Chapter 5

The Wrong Time to Have a Kid

When is the best time for a hurricane? Or an earthquake? How about a sandstorm? Have you ever said to yourself, “This is a good point in my life for a flood” or “I’m finally ready for that forest fire”?

No?

Then why do overachieving parents think there’s a “right” time to have a kid? Children are a natural disaster every bit as devastating as an avalanche or a landslide. And they don’t even require mountains of mud or snow to destroy your house. All they need is one permanent marker.

But overachieving parents think they have it all figured out. They plan to wait the perfect amount of time before they add their perfect child to their perfect life. Those parents are soon perfectly disappointed, and that’s perfectly fine with me.

Bare minimum parents know that no matter how prepared you think you are for a kid, you’ll never be fully ready. No amount of emotional, intellectual, or financial groundwork will ever make it easy to scrub poo off the wall. And, no, university parties won’t train you in advance. You can’t let your kid sleep it off on the cold bathroom floor, no matter how much they deserve it.

However, while there’s no ideal time to reproduce, different times are challenging for different reasons. This chapter will examine the benefits and drawbacks of having a kid at different ages for both bare minimum and overachieving parenting. But don’t skip this section if you already have a kid. The best mistakes are worth repeating.

Likelihood of Getting Pregnant

High Fertility, Low Intelligence: The Teenage Years

Nothing good ever happens in secondary school. This includes conceiving a child. If you have a baby before you can legally vote, there’s a 99 percent chance it was a mistake. That leaves a 1 percent chance you did it on purpose. May God have mercy on your soul.

Being children themselves, teens are unprepared to raise a kid, so they’re bare minimum parents by default. In fact, teens are so bad at parenting, it sometimes makes parenting easier. If you procreate in your teenage years and you still live at home, there’s a chance your parents will raise the kid for you. They won’t be happy about it, but if they ever watched you care for a pet, they’ll be reluctant to let you care for a child. To this day, no one knows how your goldfish ran away.

From an ethical standpoint, there’s nothing worse than pawning off your child on your own parents. But from a bare minimum perspective, it’s a job well done. This is a book about how to be a lazy parent, not a good person. Morals are too much work.

Ultimately, however, the convenience of dumping your kid on someone else isn’t worth it. The guilt trips could be fatal. Your parents will blame you for everything wrong in your kid’s life, and your kid will blame you, too. Every good sob story starts with, “My parents were just teenagers when they had me.” The third benchmark of successful parenting is to avoid blame, not to absorb as much of it as humanly possible. There’s no time limit on voicing that particular grievance, either. When you’re ninety-six and your kid is eighty, they’ll still say they could’ve been president if only they’d had more mature parents early on. Maybe it’s for the best they didn’t succeed. The only thing worse than a bratty child is a bratty child with nuclear launch codes.

Teenage pregnancy is an easy trap to fall into. Your teen years are when you’re the least ready to become a parent mentally and emotionally, but the most ready to become a parent physically. Your body is primed to pump out kids at an early age because it’s calibrated for the life spans of the last Ice Age. Watch out for stampeding mammoths. But this conflicts with society, which says you don’t have to be an adult until you’re well past university. Your reproductive system and your maturity level are moving at two different speeds. In the race between your brain and your libido, the loser is human civilization.

At least if you do accidentally become a teen parent, you can’t overachieve at anything. You’ll be lucky to finish school. Your kid won’t take second place to a secondary education, no matter how much it would help your future. Babies are bad at seeing the big picture. And without those qualifications, you won’t have many job options. The few there are will soon be done by robots. Consider becoming one yourself. No one messes with the cyborg at the drive-thru.

As a young bare minimum parent, you’ll have a few advantages over older parents, trivial though they may seem. For starters, you’ll be too young and dumb to realize you’re screwed. Older parents have the wisdom and maturity to recognize approaching disasters. They can’t stop them; they just look on helplessly as misfortune approaches from a distance. But if you’re a teen parent, you’ll be blissfully unaware of the challenges ahead. You’ll be worry-free until life sucker-punches you in the face. Always wear a mouthguard.

Pros and Cons of Being a Teen Parent

Pro	Con
You’ll be fast enough to chase down your child.	You’ll have to deal with your kid that much sooner.
It’s not your fault if you don’t know any better.	That won’t help your child’s odds of survival.
You won’t get tired.	You’ll have more waking hours to make life-ruining mistakes.
You’ll bounce back from any parenting-related injuries.	You’ll be ready to hurt yourself again sooner.
Other people will pay for stuff since you’ll have no income.	You’ll owe everyone favors for the rest of your life.
You’ll beat your peers to all parenting milestones.	No one was racing you.

