A Few Words of Advice on When to Have Kids (1)

Right goddamn now.

From all of us current fathers, and I do speak for all of us here, we all say to you that, if you don’t presently have kids, you look like you are having way too much fun out there, and you have no children sucking all of the money out of your wallet and you are able to spend your cash on cool shit and we are jealous and we resent you and you need to be all ruined up like us. Even guys that seemed like losers to me when I didn’t have kids now seem cooler than me if they are still childless, and that just ain’t right. So have kids right goddamn now and cut that cool shit out.

If the personal preferences of other fathers aren’t sufficient to sway you, however, the key thing to keep in mind is GRANDCHILDREN. If you want to know them, if you want to see them graduate from college, you may wish to get “it” going. If you have a kid at age 40 and your child has their kid at age 40, then you will have to live to be 102 in order to see your grandchild finish college. But if you have a kid at 20 and your child has a kid at 20 then, hell, you’ll know that grandchild long enough to get completely sick and tired of her or him during your lifetime. Then when you die, you’ll be sufficiently bored with and tired of life instead of full of regret. Which is just how it’s supposed to be. And you’ll get to meet your great-grandchildren! (does anyone care about their greatgrandchildren?... actually, just ignore that last one)

Although there certainly many downsides to the fact that teenagers are having babies once again in modern society, there is a weird effect going on. The white, upper class 58-year old woman with 3 kids but no grandchildren has to look over at the 36 year-old Hispanic grandmother in the ‘hood, or the 38 year-old trailer-bound lady with 3 grandkids and be a bit jealous. And rightly so. As anyone who has watched my 58 year old mother-of-four with my three kids, and has seen the frazzled and grateful look on her face as I take them away from her house after a weekend, can attest, watching and interacting with kids in your 30’s is much, much easier than watching and interacting with kids in your 50’s and 60’s.

There are practical reasons to start having kids now as well. Many people say that they are waiting to have kids until they’ve saved up a certain amount of money. That’s thinking about it all wrong. If you have kids when you are relatively poor, your wife can’t spend so fucking much money on stupid shit for them, because the money just isn’t there. And so you end up doing things like sitting around coloring and going to parks for free and tackling each other in the living room and making up complex secret handshakes. Y’know, doing the shit that makes you a family. And then when you make money in your 40’s, your kids will be teenagers and won’t want to hang out with you, so you can spend your dough on cool shit like Alaskan or Irish vacations instead of wasting it on extra strollers that will get used seven times and pairs of shoes for your 3-year old that will fit for 60-90 days max. Have the kids before you’ve got the cash and more will be left for you.