To think anyone TTC now is mad?

[absolutelybloodyanonymous]

Given the GDP fall-economy disaster, rising unemployment, coronavirus, does it seem bloody mad to be TTC now?

I’ve got mates and family who are TTC or already upduffed and it seems absolutely mad to me. Why does RIGHT NOW feel like a good time to TTC? AIBU?

(Nc for this!)

Maybe I'm sensitive because I'm pregnant with my first and over the moon. Sounds to me like OP thinks having children now is a disaster - do you regret having yours if that's the case?

If adversity, medical scares, war, and global issues caused people to stop breeding, none of us would be here. People continued having children through the Bubonic plague and world wars, it's something humans do.

WarmthAndDepth maybe your children will be great scientists and come up with a way to stop global warming or at least to slow it.

@WarmthAndDepth

Im not going to lie, sometimes these issues and many more, terrify me and threaten to overwhelm me. But then i remember humanity has got through many a crisis over history and i have faith that somehow it will all be ok

I thought I'd remain child free by choice and then BAM Mother Nature struck and the urge to ttc is driving me mad. I'm ready, we have a house and good jobs and families with secure finances who would help us if disaster struck. I also have a medical condition which makes it difficult to conceive so I need to get on with it.

I really hope that's ok with you and doesn't goad you too much.

Sometimes it's always never a good time. Have friends who have been waiting to get married, progress career wise and be stable financially. Unfortunately COVID has coincided with them turning 40. The recession could last a decade or longer, by then it won't even be an option for them so have to TTC now. They are insulated from COVID career wise- however with all these cuts who knows what the knock on effect will be on other seemingly non-related fields? So the time has never and will never be right.

@Winterwoollies

I’d get your head out of other people’s uteruses if I were you.

^ I concur

@WarmthAndDepth probably because OP is being smug and insensitive. That’s why she’s having a hard time

Italian, while I appreciate the sentiment and your kind, upbeat take on it, that ship has sailed. We're now on track to hit a 1.5°C increase in temperature by 2040, something that was previously thought we might avoid until 2100. Things are moving so much faster than earlier climate models allowed for. By the time my DC are old enough to be any kind of scientists, we're going to be in adaptation mode, as opposed to working toward avoiding further irreversible degradation of the environment though the effects of the climate crisis.
Waves, yes, we have procreated through adversity throughout history, but never in the knowledge that the very backdrop for our existence was fraying so dangerously, and that the conditions for life on earth were so precariously in the balance. We now know this to be true, yet perhaps lack the imagination or inclination to see how this will impact us in the decades to come and blight the lives of our babies.

Anyone wittering on about how they were childfree but then caved into societal norms and had unprotected sex-that is not childfree, its childless. Childfree means you will not be impregnated or produce, or parent offspring, by choice, ever.
People who are choosing to breed need to be looking intensely into what their offspring will have to endure in upcoming decades. Climate refugees, catastrophic and unprecedented climate change, a destroyed economy, water shortages, etc. obviously, and choose what they’ll explain to their kid in ten or twenty years time. They knew all this, but wanted a kid anyway. Cannot wrap my head around it.

EL8888, I think the issues are being blurred. Like me, OP has experienced some of the issues raised by previous posters. I get it. I think OP gets it too. She also perceives, rightly or wrongly, that the pandemic will impact our economy and society at large in such a way that she questions whether now is a good time to try for a baby. I get what she's saying. I work in communities already on the breadline, wondering what else they have to lose as the economic and social impact of the pandemic begins to bite in ever deeper ways. Yet the babies come. People have hope. People put up and make do. But I get OP's concerns.

Garlic, yes, this is the killer for me; any kid, 10 years from now, will be able to tell, from a quick cursory Google, that the writing was very much on the wall by 2020, that the climate emergency was very much in the mainstream, and nobody didn't know. And they'll want to know what we adults did about it. Whether we did all we could. If we educated ourselves. Whether we flinched or took responsibility. If we held politicians and corporations to account, if we curbed our own consumerism, and worked night and day to preserve the viability of a living planet for them to inherit.

Well, yes of course YABU. You clearly haven't bothered to think about the multitude of circumstances that might lead someone to TTC right now. Just reflecting for a few minutes could have spared you the effort of starting this thread, surely? I think you know that, hence the nc.

