If you had known then what you know now, would you still have children?

[madkittylady]

So I have been chatting with my best friend tonight and we came to this conclusion.

If we had known (almost 20 years ago) how shit the world would get i.e social media, global warming etc. would we still have had our children?

We both have adult children/older teens and I have an 11 year old and what sort of life is it for them? My 11 year is already obsessed with how she looks and it just makes me feel so sad.

We both decided that if we knew them what we know now, we 100% wouldn't have children. Are we being unusual?

Disclaimer - didn't want to post this in AIBU as it's brutal over there!

@AlexaShutUp

Meh, when I was dd's age, the AIDS crisis had just exploded and we were still in a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union, facing the very real possibility that we might all be obliterated. We were all worried about the massive hole in the ozone layer. We had all grown up with IRA terrorism, and then just a few years later, 9/11 happened.

There have always been threats. I certainly don't want to minimise the threat of climate change, which is hugely worrying, but I certainly don't regret having my dd because of it. She will have to cope with the challenges faced by her generation as so many have done before her.

I find it a bit weird that you seem to rank social media in the same way as climate change. Yes, some people are very unpleasant online, but the threat is not even remotely on the same scale.

This ^

and

I grew up in NI during the Troubles. My children have never been sent home from school because of a bomb scare, don’t understand security checkpoints and haven’t encountered segregated education or sectarian bullying/violence.

This (well, I^ didn't live in NI, but am aware of what life was like and it wasn't fun. Obviously nowhere near the same extent, but we have bomb scares and actual bombs across England too)

and definitely this:

It puzzles me when people tall about "the state of the world today". In the first half of the 20th Century (the world my GPs knew) we had two world wars with millions dead, a depression so deep 1000s were queuing for food, no free healthcare, education stopped for many by 12/14, industrial accidents that couldn't happen today, no employment rights, babies of unmarried women just disappeared.....

What's so bad about today, by comparison?