I’m seeing more kids. Not the majority - but a few families with 4+ kids. That would have been considered lower class 20 years ago. Not sure what the multiple kids thing is about. But I pity those poor dads - stuck working the rest of their lives to support the brood.

Mom's turning tricks while the kids are at school.

Some older millennials lucked out if they had a starter home first. I'm not in the US, but I know a few millennial couples who purchased a smaller home in their mid/late 20s and made a tidy sum selling it, which gave them a nice down payment on a larger family home. I know some couples where each person owned a house before getting married, so selling two homes to purchase one bigger one isn't that unattainable. That said, most millennials I know only have one or two children and both partners work, some also had help from their parents and/or grandparents. One guy I work with is early 30s and received 25K from his grandparents for the sole purpose of buying a home.

What R6 said.

Cops and firefighters can also moonlight doing construction and similar.

IIRC, Paul Fussell addressed this 40 years ago in "Class"--the existence of upscale blue collar types, guys who own their own plumbing contracting businesses, for example. That was the basic premise of the book, that income and social class in the US are two different things.

And now we have the living embodiment of that in the White House.

I'm from and often in a super waspy part of CT, and this is SO common. For example a kid I used to babysit for bought the house nextdoor to my mothers, no post HS education but they have 3 or 4 kids, I can't really keep up, but apparently her husband also has a kid with his ex from a town over. She's a stay at home mom. On Fridays when I can get to visit my mother its bedlam at the end of the road which I was accustomed to walking up to get home (really safe area, neighbors are always out or spying so the stranger danger bs isn't a concern), I go to pull onto the road and both sides, one blocking a blind corner, are their SUVs lined up while they are all chatting NOT paying any attention to their offspring. (I give my former charge credit bc she's on all of the kids as they swarm out.)

It seems that in places like this you A. Get an education with no intention to reproduce, or B. You pair up, use one set of parents to bankroll the house while the other set of parents cover the kids needs. Unless one parent is able to do it all, which they usually do.

OP, Greatest Generation families were very big, especially Catholic ones. My folks had 7 kids. 5 to 9 was very common in my Catholic school. Then their kids, Boomers, all had two or fewer kids. One one of those has reproduced, and he has 2.

I see a lot of this in my upper-middle class neighborhood, but it's all people my age (Gen-X, at or near 50) and the kids are all junior high to high school age. Most of the Millennials I know are just eking by.

So called blue collar people can make surprisingly good money. I grew up in an fairly rich suburb with a decent amount of wealthy blue collar people. They tended to have all the snobbishness and unfriendliness of other wealthy people in the area but with the conservatism of the working class.

The compulsive child producing seems to have become more common. I remember when it was far more common to see either childless couples or couples with one or two kids. This generation of women seem more like something out of the 50s, not really interested in anything besides baking and making babies. It's like everyone became hyper estrogenized. I'm going to be a bit controversial but I think it's actually less socially acceptable for a str8 couple to decline to have kids then it was 20 or 25 years ago. I even see this starting to be pushed a bit towards gays as well . Just the other week Pete fielded a question about when he planned to have kids.

I have not seen this trend so much here in So Cal with milennials. Most milennials can't afford a house let alone a kid. Some might have both and be lucky to be homeowners before 40 but they don't have a grip of kids. It's much more common to see milennial couples without kids and just a dog. Condo maybe.

Their cars are financed and they're renting. They also get child tax benefits and if the guys are all blue collar then theres a high chance that the chicks had a kid with someone else and is also getting child support. They're also probably living beyond their means and have very little or no savings.

A lot of them are "blended families," with the mommies and daddies on their second or even third marriages.

As soon as number three is gearing up for school, daddy starts talking about mommy getting a job to help out and bam! she’s pregnant! A miracle!

Probably no college savings, every dime is spent on lifestyle, etc. Tight but doable with good financing and some handouts from parents.

I don't know the ins and outs of this stuff, but I always hear that daycare is ridiculously expensive, like $1200/month. A lot of the moms figure they'd rather stay at home and spend more time with the kids than put most of their salary towards having someone else take care of them all day.I don't really like kids or have any desire to have them, so my understanding is limited, but I gather most people actually enjoy raising them...so they see that as the better option, provided the dad can cover the expenses. (Of course, in a lot of these cases, I'm sure they have significant debt and aren't actually that financially healthy.)

I live in a wealthy NYC suburb and this has been a trend for a while now. It's the ultimate status symbol. Most of these guys are in finance and a lot of them will be in for a shock when their careers go south once they hit their 40s as we enter the next economic downturn. They are living large in their 30s. For the ones who will continue to enjoy financial success, the pressure is on for the starter wife not to be replaced with the trophy wife.

Bingo on the status symbol, R22. That seems to be a lot of it. And the starter wife is likely going to have a difficult time if she needs to reenter the workforce at 50, having spent the last 20 years at soccer games and PTA. Her Marketing 101 or English degree (if she even has that) is not going to be worth a lot.

I honestly don't know anyone around me with more than two kids

R23 Indeed. And her career as "stay at home mommy social media influencer " won't count for much either in two decades.

R20, do you know my brother's wife?!

They're MILF/DILF cam stars.

Chaturbate is full of them.