I had missed yoru update, it doesn't change my previous response but I would add to it, go for it. Don't be put off.

Whether we did all we could. If we educated ourselves. Whether we flinched or took responsibility. If we held politicians and corporations to account, if we curbed our own consumerism, and worked night and day to preserve the viability of a living planet for them to inherit.

I do try and do all that. I live a vegan, minimalist, ethical lifestyle as best i can but i try to avoid preaching at people.

Just had my first DC, plan to start TTC DC2 in a year regardless of current/. Future events. Regret nothing, have no reservations and my fertility or
anybody else's is absolutely none of your business OP. You make your choices and are entitled to your opinion but can't see many on here agreeing with you, I most certainly don't.

I've just turned 41 so it's now or never for us. DD1 is already 2 so I'd like to have another before the age gap gets too big. Financially I'm not concerned at all; DH's industry has grown in strength through the pandemic and he's senior so his job feels very secure. And we're mortgage-free. It does feel like bad timing though, mainly due to the restrictions on everday life - if I was younger I probably would wait.

I imagine the OP has never had difficulty trying to conceive or she might feel differently

There is a great Billy Connolly bit where he talks about his friends going on about how people shouldn't have babies because of the environment. And this was decades ago. And he points out that when he was conceived, WWII was still going on, Nazis were jackbooting around, bombs were dropping.

Life will find a way.

@AudacityOfHope

I feel the same as you. With all the uncertainty in the world, people keep going.

As for people being goady about financial security...is it goady? Our finances are shit but obviously I know not everyone is in the same place. That's life. I would have another baby but I feel like it would be financially difficult so we're not going to. What can you do?

Totally understand people cracking on with it right now if they are approaching or past early 30s. If people have time to spare, however, I would really really not do this right now.

A baby bust is already being predicted. It's going to have some interesting effects---think how small the class sizes could be for the cohorts starting school in around 2025-2028.

It's possible that birthrates could even continue to fall long-term. The fertility rates in the majority of countries, including the UK, fell from about 2020---ie as soon as the real-world effects of the financial crisis started to be felt, people stopped planning pregnancies. And fertility rates in most countries have actually never really recovered since then. It seemed to inaugurate a long-lasting decline.

If I had known 10 years ago what is common knowledge now I would like to think I would have had the strength of character never to have started a family.

There was plenty of knowledge of global warming 10 years ago and plenty of talk that this was a dying planet and this apparently didn't put you off. To give one very famous example, Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' came out in 2006. So no, I don't think you would have had the 'strength of character', since you didn't. I'm sure it gives you a really nice warm glow to morally judge other people for not giving up something that you chose to have, though.

Mind ya business

Another one thinking the Op is getting a really hard time here. I agree with Depth in that the outcome for the planet and life on it with regards to climate change, Civil unrest, etc means the future for future generations looks very bleak!!!! It DOES seem selfish to bring a child into a world with an uncertain future that you're not going to be alive to help them navigate. We know that destruction of the planet by humans means resources are scarce and we simply don't have many of the answers for how humans will adapt and survive on a planet that will have shrinking livable areas. Huge migration due to inhospitable living environments is going to be a massive thing. That's without even considering Covid and how it will affect life going forward, there was still so many unknowns!!!!!

Perhaps the Op could have been more tactful as of course many people will be TTC or pregnant but the question is valid surely!

Life will find a way.

Do they say that in Jurassic park/world?

I got pregnant in January, lost that baby in March and turned another year older in April. We decided to continue to TTC regardless of the pandemic as A. It’s what we felt we needed to help heal after our loss, B. We’re not getting any younger, C. We’re lucky in that our jobs are relatively secure and we’ve been saving for maternity, D. The loss made us realise that actually having a baby may not be as simple as we once thought and it could take a while and E. who knows how long we’ll be living with covid for, it could be years, which my fertility doesn’t have!

I’m now almost 10 weeks pregnant again and the main concern for me is that we don’t lose this baby, too, covid has taken a backseat - we will deal with that as we need to. Obviously it makes things more difficult (as I know from experience, finding out at my scan we’d lost the baby and then having to go through multiple rounds of management without my husband there) but it doesn’t seem right now like it really affects babies and to be honest, if I had to shield for the next seven and a bit months so we could have our baby at the end, I would. Hope that helps clear things up for you.