Parenting versus career choice thinking in teenagers

If we're talking about parental encouragement, there's another issue. It's much easier as a parent to admit to having made a mistake in one's career choice and encourage one's child to do better than it is for a parent to admit to their child's face that they made a mistake in their reproductive decision. So if you engage in serious discussion of rational reproductive decisions, some pretty unpleasant conclusions may be forthcoming...

Having children is easy. Any idiot can do it; many of them do; some of them have dozen children.

Is it more beneficial for a society when smart people have children? Yes, it is... but good luck explaining why without saying something politically offensive.

Are people with better genes and higher IQ inherently more worthy? Nice try, Hitler! Do smart people provide better education and other support for their children? This should be solved by social engineering; we should provide better schools for everyone, maybe give everyone free books, etc.

If you are not allowed to specifically praise smart people (and only smart people!) for having more children, then having children cannot provide the same status for smart people as their careers can. A smart person in IT can proudly say they do something that 99% of people don't understand. They even don't have to say it; everyone already knows. A smart parent with well-mannered and educated smart children... is still perceived on the same level as an average parent with the same number of average children. You can do a better work, but most people won't recognize it, so it will not give you status. There is no "best parent in the city" award you could show everyone; no official ladder to climb.

You cannot say "X is better at being a parent than Y" without saying "children of X are better than children of Y". And the latter is very offensive. "My child is better than your child" is more offensive than "my understanding of quantum physics is better than your understanding of quantum physics".

Teenagers aren't sufficiently mature (physically, mentally, emotionally) to think about childbearing and childrearing choices in a meaningful manner.

I'd really like to see a qualified rational explanation of this. I agree that teenagers have different goals than 'mature' adults but that doesn't mean that they are irrational. Different? Sure. Causing social disturbances? Probably. But not meaningful? Come on.

I can't help but think that some of this has to do with feminism, at least in the case of girl teenagers. I hear a lot of people emphasizing that having children is a choice, and it's not for everyone. People are constantly saying things like "Having children is a huge responsibility and you have to think very carefully whether you want to do it." The people saying this seem to have a sense that they're counterbalancing societal pressures that say everyone should have children, or that women should focus on raising kids instead of having a career.

It's interesting, though, that no one applies the same advice to careers. (At least, not in my demographic.) No one says "Following a career path is a huge responsibility, so think very carefully whether you want to do it." A lot of people say "think very carefully about which career you want" but not "think carefully about whether you want a career at all".

I wonder, also, if there's gender differences. Do parents talk to male teenagers about their careers, and female teenagers about their future children, or anything like that?

Explanation: adults are uncomfortable with teenagers discussing having children and wish to suppress it, or at least do not encourage it. This is because the association available to most adults will be "teenage pregnancy", not "rational, mature planning of far-future behavior." And they may be right: people adopt far-view opinions to justify near-view actions.

Yeah, I think #2 is the clear winner- get the degree, attract the high quality mate, then have the kids- with a modification. You don't want to encourage your child to have kids until they've found a high quality mate, because if they have kids when they're a teenager that will lower their lifetime prospects.

I was quite frankly told by my father that I'd find a wife to love, and she would eventually force me to have children. I was eight at the time, and somehow managed not to draw the obvious conclusion about his own life. Probably just as well.

I have the impression that wanting children is seen as rather feminine in traditional cultures, and therefore not something to discuss with a son. Women seem to get more advice on it (In ireland and Germany at least).

Additional explanations: Some children are (acknowledged by their parents to be) accidents, especially in previous generations. But even careers that built on largely random events are often seen in hindsight as the logical choice at the time. This may create a hindsight-based impression that careers need more planning than childrearing.

Not sure about teens, but in my experience most adults don't understand squat about raising children until they have a couple of their own.

The effect of parenthood on income is significant esp. for women (naturally) and seem to be the largest remaining part of the gender wage gap: A Grand Gender Convergence

There is a rather obvious difference. You can start investing time and effort into your expected career at an early age. Mistakes can be costly. You cannot invest time and effort into your expected number children when you're a teenager. You can change your mind easily (until you actually start having children) at no cost.