I live near Microsoft, Expedia, Facebook, Google and others. This is very common. My millennial friends in the tech biz are in their early 30s pulling in 200k-300k (combined). They travel, eat out regularly, buy expensive tech gadgets and Audi’s and BMWs yet are fugal how they go about things. They’re the ones paying for the 750k plus homes. They’re all Indian and will have 2 kids within their arranged marriages. I’m going to add that I’m bitter sometimes that they’ve come here, taken some American jobs from some of my longtime American friends, and are living the good life. One guy did admit he felt bad while applying for his visa that he had to answer if he was more or less taking a job away from a US citizen. I’m older and not in tech and I’m unable to do and buy what they can and was born and raised in the area. If I moved away I could never return.

R28 - yes, the whole "we can't find anyone in the US with these skills for the tech jobs" is utter bullshit.

I have rich single millennial girlfriends whose moms have begged them just to get knocked up at a bar by anyone to give them grandchildren. Maybe the Indians get $ rewards for each grandson.

A FOAF told her "girls only group" that she bought a house outside of Boston so that they could tear it down. They needed the lot to build a five bedroom house so that she could get pregnant with her fourth child. Apparently, four children is a status symbol (husband can afford it, the wife doesn't have to work, she loves the attention of being pregnant, and will be able to extend her being a mommy). She actually told my friend that the status is what she's after. My friend said, "Well that and you can provide a safe and loving environment for a child." The woman looked her dead in the eye and said, "That too."

Yes, it’s 4 or nothing now. It was 3- signifier of having at least a nanny, as there is need for at least one more adult in helicopter 1:1 world. But that became too attainable and 4 is the magic number, like Kardashian’s deeply unnecessary surrogate baby.

This is nothing new.

Stay at home wives and more than two kids has been a status symbol since I was a kid and I'm 35, so the parents were Boomers back then.

Many of the wives, then, as now, had advanced degrees and high power professional jobs but that was often cited as the reason to stop working.

My own mother (who worked as a lawyer at a very large white shoe firm) being a good example.

The facts show millennials are having fewer kids than any generation before them, but sure OP.

R22 A girl I knew growing up was a starter wife who got traded in. She married the guy at 19 and literally never had a job in her life, never went to college. A really cunt who would brag about how much better she was because she married up. She ended up moving in with her mom and trying community college. She flunked out and then started drinking. She then moved on to meth and lost custody of her kid.

I'm not seeing this anywhere. The ones breeding a lot are usually the dumb ugly religious freaks.

The only ones with 4 or 5 kids are the Mexicans.

With the rich folks who have four or more kids, the wife’s job is to create the perfect home. That means making the right friends, making sure all the kids’ issues are handled, and stay hot and interesting so she doesn’t get replaced.

R35 she sounds like/reminds me of quintessential Betty Broderick syndrome. Most starter wives have to stay in impeccable shape to tolerate being chronically ignored.

R38 Within that 'group ' children are staggered, sometimes quite dramatically in age, and usually have different mothers, almost a family matrix vs. a family tree, when more than 2-3 kids are in the family with one father, having up to 8+ children. Typically wealthy enough to pad the lives of their children if not ex wives too.

[quote] Within that 'group ' children are staggered, sometimes quite dramatically in age, and usually have different mothers, almost a family matrix vs. a family tree,

While that exists for sure R39, I grew up with enough kids who were one of three kids spaced pretty closely from the same mother (say 2-3 years apart) and some with four (though one was two sets of twins)

If women are having broods and not working as a “status symbol”, they are betting big in a game with a 50% chance of losing: none or dated professional skills, as primary caretaker she’ll probably get standard custody and therefore most of the responsibilities & expense of raising the brood....and in most states it’s a nominal percent (5% here) for each additional child after the first. (First usually 20%).

Really, they both are: dad could end up paying 30-40%+ of monthly net in support, and for her it’s not like childcare, clothes, medical, food, etc....only cost 5% more per additional child. Then you end up like R35’s acquaintance.

Maybe the gals with multiple baby daddies for their broods aren’t so dumb, after all?

Anyway - they’d better be able to stay married, which means putting up with anything he dishes out and praying he doesn’t decide the grass is greener elsewhere. I believe all 50 states are no-fault now, so if he files no judge will “make” him stay.

I think it is more of a status symbol for the men. Some weird macho, virile provider thing.

Apropos of nothing, that prick of a White House lawyer Cippalone has 10 kids. Ten fucking kids!

LOL R41, it's not the 1980s

Upper middle class fathers get that their kids will hate them if they leave mom destitute AND that ruins the whole status symbol look.

She'll get a job as a realtor or a Pilates instructor and he'll have two big houses or apartments... because he can.

And these are women with law degrees from Georgetown you're talking about.

Not the secretary from the typing pool.

[quote]...get a platinum benefits package, and can retire after 20 years (“20 and out,” they call it) with full salary and benefits intact.

Retiring after 20 years generally entitles cops to HALF of their salary as a pension. Most get another job in some kind of security position, and here in NYC more than a few retired cops become actors! It isn't as generous as you make it sound, though I am assuming they remain on the union's healthcare but for a bigger monthly premium.

