Only valid point you made is that wages haven’t kept up. Everything else sounds like a lot of crying and excuses to me.

Over 90% of workers have a single job. So I don’t think most parents are working over 40 hours a week like you said.

It all comes down to the parents at the end of the day. people need to stop trying to blame society for their short comings and choices

got called a schizophrenic when i was talking about how rampant individualism is in modernity

Only valid point you made is that wages haven’t kept up. Everything else sounds like a lot of crying and excuses to me.

Most Americans are falling into credit card delinquency right now, repos are at all time highs, and insurance costs have jumped 40% while used car prices still haven’t completely come down from Covid because dealers have incentives to keep them high. The average student loan repayment is 500-600 dollars a month.

I don’t think I have to speak about inflation since everyone should know that by now

You’re choosing to ignore a lot of negative economic indicators

I can go on and list a lot more based on recent data but I’ll leave you to take these trends seriously or not

Over 90% of workers have a single job. So I don’t think most parents are working over 40 hours a week like you said.

That doesn’t make sense to cite — working greater than 40 hours a week doesn’t mean you have two jobs or more. It indicates more and more Americans are relying on OT or switching to jobs which demand > 40 years a week (most higher paying white collar jobs do)

We can compare how many Americans are working more than 1 job in 2015 compared to right now though and see the real trend of where we’re going here

If over 90% of the workplace has a single job and the average American works 40 hours a week you can assume that most people are working 40 hrs a week at their one job.

Most credit card delinquency comes from consumer debt, living above your means and lack of discipline in your spending habits.

over 90% of the workplace has a single job and the average American works 40 hours a week you can assume that most people are working 40 hrs a week at their one job.

You stated over 90% of workers have a single job, that’s not sufficient enough by itself to claim workers are not increasingly working >40 hours a week. That data point tells you nothing about how many hours people are putting into their singular job. Also again, citing 90% but not showing the trend of where things are going is not helpful.

Most credit card delinquency comes from consumer debt, living above your means and lack of discipline in your spending habits.

This sounds like the ‘working class’ is stupid argument and that’s why we have so much household debt. I’m a first gen American who grew up on section 8 and earn significantly above my age group/area and wouldn’t make this claim. I additionally work in finance/investment industry and imo honestly it’s simply not the case.

The average income a new car buyer is 155k and their average age is 58 lol .. meanwhile again used car monthly payments on average are ~1k a month

If you wanna argue that Americans are overspending then why is the average age of new car purchaser so high? Clearly Americans have still foregone expenses like a new vehicle but even then they face heavily overpriced used vehicles on market + greater insurance costs.

Maybe savings depletion/increasing levels of debt have because household goods aren’t affordable compared to 5 years ago .. sounds much more plausible compared to ‘most Americans lack discipline’

As a father of a three year old, yeah, it's a lot easier when you have your parents that are able to come in and give you a hand. My mum is retired and so is my wife's mum, and they've both been a huge help to us whenever we need them, from small stuff like watching our daughter while we go take care of errands to picking her up from daycare, cooking for us all, etc.

On the other hand, one of our closest couple friends have a kid the same age as our daughter, but live in a completely different city from their parents and they struggle with a lot more stuff then we do just cause of us being able to rely on our parents. It's a huge help.

And it really used to be that you could rely on a whole support system, from parents to neighbors and the local community while you were raising your kids and nowadays, that's completely gone in a lot of urban areas. I can't imagine how people would raise 4, 5 kids as they used to nowadays.

good talk I guess my boy

Both of these can be true

What is an absent parent? Your wife works 3 days a week as an RN. Your hours seem volatile but you make over double the average household income so you can cut down your hours if you wanted to.

I find it hard to believe either one of yall would be absent parents unless it was by choice

watched this video a week ago

good video

Not having your parents around is much worse than having money problems

my parents said they would be cool with raising my kids in retirement obviously id want to be more involved in there lives but as long as there being taken care of im okay with that

two incomes are better than one so make sure your partner has two jobs

My job doesn’t really give an option to cut the hours/travel — most people in management consulting have a pretty hard time managing family/spouses from what I observe

Tbh even tho it’s 3 days it’s still 40 hours or more a lot of the time — asking her to be the primary caretaker + work those 40 hours is too much. Those 3 overlapping days of work there’s gonna be no one there for the kids at all. I think lot of mothers/wives in that situation would get burnt out too

ima keep it a buck, people gotta let go and realize there’s going to be a whole new normal and new traditions that need to come about for us

The truth is if you can't avoid student loans/make them minimal then you shouldn't be going to university.

