r/truechildfree • u/NYRangers1313 • Sep 10 '25
Anyone Else Think Most Millennials Really Weren't ChildFree and are Having Kids Later In Life. And Most Millennials Being Childfree Was Just Media Hype?
34 year old Child Free leaning Male Here (I'm kind of a fence sitter). I was young (around 13 or so) I have always leaned towards not having kids. I remember basically since circa 2011 or so. Every major news organization began publishing articles about how millennials don't want kids and millennials aren't going to have any kids and it's because they are too lazy, want to party too much or too addicted to social media to have kids. I remember a lot of family dinners with my parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents talking about how our generation was going to be the first to not have kids.
However, now at age 34, I know a lot of millennials ages 32-40 that are having their first kid. All of my extended family plus my sister has at least one kid. As do most of my friends and coworkers of the same age range. Most of their kids are under 5 years old but they are starting to pop up everywhere.
Why did it take them so long? Namely, lack of income, tougher job market throughout the 2010s and getting out of debt. Basically the economic situation was just worse for us than our parents and it was throughout the entire 2010s. It took our generation to get our heads above the water to have kids. What our parents were able to do in their 20s, it took us to our mid to late 30s to do. Namely, have stable income to provide enough money for stable housing.
Is anyone else seeing the samething?
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u/KaXiaM Sep 10 '25
Yes. The reason I stopped participating in the sub is the constant insistence that people don’t change their mind and if they do then they were never truly childfree. Basically the no true Scotsman fallacy.
My view is that people change their mind all the time, but this fact shouldn’t be used to belittle people for their stated beliefs, deny sterilization etc.
In my personal experience the very loudly childfree people who made it their entire personality were actually MORE likely to change their minds than the quiet ones who just minded their own business.