Divorce is a financial disaster. It’s a reason to avoid marriage. The crazy assumptions that go into “lifetime together”, “big family of kids” and a family home are in direct contradiction to the reality of slaving away to pay the bills, being incompatible as adults and having kids who are less than the ideal.

Having 4+ kids is a sign of mental health problems

Most of the families I see in California that have multiple children are Mexican. Why they continue to bring more uncut stank into this country I’ll never know.

LOL R44, or YMF....

You can go right ahead and say my contribution to the discourse is 40 years dated. Per usual, you clearly don’t have any idea of what actually goes on in the rest of the world. That said, I wouldn’t piss on you if you were in fire.

Best wishes.

My cousin's daughter just had her fourth kid. She is still very attractive and is married to a pro baseball player.

Trophy wives do tend to be educated these days.

But that’s not really what we’re talking about. We’re talking about average sclubbs supporting huge families and non working spouses even as the cost of living goes through the roof.

And why, suddenly, are women just giving up and becoming baby factories again? It’s a weird moment in our culture.

There’s one nasty bitch at my kids school who basically personifies this. The MINUTE kid #3 started kindergarten, she got knocked up again with kid # 4 at the age of 37. She’s never worked. You can practically hear her husband’s desperation.

Yet she stomps around the school barking at everyone and basically being a domineering know-it-all. Bitch, if you’re so smart, why is your life such a train wreck?

I blame it on the fathers. Of course, everyone would rather not work and be a “stay at home parent”. The pussy-whipped dads who allow the wives to get away with it deserve the misery of being forever trapped as the money maker in a miserable corporate job. Fool me once, shame on you - fool me four times, shame on me. Suckers.

I have a feeling the 2020s decade is when millennials will be breeding a lot.

R45, in my city (not NYC), the 50% of their salary is based of what they make their last year of work. During that last year, the retiring police officer is permitted (actually, encouraged) to rack up many, many hours of overtime, significantly inflating his/her salary—if he/she sits around in a squad car at construction sites enough during that last year, the cop can easily double (sometimes triple) the salary that used to calculate his/her lifetime pension payout. So a guy who served 20 years on the force and made $100,000 each year for 19 years can, in that 20th year, make $200,000+. And half that last year’s salary is what’s paid out to that retired cop each year.

The “20 and out” rule means if that guy entered the force at 25 and retires at 45, he can collect a full six-figure salary every year for the rest of his life. And with life expectancy what it is today, that means the city could be on the hook for paying him 30+ more years (more years than he actually served on the force). I’ve known relatively young, retired cops who never worked another day in their lives after “retirement.” Others go on to second careers. Still others re-join the force as consultants—thus entitling them to a second pension! This is completely unsustainable, but our police union is extremely powerful, and no elected officials seem interested in addressing it.

Right - but God forbid we criticize the police. They are doing Gods work by keeping “those” people in jail.

R3 tv actors & carnies buy McMansions (Tasteful Friends!) in Thousand Oaks, Santa Rosa & Napa then fill them with babies & dogs & illegal help. That dents the cachet.

One kid means they learned their lesson.

Two kids means they bought into the myth of the "traditional family."

Three kids means one or both of them are sloppy bitches who can't figure out birth control.

Four kids means mom is likely bunny-boiler crazy.

My best friend just had her first child last year. She and the husband decided to start trying, she went off BC, got pregnant right away. I made a joke with her about being pregnant with #2 and she had the fear of god in her eyes. Big families are for crazies.

R57 Haha, generally true (though obviously there are occasional exceptions ). The nuttiest ones are the families that were essentially solidly suburban middle class but drag themselves into lower middle class and piles of debt because they can't stop reproducing. There's always one or 2 kids in these homes who get completely fucked over because of the lack of resources.

I’m also trying to figure out what’s going on. I live in a town where there are only a few employers and yet so many of these families live in huge homes and drive nice cars and in many cases the wife doesn’t work. I simply cannot imagine that ALL of these husbands can have such high paying jobs that they can afford all of this. They have got to be in debt.

R59 after a certain number, how can they possible make quality time for every kid? It's nuts.

you and they must be very wealthy

"They also have the luxury of being able to find a decent paying job if they divorce."

Not really, after 2 decades out of the professional life, competing against younger people with a current skill set, not as easy as you think.

An acquaintance of mine has 4 kids, non-working spouse, expensive house (though not large-- expensive in California doesn't get you much.) Spouse has never worked. He is former Air Force, now a pilot for an airline. I just figured pilots must make around 500K a year to live the way they do.

I was shocked when I looked up typical pilot's salaries online. It's about $125K, sometimes much less depending on experience and the airline. That's a good salary, but not to support 6 people in California. Plus his fat, useless twat wife is always posing for pics with her hip thrust out, sucking down a Starbucks. So you know she's not exactly frugal.

If major economic problems hit, many of these families are going to have real problems. It's not the days of farming and pioneering, nobody needs these huge families. In the last decade or so, Americans seem to have developed some weird pregnancy fetish. I first noticed it around the mid 2000s when gossip columns started focusing almost exclusively on "baby bumps " and pregnancy rumors. I think a number of women have realized that being visibly and constantly pregnant gets them attention and validation.

