To not really have much sympathy?

[cailindana]

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/14/babies-an-impossible-dream-the-millennials-priced-out-of-parenthood#comment-63353806

The writer complains that she can't have babies because she resents the idea of moving out of London.

Others in the article complain they can't afford houses and so won't have children.

AIBU to think that yes house prices are mad but if you really 'dream' of having babies then there are ways to make that happen and it's not 'impossible' unless you are unfortunate enough to be infertile (in which case there may be other options if you are willing to consider adoption/fostering).

I have to say the whole thing comes across to me as a bit whiny.

It's a bit 'cut off your nose to spite your face', I think.

It's not unreasonable to complain about the economics and the incredibly tough choices (there are a whole generation of us after all).

It IS unreasonable to make the choice to not have DC rather than compromise other things and then claim you've been prevented from having the DC you dream of.

So, YANBU OP.

" it's not 'impossible' unless you are unfortunate enough to be infertile (in which case there may be other options if you are willing to consider adoption/fostering)."

Infertility is a hugely distressing situation. Yabveryu to be so simplistic and unthinking about it.

It seems to me that things are such that a proportion of young people are having to consider very carefully if they can afford children. More women than ever are delaying motherhood, sometimes because it takes them a long time to be financially secure. This in itself can cause fertility issues.

I don't know anything about the journalist you are referring to, op, but I can easily imagine that living and working outside London would have a negative impact on her career, one which she may have fought quite hard to develop. I don't mean to insult anyone but a journalist living and, more importantly, working in the provinces is often seen as lower down the rung. Why shouldn't she be angry that she has to choose between her career and children?

Also, again without knowing about her, she may come from London. Her friends and family, her support network may all be there, why shouldn't she want to stay there?

I think she is speaking for a lot of people.

YANBU. Yes, London is expensive, but if you really want children then you do what you have to do to make it happen. A lot of the women in that article don't live in London anyway, but are still saying it's "impossible" for them to have children. The message I got from all of them was that they have a certain standard of living in mind and aren't prepared to sacrifice that.

Also, again without knowing about her, she may come from London. Her friends and family, her support network may all be there, why shouldn't she want to stay there?

Well, so do lots of us. I don't think I know a single person who has concluded that the answer to the impossible puzzle is to give up entirely on the idea of DC and then complain about it.

Most of the people I grew up in London with, had or are having the DC and have either bought out of London (and complain about it a bit, fair enough) or are still hanging on in rented London place (and moan about that, again fair enough) or the lucky few partnered with someone born before '75 who had a whole foot or even a limb on the ladder.

It's not the that the dilemma isn't real, it's that complaining that you CAN'T have DC isn't quite true.

I have sympathy for anyone who struggles.
It is a choice to live in London, though.
I live in the North, and have rejected a move to London in the past so that I could afford a decent house and the life I wanted somewhere more affordable. I sacrificed some career progression at the time.

There are houses and jobs oop ere, you know. There is more to the UK than just London. People do relocate, get jobs elsewhere, live different lives. It isn't outrageous to suggest a migration to another part of the country. People migrate for financial reasons the world over, and always will.

It is about making hard and painful choices. Not easy ones, but who amongst us gets to choose perfect job / perfect income / perfect home/ perfect family / perfect location?

We choose what we want most on the list and sacrifice the other stuff.

My dad shared a room with five other men so he could live in central London and save when he was younger. When he married my mum they moved out of central London and then ended up in the far reaches of zone 6 when they wanted kids. Of their friends it was only the ones with wealthy family that could afford to stay in central London.

This isn't a new problem!

She addressed why she can't move out of London: freelancers get a lot of their work from London and her clients wouldn't use her if she moved up north or somewhere cheaper. I have every sympathy with her.

She doesn't have to move up north - how about the commuter belt?

Or get another job? I know it's hard to leave a career you enjoy but if having children is really a 'dream' then isn't it worth making compromises?

She addressed why she can't move out of London: freelancers get a lot of their work from London and her clients wouldn't use her if she moved up north or somewhere cheaper.

Complete nonsense. I know more freelance journalists than I can count. The ones my age have mostly scattered around the South. It's one of the major advantages of freelancing.

(And the freelancers I know who worry about being outside London all have '0207' internet phone-lines. That overcomes any subconscious bias. No editor knows where anyone is when they commission, the small percentage of jobs like interviews and venue reviews that are location specific, people travel to do as a one-off or don't chase in the first place.)

It is hugely difficult for young people. My DD and DS (26 and 24) are both partnered and employed, but can't contemplate making me a granny yet, and will only get out of expensive private rents with family help.
We need more affordable social housing with secure tenancies , enough not only to meet the needs of the needy, but also to be able to allocate homes to young working couples who currently miss out. If Britain post-war, indebted and bombed to within an inch of its life could build a home for every young married couple who wanted one, surely the state could now, if the will was there to do it.

Strawberry yy exactly. Hardly any of the freelancers that I know do live in London. They still get published in national and international titles or work in TV/radio or have a weekly column in The Guardian/Observer.

