I can’t help but feel that your reductive description of child-free people says more about how you see your own choices than it does about theirs. Surely a sufficiently-motivated child-free person can use their advantages wrt time and money to not be fat, ugly, and jaded. More time for exercise, more money for travel, etc. And there are plenty of people with kids who are fat, ugly, low-energy, and jaded – I’d argue that number taken proportionally is probably even higher than it is for people who chose not to have kids, provided they made that choice consciously and they take initiative in life to make meaning out of it.
Whether or not someone can use their time to not be fat, not be ugly, etc. is irrelevant. The could have done those same things in their early 20s and been less fat and less ugly. My point is that as you age, without kids, most peoples’ options for spending time is the same subset of things they could do in their late twenties and early thirties, except they will do those things worse as they age.
Is travel at 50 really fundamentally different than travel at 30? Other than having a bit more money, my opinion is not really. In many ways, travel at 30 is better, even with less money.
> My point is that as you age, without kids, most peoples’ options for spending time is the same subset of things they could do in their late twenties and early thirties, except they will do those things worse as they age.
They wouldn't be limited to options that don't build. You can have children and build a family, but you can also choose to dedicate your resources to building a business, or a skill, or knowledge, or whatever. Doesn't matter that you lose energy as you age and make lesser contributions, because you're kind of transforming it into something more persistent that you value. That could be a family, but it doesn't have to be.
> Is travel at 50 really fundamentally different than travel at 30? Other than having a bit more money, my opinion is not really. In many ways, travel at 30 is better, even with less money.
Even with relation to travel, maybe you dream of having a deeper understanding of one or more cultures or pieces of history and each travel contributes a bit to that.
It seems like you think the point of traveling is just to enjoy the travel itself, a momentary pleasure, but I don't see the point of travel if you return in the same state as when you left. It's only when something changes, when a contribution to something was made, that a travel was worthwhile. I don't think that ability to contribute to something (interpersonal relations, business, knowledge, etc.) is all that much affected between being 30 and 50.
> I don't see the point of travel if you return in the same state as when you left. It's only when something changes, when a contribution to something was made, that a travel was worthwhile.
I don't think the vast majority of people achieve this with the vast majority of their travels. Kind of curious what are some examples of that in your own life, especially the 'when a contribution to something was made' bit.
As someone kind of in a similar situation at the moment, I do think you're kind of right about this (not for everyone, of course).
I have felt several times that "Is this just it now? We're not going to do anything terribly different, just work/eat/hobbies/occasional trip, pretty much on a loop, while our health just keeps getting worse?" I do feel having children would change that, but for various reasons (not all of them great reasons, imo) we still haven't had them yet.