"I’m GenX. Growing up, I didn’t know a single person from a family of more than 2 kids. Everyone’s mom worked."

Hi, I'm GenX and I'm using anecdotes to bash millennials! Claiming that millennial families are having tons of kids is hysterical since stats show women are having fewer kids than ever. Stats show the majority of millennial moms work outside the home. And there was never every point in history when "Everyone's mom worked"

"This generation of women seem more like something out of the 50s, not really interested in anything besides baking and making babies."

Once again, people pulling "facts" out of their ass without evidence to back it up

"The pussy-whipped dads who allow the wives to get away with it deserve the misery of being forever trapped as the money maker in a miserable corporate job."

Of course DLers have to make men the victims, but men with stay-at-home wives are often social conservatives who don't want their wives to work. Or they ove the ego boost of knowing they make enough to support the kids on their own

R51 and R65, my theory is that women are finally realizing that the Independent Woman (TM) role is not what it's cracked up to be. Most corporate jobs are boring and soulless as hell. The bulk of them have "at will" employment, so you can be fired at a moment's notice. And no one really wants to work at a shitty job for 40 years just to collect retirement once you're old and shriveled up. Most want to do things that are meaningful NOW while there's still time and energy in abundance.

I get the sense that some women are realizing that being a SAHM isn't such a bad deal after all. I'm a software engineer, so I make pretty good money, and yet I would quit my job in a heartbeat if I had a spouse willing to financially support me while I go back to school, start a business, etc. I'm not much of a family person myself, but even I can see that being home with your children is more rewarding than being parked behind a desk making someone else rich.

Also, being a working home mom seems like straight up masochism. Women are going to work for 8-10 hours a day only to come home and have to cook, clean, console, etc. their families just as much as SAHMs do. Sounds like torture.

I am not denying your experience is real OP but it is very atypical and uncommon because the average number of children an average american woman has and the overall birth rate is falling. Infact the number of women choosing never to have children is also increasing.

My pension is not great but earn 1.5 times overtime pay at the local pickle park entrapping the gays. Sure, I gotta whip out my mating parts for the gays but I get a lot of compliments, so it's not all bad.

The same. I'm in my 30-ies, and while all my friends have 1 or maximum 2 siblings themselves, they all want "at least 3 kids and more". They have different backrounds, being involved in IT, design, etc.

No wonder! Even celebrities are like rabbits nowdays.

r65 and the other posters.

Reproduction medicine has made it possible that unfertil women and man now have children.

When there are twins, George Clooney for example, this is always invitro pregnancy.

Nowadays twins, pop up like mushroom are the result of Reproducn medicine.

Californians are passing down the Prop. 13 tax break as well as smaller mortgages from when they bought their homes decades ago, when a 2,500 sq ft house cost $250,000 dollars. Their kids are probably taking out more loans on the gifted homes to finance their lifestyles and will end up with jumbo debt to pay back.

R72 no doubt reproductive medicine has led to an increase in twins but I was born in 1966. In my high school class of 98 kids there were 5 sets of twins.

Most families were larger. I have four siblings. My neighbors were all families with 4,5,6 kids. There was one family on my block with 9 kids, and they weren’t the only ones in town.

It was weird to see a family with only one or two kids.

[quote]I think it is more of a status symbol for the men. Some weird macho, virile provider thing.

Agreed, R42. For a quarter century I've overheard straight guys complaining/bragging about their wives who stay at home to look after the kids because, "well, when you do the math, most or all of her salary would go to child careanyway, so...". The words are practically identical every time, as if they learned them in tandem with "you don't buy beer, you rent it."

The point seems to be, "hey, I make enough money that it doesn't matter, and I don't mind telling you that I do."

The down payments on the homes are mostly coming from their parents. Whenever you see a young family in their 20s buying a nice home, it's a 90% certainty that their parents gave them the money.

And I'm supposed to care about this because...?

My male, very attractive cousin, was a personal trainer. He met an obese wealthy woman, when they were both in their early 30’s. He now stays home with their two kids, has a fleet of cars and boats, front row seats to every major sporting event (She is a CEO at a company that is sports related). He is living the life, but people talk shit about him constantly. He asked another family member if they would hire him on paper, so he can tell people he has a job, because he’s sick of people talking shit. There really is a double standard.

Yes, the men who are stay-at-home dads get mercilessly shit-talked behind their backs. They're seen as lazy moochers. And that they're also wasting their potential and shamefully not contributing to the household. They're a definite double standard.

People talk shit about house cows too, r78. It’s just they tend to congregate together, creating the impression (among themselves) that this is normal.

It doesn’t strike me as normal at all that a woman would want to spend her entire life shuffling around a kitchen (not that they can cook) and “talking” to toddlers.

I can understand why people would want to stay home if they can afford it. Especially if they've worked in the corporate world, which can be soul-crushing and humiliating, not to mention stressful as all hell. If I had the money, I'd quit tomorrow.

How sad many think that corporate work is soul crushing. Maybe it's them, not the job? Going to work and feeling that you are accomplishing goals at work is rewarding. What type of work do you people want?

Well, r74, we can’t all grow up in the ethnic enclaves if Baltimore and Philly, can we?

[quote]Going to work and feeling that you are accomplishing goals at work is rewarding. What type of work do you people want?

