Really I'm pretty close to giving up on the idea of one day having kids.
Why?
Unless you're rich, everything in the country is just an endless, ceaseless, dog-eat-dog fight over scraps. Day after day, month after month, year after year. I don't want my child to have to deal with this crap.
Examples:
. I'm currently having issues with the landlord over various repairs he's dragging his feet on. His attitude is, if you don't like it move. I pay £700 for this crappy shoebox. I could just move - again - or threaten court action, which as empty as any money I'd get from that would be wiped out by legal fees.
. This is like my 10th rental in 12 years. EVERY single one them had at least one serious issue with it - mice, damp, noise issues, no washing machine, landlords entering property etc. Out all of them only one landlord was actually a decent person - all the rest having been lying, cheating, two-faced money-grubbers. Of course, not a problem if mummy and daddy can give you a deposit. In my 30s yet feel as I'm trapped in a permanent state of being 21.
. I work full time and do freelance in my spare time. I constantly look for new, better paying roles and I have been saving for a deposit for years and as house prices just rise and rise it feels I'm getting nowhere. I'm almost at the point of saying, why bother? How is it fair to raise a kid in some crummy tiny flat? The housing issue has been a problem for 20 years and NOTHING has been done - every year it just gets worse and worse. Meanwhile smug boomers who bought their semi for £80K in 1979 bang on about avocados.
. I got conned into doing a degree which every adult in my teens said would be a ticket to a great future. Instead, all it represents is a massive pile of debt and a waste of three years. Yet, even a receptionist job now insists on a degree, so you have to do it, even though only a degree from Oxbridge or a top redbrick is worth anything these days.
. Jobs - graduated into the recession. I've had jobs where I've been bullied, others with psycho bosses, others with vicious backstabbing 'colleagues'. Constantly the implicit threat of - if you don't like it we'll fire you. Felt I was finally getting somewhere in my old job and then was made redundant during covid. Cue several months of soul-destroying unemployment. The job I have now is ok but less well paid then my old one - so, more struggle, more jostling for favour, wasting more of my free time looking for a better paid jobs, more endless rounds of interviews. I feel like I've been going up the down escalator the entire time. Every year it seems the jobs market gets fiercer, more competitive, more brutal and cut-throat.
. The low pay means I spend large chunks of my free time freelancing. I enjoy it but it can be exhausting. Atm I'm embroiled in a dispute with a client who is refusing to pay for some completed work (with £700) - turns out he's con man with a dodgy past. I'm having to take him to a small claims court - yet more of my time and energy wasted.
. Similar to an occasion a few months back where a hotel Cornwall was nothing like the pics when I got there - it was in a disgusting state. I cancelled and went elsewhere, and then was embroiled in a 3 month battle to get my money back, with the owner only relenting when I got the local council involved.
Spotting a pattern?
If you're not rich in this country everything's just a pointless, exhausting fight to keep your head above water. Every economic interaction is just a vicious bare-knuckle fight, with people out to shaft you for what they can. Honestly, if it wasn't for my family and friends I really would have just given up on the human race.
I won't go into the this country's general lack of manners, the yobbish behaviour of many people here, the rows of homeless tents in out high streets, the crappy education system, the utterly broken and corrupt political system, and the general utter madness society seems to fall further into with every passing year. The quality of life here just deteriorates every year.
So, basically, I don't want to inflict this on a child. My life is worse than my parents - fact. I'm doubt I'll ever reach their level. If you're not rich, children have no future in this country - just an endless treadmill of debt and exploitation. And every trend I've discussed above is getting worse - I just dread to think how things will be when they grew up.
And before people start saying, 'maybe it's you' - believe you me, I've fought coming to these conclusions tooth and nail. Grew up in a firm Old Labour home - solidarity and all that. I used to be the classic caring, sharing, naive people-pleaser - after years of being taken advantage of and shafted I've bit by bit given up. Now all I care about is myself, my family and my immediate friends.