Kids need to witness how to build a life
Achieving financial stability before having kids has its drawbacks
In the opening scene of the film Idiocracy a couple talks about their reasons for waiting to have children. Seemingly, both the man and woman are intelligent, hard-working individuals who want to be fully prepared—financial and otherwise—to take on the role of parenting. The purpose of the scene is to explain why, in the future, the population is less intelligent—the scene cuts to those who are reproducing without a single thought regarding whether they are capable of taking care of children. The forward-thinking couple waiting to have children ultimately become too old to reproduce, while the less intelligent among the population were reproducing with no problem.
Idiocracy is a comedic dystopian future film. The aim is to show what happens to a society when intelligence is not common and not prized. Like with any dystopian future movie, there are parallels to modern society, hints at what might, or could, be our demise. The writers focused on the absence of reproduction when intelligent people wait too long—in other words, what happens to society when they don't have kids. But there is another possible outcome to waiting to have children until fully prepared: the children grow up not knowing how to build a life marked by financial stability.
Waiting to have children, if children are had at all, is now common. The reasoning for the desire to delay starting a family is primarily financial and cultural: young people simply aren't or don't think they are financially equipped to start a family, and/or the allure of single life promoted and portrayed in popular culture draws them away from the steps necessary to start a family.
There is never a perfect moment to have children. As the couple in Idiocracy shows, waiting for that illusive moment is costly. The couple's relationship ended and they never had children. Certainly, being financially stable before having children makes sense. Kids require things—although not as much as companies that produce baby goods would have you believe—and being financially stable buys you more time with your children. Theoretically, if planned well, financial stability means you don't have to work from sunrise to sunset and you can take time off for family vacations. But, achieving financial stability before having children has it's drawbacks: bringing a child into too comfortable a life means they never witness first hand what it looks like to attain that stability.
Many of my friends have young parents, and I am among that group. Our parents were barely able to scrape up enough money to buy or rent a house when we were born, they drove used cars, we had hand-me-down furniture, and family members were heavily relied upon to help take care of us while our parents were at work. Our parents were just entering adulthood when we came onto the scene and any sort of financial wealth they were able to accumulate didn't come until we, the kids, were older.
To be sure, we had a sense that we didn't have a lot of money compared to some of our friends, those whose parents had well-paying jobs before they had children, which created tension in social situations. But, in hindsight, the lessons we learned were more beneficial than the high status that familial wealth can buy, especially for teenagers.
The difference among those of us who had little at the start of our life and those who had a lot is that, unlike children born into financially thriving families, we got to witness what it takes to reach a plateau of financial stability. We got to watch, and participate in, the building of a life. Adults who wait until they have a solid monetary foundation deprive their children of the first-hand experience of achieving stability. They may witness their parents working hard, but working hard to maintain wealth looks different than working hard to build wealth. And by wealth, I don't just mean financial. My parents, and parents of my friends, worked hard to provide familial experiences like yearly vacations, short trips to nearby towns, visits to the local museums and zoo, weekend BBQs and parties in the backyard. They worked hard to eventually buy themselves quality time with their families, and we got to experience the before and after—the parties and vacations got better as we aged.
My uncle, who is a farmer, once told me that family businesses and familial wealth typically disappear within three generations: the 1st builds it, the 2nd maintains it, and the 3rd squanders it. My husband is in the collectibles business and has witnessed the same cycle. The 3rd generation squanders the business and wealth because they didn't experience it being built. They weren't around while the 1st generation was barely making ends meet at the start and was working tireless hours to lift their dream off the ground. They only saw it being maintained by the 2nd generation, who likely gave the 3rd generation everything they wanted because they could and because they didn't want their kids to go through the same struggle as the 1st. Unfortunately, the 2nd generation failed to realize that witnessing the struggle provides a crucial lesson in how to have a life filled with wealth, monetary and otherwise.
Of course, it goes without saying (or maybe it needs to be said) that being raised by parents who work day and night has negative consequences for kids, and money isn't everything. Children need the love and guidance of their parents more than they need stuff. My point is that children miss lessons in becoming an adult when they are born into a house where nobody wants for anything. If a couple is financially stable when their children are born, they should manufacture ways to show their children how to work hard and build a solid foundation for a thriving life. That way, when the child graduates from college or lands their first career-track job they aren't dumbfounded when they can't immediately purchase a new car and a new home with all the furnishings.