Accomplishing goals? (And whose goals?) I can only assume the annual performance review period is R82's most wonderful time of the year, to reflect upon his goals completion successes and his embodiment of key corporate values and promotion of company culture.

Never retire, R82, you'd be dead the very next day for lack of purpose - and goals!

I have a large extended family and know many people, co-workers, relatives, and friends, who have 2-4 kids, but mostly two. Most are traditional families with loving, accomplished parents. One thing I've noticed is the number of those families who have bred one troubled or mentally ill kid. Literally, they hit their teens and really screw up. One son of doting parents is drug addicted and living on the streets. His mother has a master's degree, his father a career in finance.

In one seemingly perfect family, father is a doctor, mother an engineer, two kids who went to excellent universities, and the son, 26, is marrying an slightly older overweight woman with two kids from a less cultured family. The son's parents aren't happy but are going along with it. I must say, I find it rather amusing.

There are no guarantees in this life, not for anyone.

[quote]I have a feeling the 2020s decade is when millennials will be breeding a lot.

It's not like they'll have jobs to go to every day.

[quote]One thing I've noticed is the number of those families who have bred one troubled or mentally ill kid.

This is pretty much every fucking episode of Dr. Phil I've ever seen. If if wasn't for middle/upper-middle class parents with at least one fucked-up demon seed teenage/young adult child, he wouldn't have a show. Amazing how many people like that are out there.

My main frame of reference on this is people that I went to school with who I don't really speak to anymore but see on Facebook, and actually I agree. A lot of the girls particularly that were in my year at school have 3-4 kids and seem to live in pretty expensive houses, and I have no idea what their husbands do for work but they don't seem to work themselves or if they do it's little part-time jobs at most. They go on expensive family holidays (i.e. Disney World, rather than a holiday camp in France) too.

I can only assume that they had more family help or the husbands are on 6 figure salaries.

R28 - "I’m going to add that I’m bitter sometimes that they’ve come here, taken some American jobs from some of my longtime American friends"

Wow, OK boomer!

They haven't 'taken' American jobs. If they are better qualified and more competent than the competition they get the job, that's how it works. Don't get bitter, just get better.

It's common here in the Midwest, R1. Factory jobs remain here because wages are low and there aren't many worker protections.

I don't know how these families can have the big SUVs and houses they have. My partner and I have to live on mostly his income after I was injured and can't work full time, and we have no kids of course, and we've got a tiny house and a 21-year-old car and are struggling. But we also don't have any credit card debt, so maybe these families are living off credit cards.

[quote]This generation of women seem more like something out of the 50s, not really interested in anything besides baking and making babies. ... I'm going to be a bit controversial but I think it's actually less socially acceptable for a str8 couple to decline to have kids then it was 20 or 25 years ago.

The fake leftie Bruenigs are always insulting people by calling them "childless." They also go on at length about white picket fences and nice yards and good suburban schools, they sound like conservatives from 1962. It's curious that they're considered leftists but apparently they are.

The whole work visa thing is BS.

Companies routinely advertise skilled jobs with pay no US worker would accept - so they can turn around and claim they can’t find qualified applicants. They use that as an an excuse to hire some foreign worker who will do twice the work for 2/3 the sararied pay with no complaints —with the hopes of eventually getting a green card.

How can anybody afford three or four kids?

I honestly don’t know, but I do know SAHMs that make a full daily publicity campaign on social media on how hard they work being the best moms ever. To be honest I feel like it’s mostly for hubby so there is no way to rationalize them going to work outside the home.

I have a friend I never hear from since she became a mom. She claims she has no time, but on Facebook, she has her child attending EVERY activity, children’s theater event, ballet lessons, etc. It’s like they are their child’s’ personal assistant, not their parent. I don’t get the whole living and breathing to be a parent—and that childhood makes the world go round. Obviously parenting is important, but I see how children can end up with a distorted view of they own self- importance when adults are focused on them. 24/7.

People that rave non-stop about their kids on social media—and the magic of being a parent—wear me out because it’s non-stop—and rarely do they ask about your life because they are so “exhausted” by being a mom. I stopped following my sister on social media for this very reason.

R92 speaks the truth.

So does R94. Facebook parents who post obsessively about their children’s activities are living vicariously through their kids. It’s as if they’re hellbent on turning their children into the massive successes they themselves could never become. It usually backfires.

I think a lot of these young families have financial help from their parents.

Exactly r92. R89 needs to do his research. I've seen many in IT having to train their Indian replacements after being "laid off". They have mentioned that many of these people have only the most basic understanding of what they are doing.

People should have one or 2, not a litter.

When you say “blue collar jobs” what do they do?

We are in the midst of renovating a house - our contractor costs a small fortune. He’s great at what he does - his work is perfect - and he’s always booked many months in advance. He easily makes 150-200k a year.

So maybe your “blue collar” neighbors are making great livings

Yes, they all have to have the expensive SUV. Maybe these people are making child porn, using their children.

R94 is absolutely right, there are way too many mums today whose entire lives revolve around their children, taking them from one scheduled activity to the other. Kids aren't ever left to entertain themselves, they are stimulated every second of the day and believe they are way more important than they are - all that happens is they grow up to be entitled, spoiled assholes and the parents end up self-medicating and insufferable bores.