Tbh I've just brought a lovely 3 bed with decent garden and garage for 350k. It's I a less salubrious East London suburb but still zone 3 and 3 mins from the tube and 17 mins in to central London. It's a bit rough but hey, needs must. DH and I both young and working in public sector jobs- nurse etc.
It is possible to find affordable housing in London, just not in the naice areas that people expect to be able to live in.

She doesn't have to "move up north" - she can still be in easy commute from London and buy a 2/3 bed house - the Home Counties are full of middle class people who used to live in London, then discovered they earned too much for help, but not enough to have the lifestyle they wanted with DCs in the capital, but still wanted to be in commuting distance.

There is a very odd midset in the Guardian that you have to live in London in order to work in London, I assume the writers haven't talked to the Accountants, HR staff, PAs and IT team in the Guardian offices and found out where the ones with DCs live. Many will live out in Bedfordshire, Kent, Essex etc. They even had an article earlier in the week about 'super commuters' commuting 5 hours a day, there's a middle ground between walking to the office/have a 2 tube stop hop and 5 hours each day of the "under and hour door to door" which is the ideal of many London workers.

Another whiny parenting article from a female Guardian "writer" ?

Meh. The last one didn't end well

Just wanted to add that we only entered the workforce 3 years ago and scrimped and saved hard to pay for a deposit on a shared ownership property which we have now sold to buy this house and had no help from family. I was a student nurse at th time. We were offered the chance by the shared ownership company to help us buy a bigger house but ultimately found we could afford this outright when we number crunched.

I have sympathy to a degree, but I think some of the people whose anecdotes she tells have got too hung up on "having to" have done x, y, and z (established a stable career, married, and most of all bought a house) before having a baby. Of course you don't have to do all, or in fact any of those things in order to have a baby

Loads of people do all 3 yet it all goes pear shape and they are renting, divorced and starting an entirely unconnected new type of work more manageable around children, by the time the children are a few years old.

The best laid plans and all that.

I think the experience of the Baby Boomers has created a false ideal - they are pretty much the only generation who (taken as an average) have had "it all" and also retired at 55 in the "forever" home they bought at 28 for a manageable on one salary mortgage...

Those who are now very old experienced a whole raft of problems, just like those currently of child-bearing age.

People need to ignore the unsustainable, unrealistic "blip" of a largely free ride that many (not, of course, all) of the baby boomer generation had and remember that all the generations before and since are similar, and the human race didn't die out when things were harder before...

Iliked you are very wise

I am less zen and may punch the next person who smugly refers to "doing it all the right way"

Iliked you are very wise

I am less zen and may punch the next person who smugly refers to "doing it all the right way"

Tom
I don't £350k is affordable for many people. I assume that there would be cheaper flats in the area. Although I agree that people can't be so picky about areas unless they are seriously wealthy. London is so skewed that we all get a distorted idea of what is a reasonable price.

I have some sympathy with the thrust of the article. I am in my mid forties and bought my first flat in Zone 2 in London at 27 (completed a month after my 27th birthday). I look at my younger colleagues now and they would all struggle to do the same. Property prices have outstripped wages for years. I don't think it's good for them or for London.

chaz you are right, there are more affordable flats in the area. I was just meaning in terms of space and the idea of having enough to raise a family. I often see people complaining about the market in London and their need to stay in the capital and expecting not to get change from 700k for a pretty bog standard house.

It may be an irritating article, but it points to a very real problem. This isn't about individuals wanting it all, it's about a vast swathe of our country becoming unaffordable for ordinary people. How can anyone not be bothered by the growing scenario where ordinary people can't afford to live anywhere near their jobs, and our capital is increasingly taken over by the super-rich. I'm a born and bred Londoner, doing a job that is only available in central London, clinging on but on the outskirts, with a ruinously expensive 3-hour daily commute. It's not about wanting the pick of inner London 'yummy mummy' areas - it's impossible for me to live in those areas, they're pretty much reserved for bankers' wives now.

If you have no sympathy for this, if you think whingy spoilt Londoners are simply shouting 'I want, I want', then you need to do some more thinking about the politics of this. And, indeed, the connections between what is happening to London and what is happening to deprived Northern towns that have been pretty much cast off and allowed to drift. It's all connected.

I feel very sorry for the young women I work with, who are still living in grotty flatshares in their 30s and despairing of ever being able to live somewhere halfway decent, let alone somewhere to raise a child in.

Oh, and on the adoption thing: that's also dependent on having a spare room for the child and being able to afford at least a year off work.

'If you have no sympathy for this, if you think whingy spoilt Londoners are simply shouting 'I want, I want', then you need to do some more thinking about the politics of this'

That's not what I said Devora. I said, multiple times, that I agree the situation is awful and that it needs to be addressed. What I don't have sympathy for is the idea that this writer (and others in the article living elsewhere) can't possibly ever have children, simply because they can't have everything exactly as they want it. They can have children (assuming no physical issues) if they compromise.