Having kids should be out of the equation for most people. Being broke and birthing a child is literally psychotic behavior.

I make north of 60/hr right now. I live at home because I know that in order to buy a house, I need to stack chips. I avoided all student loans by working full time and paying for school out of my own pocket while my friends took out loans to travel, party, buy cars they shouldn't have, move out for no reason, etc.

Most people want it all. They want to move out, own nice s***, travel the world, go to a nice school, etc. all while in school. Life doesn't work that way. S*** has to give. The truth is that you need to realize the sacrifices you need to make. Tell me why people with s*** jobs and crippling debt should be having children before sorting out their s***. Tell me why people think they need to go to an expensive school or move out into an apartment when their parents are perfectly fine with them staying home until their financials are straight. It's nonsense.

F***, most people don't need to go to university. They need to become plumbers, carpenters, and electricians. Their lives would have way better outcomes if they did that instead of going to NYU.

Again: DO NOT GO TO AN EXPENSIVE UNIVERSITY. DO NOT GO TO UNIVERSITY UNLESS YOUR OUTCOMES POST-GRADUATION ARE A HIGH WAGE AND LOW/NO DEBT. DO NOT HAVE KIDS WHEN YOUR FINANCIALS ARE F***ED. DO NOT HAVE KIDS OUT OF WEDLOCK. DO NOT F*** YOUR CREDIT SCORE UP. DO NOT BUY A CAR YOU CANNOT AFFORD. DO NOT GET AN APARTMENT YOU CANNOT AFFORD.

I grew up dirt f***ing poor. This isn't complicated. Most people can follow the path, they just don't want to. This isn't some luck s*** or something incredibly hard to do. I urge anyone thinking about going to college for some bullshit degree/anyone looking to take on tons of debt to go to university to look up how much plumbers make in their area. Do you want to like your job or do you want to enjoy your life? S*** ain't a dreamscape. These are the choices most people have to make in order to live a decent life. Maybe being a plumber sucks -- but making a nice wage with no debt and a high credit score allowing you to enjoy your life is a f***ton better than liking your job while buried under mountains of debt with no prospects of ever being a homeowner.

You mentioned that the average car payment for a used car in America is $1k/month. Do you know how f***ing insane that sounds. Americans are overspending. I pay $300 making double/triple/quadruple what niggas paying $1k/month is bruh. If I'm not spending $1k why the f*** are they???

The reality is this is a country of immigrants so you are competing on a global scale and if people don't have children, we will raise the immigration quota, not only is it easier but also more cost-effective to just encourage young adults who are already educated to move here than waiting for your own crop to grow. This has always been the reality and the trend is only going to continue to grow. It is estimated that by 2050, 50% of Americans won't be born here. This country is not investing in children, it's investing in immigrants.

you tryna say working full time and raising a kid isnt extremely hard?

sacrificing career for kids is most felt by women since they're expected to handle domestic duties. unless you have a nanny, daycare, and/or family to help out frequently, its not really possible to raise kids without sacrificing your career

Nowhere did I say it isn’t hard. Having a family is sacrifice just like anything in life is.

If someone personally feels like they don’t wanna sacrifice their career in order to have kids then don’t do it. Nothing wrong with that but don’t blame society for your choice.

There’s parents at every income bracket that are there for their kids. And the whole “there’s no village helping” is just a snappy little slogan I’m seeing out gen latch on to when it couldn’t be further from the truth

Just dont have kids if it will be a struggle

Nothing wrong with that but don’t blame society for your choice.

sounds like you're trying to imply this is an individual problem when its really not. theres structural issues that are disincentivizing people from having kids, its not a coincidence that our generation is less likely to have them. its a lot harder to raise a family when theres a horrible housing crisis going on

society also dictates that women should be responsible for unpaid domestic labour, forcing them to sacrifice their career. this isnt as much of a problem in other countries that are much more accommodating for working mothers, i.e. longer mat leave and more affordable child care options

You’re referring to taking care of your child as “unpaid domestic labour” lol. Thinking like this is why gen z and beyond is f***ed man.

you're dumb as hell if thats your takeaway from what i said