[quote]They haven't 'taken' American jobs. If they are better qualified and more competent than the competition they get the job, that's how it works.

No, they just work for cheap and they'll put up with shit that an American worker never would.

[quote]Accomplishing goals? (And whose goals?)

The goals of the company you persued to be a part of.

R84, the beauty of this country is you are not forced to work where you don't want! You think a company's job is soul crushing? Psst. Don't work there. Our start your own company, you can Iif you want. Not really that hard to understand.

The mommies need to keep having kids so that they can continue to generate content for their social media. And I agree...they always have a newish SUV...and often a McMansion. They spend all day humblebragging about their perfect lives. They likely have huge debt. Perhaps they're waiting on a huge inheritance, they're going to launch a frivolous lawsuit or they're going to hire a bankruptcy lawyer.

I remember the 1980s when the goal for women was to "have it all"...having a job and raising a family. In the working class community where I lived, Moms diidn't work to become rich. They worked to get out of the house and be a part of society. Today's mom has access to society through her smartphone.

Wow, nobody mentions ME?

Divorce does hurt your finances and in the end, the women suffers the most. But the dumb men, marry the trophy wife and end up having a couple of children, just to please their much younger wife.

Many of them are probably living on credit, and are two paychecks away from financial ruin. Of course on social media they present themselves as perfect and happy and all of that shit, but you never know what goes on behind closed doors. The way people present themselves on social media and their outward appearances is often complete bullshit.

Yes - when I watched a doc on Chris Watts and they talk about the couple being in debt up to their eyeballs and filing for bankruptcy, his lizard sociopathic brain must have thought killing his family was the only way out so he could start over. Ironically now he’s a prisoner forever. I wonder how many more “amazeballl” families are praying daily things don’t go south because they owe their souls to the bank.

The thing is, R80, kids really are better off when at least one parent stays home, especially the mother. Some women do enjoy being homemakers, but beyond that who the hell wants to drop off their kid at daycare just to go work at some boring job for someone else?

R95 is right -- in fact, I think a lot of people have kids because they really have no other ambitions and/or they're self-aware enough to know they don't have what it takes to be successful at anything else. Nothing wrong with that, but I've noticed it's not talked about that much.

Also, random question, but how do you quote what someone says without mentioning their comment number?

R109, those definitely aren’t the only options. My sister is an attorney with her own practice and designs her schedule around her daughter. She loves her job.

When my niece was a baby, they paid through the nose to have someone come in and help with the baby the first 15 months or so, and my sister worked mostly from home during that time.

True, it’s expensive as hell and my sister could make a lot more money if her schedule weren’t restricted. But you do your best to stay sane and have a life/career when you have kids.

Of course this doesn’t really work if mom is a baby factory. There would be too many schedules to coordinate. It is “easier” for the large families if mom is an unpaid servant. But it’s no life for mom.

Maybe the moms work from home.

My brother did this. Let his wife not work and stay with kids. Now the kids are in school - and he thought she would go back to work to help pay for their upper middle class lifestyle. Nope. Bitch refuses to go back to work. Says she is so “busy” with the PTA and school events. And divorce only means he doesn’t get to see kids AND pays for her alimony. A horrible life - but I blame him for letting it happen and marrying a bitch.

It’s a scam that these women sucker stupid men into allowing. My sister has always worked her ass off despite having 2 kids. Would never think of not working.

Once again, datalounge blaming the women when these guys usually don't want their wives to work. If they wanted an independent career woman, that's who they would have married

Yeah - the men I know in this situation look about 10 years older than they are because they are supporting the entire fraudom by themselves. And they all live in these tight communities where keeping up with the Joneses is a requirement, so it’s almost impossible to live within your means. You never see the dads in all the fab photos on social media because they are too busy working. It’s a total frau hustle. It must be an awful existence.

No one mentions the obvious no college degree means no student loan debt.

I have four millennial nieces, aged 18 - 30, one is in her first year of university with the goal of being an attorney. She's already interned in a law office for two years. The others are professionals in law enforcement, business, and science. Their are no marriages or babies in sight. I have to say I am proud of them all. Smart and hardworking, they give me hope for the future.

If gay was a choice I’d still choose it. I’ve had a fabulous life of travel and have everything I want and need. A wife and kids would have been a lead weight and a thankless existence.

I don't know how many kids my neighbours have because the kids are in boarding school and spend holidays at appropriate resorts.

Reading this just took me back, I was maybe 7 years old, on a playground with a girl in my class, both of our moms were there. I asked her what she did for work, and when she replied that "I haven't the need to work" I couldn't get it. I followed up with more questions, being "You don't do anything? Why dont you want to have something to do? " no response. Remembering it, was clearly an attempted jab at my own mother, but my mother wasn't speechless that afternoon.

There was most definitely a time when most moms wanted to work, wasn't just a mandatory requirement to keep financially afloat.

R116 And then the fraus can’t seem to understand why their husbands have a midlife crisis once they hit 40 and leave them for a 20-something Borderline who worships them.

I think iPhones, and the internet in general just fucking ruined work. I’m a millennial, but when I started working I didn’t have an iPhone and couldn’t be reached or necessarily bothered after hours by my law firm. Then when I was available- requests at all times, emails sent by partners at 2am that didn’t have to be answered until 8am, but still woke me and set my mind racing.

I’d rather work in the 80s and leave my work in the office at 6pm than now in our 24 hour American work culture. (And yes, specifically the law but many fields are like this now)

The 24/7 work culture killed me. Mine started with blackberries - around 2000. Anxiety from the second you wake up until you finally can get to sleep. Now I just want a job where I type in numbers or words - mindless, anxiety free paycheck.

R121, more moms than ever are working. Not sure what halcyon days you are referring to....

R125 I'd be referring to the 1980s. And you should introduce yourself to the US Census. More mothers are staying at home (or in some cases fathers) to raise their kids. Number of homeschoolers is also up, indicating more presence of the mother/parent at home

I am just adding my post from the "Is there any point to living thread":

I live (RENT) in a wealthy seacoast east coast community. And what I have learned from various sources- realtors, etc- even my own piece of shit landlord (I may be one of 50-75 renters in this community of about 10,000) is that MOST of these motherfuckers have INHERITED EVERYTHING (my shitbox house I live in, is an inheritance)

It is a real revelation, when you work your ass off.

Again, I choose to believe in my soul, fate, the universe, ect....

I take my morning jog and run by these 5, 7, 10 million dollar homes and want to kill myself.

But I am really getting better about accepting the pointlessness and that its all RIGGED.

Let me add- The realtors I have gotten to know, basically stalk the retirement communities and get the listing when the wealthy elderly person is thrown in the retirement home.

The child or children then of course sells the home or rents the home (initially)

And these folks have ALOT of funds, it's not a situation where the home sale solely pays for the elderly person's retirement home fees. Its just another 750,000- 3,000,000+ in the children's pockets.

R125, nonsense, plenty of 80s moms stayed home

Everyone in my family is married, 2 kids minimum, with homes ranging from Vancouver to San Diego. The East coast has my brother with a house he sold, which I LOVED, in Long Island, for a place in NJ, because he commutes to the city (NY).

Everyone has a pool, and a pretty decent sized home, save for my aunt and not sure if my brother’s new place has a pool, so whatever.

My stepsister and I are the only ones who did not have kids. She remarried - for Love this time, not her career, and she and her hubby live in Washington DC, or more precisely, a suburb. His kids fly in every summer, and she’s an awesome step mum. Her husband has plenty of money, but she still works, because she’s like me, and has worked all of her life, and probably wouldn’t know what to do with herself. She’s got a law degree, and she’s happy. Looks great, and does Pilates. Lol!

Another cousin I’m LA, who is like a sister to me, is CONSUMED with her children. When she’s at home alone, she stuffs her face with anything from cake, cookies, pasta, pre-made salads, whatever she can get her hands on for those hours of silence, and if ever anyone ever says anything like, “Hey, wanna go for a walk, or hit the gym? She flips out. Her husband, on the other hand, runs, surfs, bikes, and spends lots of time at the office.

This is what we do. We get married, have kids, and eat. Lol. My only regret is not having had kids. But I just wasn’t going to do it without a decent husband/potential father, so I may have regrets, but I know I made the right choice for me.

I think people just want to be happy. Kids do it for many of them, even when the marriage goes through ups and downs. Not one divorce in the fam, other than for myself, and my sis.

R130. I have fallen love with you.

Not an iota of judgement or nastiness in your post-

You just speak from your experience.

Your family is blessed to have you!!

XOXOXOXOXOX

I think things were a bit better when drinking and smoking were acceptable.

[R131] move along Jesus Frau

Three words: Rich Boomer Parents.

Parents that have money to help them out. No millennials that had parents that weren't somewhat wealthy, are doing this. Not only are they being supported financially, they are benefiting off nepotism.

It’s weird to live in a place where it seems everyone must be in the top 1-5% of wealth. I look at national stats of income and retirement savings and feel better. But it seems like EVERYONE around me is rich - $1MM+ homes, kids college tuitions and private school, retirement savings. But then I look at the national stats and there is cognitive dissonance.

But it’s not all debt. You can’t buy @ $2-3 million house or apartment if you don’t have the income. It’s just weird.

R135, I feel you.

R134, R127 have hit upon an important point. In recent years, I’ve noticed that middle class parents continue to financially support their children well into adulthood—something only the very wealthy used to do. I work with a guy (early thirties) whose parents gave him a $35,000 down payment for a condo. His parents also bought him a car when he got the job at our company (about three years ago). He talks about all this as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. Another coworker (young woman) is getting married later this year. The couples’ parents are paying for the wedding, the honeymoon, and a down payment on a house. And my boss and his wife are providing their thirtysomething year old son seed money for a whackadoodle business that’s well on the road to failure.

As as one writer said about ten years ago (can’t remember who, unfortunately), the U.S. is fast becoming a society of patronage.

That's what happens when wages stagnate.....

Too much cheap labor have caused wages to stagnate.

I sometimes see millennials like this. They are usually a bunch of losers. I think the husbands usually work in the trades

Oh my dears.

I thought this is a mostly german or european problem. Oh I am so much wrong.

The same for us here. Especially in my region south of Munich close to the Alpes.

A townhouse (Reihenhaus), 120 qm on three levels, so mainly living on the stairways is about 600.000 Euro. How do they do it, how to finance that? And what happens to them and their houses, when the children are moving out for University?.

May be the house is paid after 20 years, but wtf wants to live in those houses getting older?

It is always the same layout: You enter the house, there is a small entrance room with the guest toilet (may be a shower included) and then a living room over the complete house size with an open kitchen. Upstairs there is the parents bedroom, a bathroom and two additional bedrooms for the kids.

Additional there are rooms under the roof or in the basement.

Most of them are in debt to the eyeballs and have no savings. Or they’re living off their Boomer parents. The kids are so used to having mom do everything for them that they inevitably grow up to be entitled assholes.

R142, it's the boomers who are entitled assholes. Like their idol, Trump.

Well, if the Boomers hadn't rigged and wrecked the economy and standard of living, these Millennials would be able to buy a starter home without any help.

r143. What is wrong with them? I am born in 1962 in Stuttgart/Germany.

I went through difficult times, my father, born 1925, was used to fight in a war as a young guy during the Nazis. A war he has to attend, when he was 18. And it was not his choice.

I was always a political interested person. Was an elected member at the local town parliament. Being left does not make it easier.

After the fall of the Berlin wall, our reunification with the two Germanys, the new Russia with Gorbatschow, the US with Barrack Obama as President, I thought our little blue ball in our small solar system located at an outside arm of our small galaxy would do fine.

How wrong I was.

If this is such a widespread phenomenon, why is the US fertility rate at an all-time low?

I think it's limited to a few groups: those in the upper 20% or so economically; those with parents who can afford to help (lots of overlap with the first group); and those willing to live with crazy levels of debt for most of their lives.

On the other hand, humans have been breeding for quite some time now, so having children seems to be a fairly normal and widespread desire. I don't know why so many are so worked up about it.

The frauen might want to keep their legs closed once in a while. And hubby can get some release with his golfing buddies. It's the natural way.

Key takeaway of this thread is how divorced most DLers are from reality.

Upper middle class families have multiple kids as a status symbol. The wives were often also in high power professional jobs (which is how they met the husband) and juggling kids and two high power jobs is tough. So she stays home and having 3 or 4 kids and a non-working wife is a big status thing because it means he can pay for 3 or 4 college tuitions, plus tutors and summer camps and Caribbean vacations and all that on a single salary. (And/or the grandparents are chipping in big time.)

Upscale blue collar families often have multiple kids because they come from cultures where that is the norm and they can easily afford it since college is not necessarily in the picture. Wives were not working a high paying job, often as not were working in the husband's plumbing contractor office to cut costs, but now can afford to be with kids.

Immigrant families have multiple kids because it's cultural (Catholics)

"Millennials" with big houses/families either have generous parents, really good jobs given that a 35 year old has been out of college for 13 years and may well be a law firm partner or very successful banker or tech exec, or both

[quote]Upscale blue collar families often have multiple kids because they come from cultures where that is the norm and they can easily afford it since college is not necessarily in the picture. Wives were not working a high paying job, often as not were working in the husband's plumbing contractor office to cut costs, but now can afford to be with kids.

Exactly, R148. Also, this group tends to stay close to home. They don't move halfway across the country for their careers. Because of that and the culture of larger families, there are always relatives around to help. Often, as the kids get older, the wives begin to work part-time, relying on mothers, MILs, sisters, etc. for free child care.

Another thing is that their expectations are lower, especially with regard to where they live. They want good schools for their kids and a big house, but they don't need to live in fashionable close-in suburbs or "name" neighborhoods. They're fine with all the local restaurants being chains and many of their neighbors being Trumpers. (They may well be Trumpers themselves.) They're quite happy to move to the far fringes of their metro area to find exurban McMansions and "good-enough" schools - that is, schools that are safe and have decent rankings but aren't sending their graduates to Harvard and Stanford. This is much less expensive than trying to buy a large house in the best parts of Westchester County, NY or Montgomery County, MD.

We're talking about the cream of the high-prole crop. There isn't the level of dysfunction in these families that you see in poorer people. They're a pretty happy group, actually, and why wouldn't they be? They have no-bullshit jobs they generally enjoy that pay well, and strong family (and often strong religious) bonds. It's a nice life if you fit in.

If I could do it again, I’d try for five kids. At least.

Many boomer parents know they have to help finance their kids' adult lives if they want any chance of having grandchildren. I know of several families where this was pretty much stated as fact.

The stories you hear about Milennials not making it are true - but they're from regular families who don't have large funds to subsidize them.

My partner gifted both of his sons $75K for down payments on houses when each was 25. He received some money from his grandmother when he bought his first house at 25, so he believes it is only right to do the same for them.

Neither of his kids live in super expensive areas, so they are able to have 4 bed, 3 bath suburban homes (with live-in girlfriends to share expenses) at a very early age.

It's a great leap forward in life for both of them. I'm somewhat jealous of his kids and their starts in life, but it's not unusual.

When I lived in Manhattan, only about 1/3 of my friends paid their rent - usually their parents did. It is unequal, but that's the state of wealth distribution in the US.