You’ll also have more energy than at any other stage in your life. Sleepless nights with a newborn won’t faze you since you would’ve been up that late anyway doing whatever pointless, time-wasting activities teens are into these days. I have no idea because I’m in bed by nine. You’ll even have the energy to chase around a toddler, which you wouldn’t if you had a kid later in life. This won’t make your kid behave better, but you’ll be able to catch disasters faster. With luck, you’ll find that Lego pie before your kid turns on the microwave. It tastes better cold anyway.

Finally, if you have a kid when you’re young, you’ll have them around for more of your life. You’ll spend the same eighteen years raising them, but you’ll get more time with them when they’re an adult than if you’d had them at a later age. They’re less work at that stage, so it makes sense to maximize the easy years you live to see. That’s more time with your best friend—or worst enemy. You won’t know until it’s too late. There are no returns for adult children.

Overachieving parents would never, ever consider becoming a parent during their teenage years. Bare minimum parents shouldn’t, either. But if you somehow find yourself with a kid, embrace the few bare minimum advantages teen parents have and hope for the best. With a little luck, you’ll survive your teenage years. With a lot of luck, your kid will, too.

A Degree and a Baby

Overachieving parents want to be “established” before they have a kid. In their fantasy world, that involves a committed relationship, a six-figure salary, and a celebrity photographer to capture their casual moments in six-hour-long photo shoots. There’s nothing more candid than posing in designer clothes at a park you only visit once a year when you need family photos.

That’s why the years immediately following university are still the exclusive territory of bare minimum parents. If you start a family in your early twenties, you have to be willing to do less with less. A twenty-two-year-old graduate is even poorer than a teen parent. A sixteen-year-old mum or dad is simply broke. But if you’re a recent graduate, you’re in the hole. And you’ll likely stay that way till you’re buried in an actual hole. Your tombstone will say, “They ALMOST paid off their student loans.” Then the student loan company will repossess your coffin.

Pros and Cons of Raising a Kid in Your Early Twenties

Pro	Con
Your degree will show you know everything.	You won’t.
You’ll be a real adult.	Your age will confirm it. Your maturity level won’t.
Staying up late will still be relatively easy.	You’ll regret that lost sleep when you’re older.
You’ll save money.	By never having fun.
People won’t give you strange looks for having a kid too young.	Just kidding. Judgment has no age limit.
You’ll be old enough to buy alcohol.	No downside. This will save your life.

Also, most teen parents are expected to scrounge off their parents. As a recent graduate, you won’t benefit from those lower standards. People will mistake you for an adult because you’ll kind of look like one. You’ll be expected to financially support your offspring, outrageous though that may sound. Becoming a grown-up is the second-most expensive mistake you’ll ever make. The first is having a kid.

To add insult to injury, you’ll be making the least money of your career. No matter what field you go into, you’ll start at the bottom. You’ll work longer and harder and for less money than your colleagues who have been there more years than you. But if you stick with it and sacrifice decades of your life to the company, you’ll get promoted high enough to exploit the people below you. The system works, unless you never move up and just get walked all over for your entire career, which is what happens to most of us.

Overachieving parents could never cope with those challenges, but as a bare minimum parent, you’ll never be more ready than you are right then. University teaches you to get by with no money and even less sleep, so raising a kid will just be more of the same. The only difference is the struggle lasts eighteen years instead of three, and if you fail, your kid will be a social deviant who can’t support themselves and blames you for all their problems. No pressure.

Middling Mid-to-Late Twenties

By their mid-to-late twenties, potential overachieving parents are done biding their time. They’ve moved up a few rungs on the corporate ladder by stepping on the faces of the people below them. Scuffed up their shoes, too. But now they have money, and that solves all problems. This is the best time to have a kid, right?

Wrong. This is just one of the many myths overachieving parents want you to believe, like that hard work is rewarded or that poverty is contagious. Stay quarantined on your own side of the tracks. Overachieving parents think that by waiting, they’ll give their kid a more privileged life, but in reality, they become just as broke as everybody else by wasting their money on pointless upgrades. Instead of buying a basic cot, they will buy a super-deluxe model that costs four times as much but still serves the same function of housing their kid in a nocturnal baby cage. But buying their child anything less than the best would make them a terrible mum or dad. They always give in to their guilt. The economy depends on it.

Pros and Cons of Raising a Child in Your Mid-to-Late Twenties

Pro	Con
You’ll have money.	Actually, if you’re an overachieving parent, the shops will have your money. You’ll have a bunch of overpriced baby junk.
You’ll understand life in all its wonder.	You’ll understand life in all its horror.
You’ll have a career.	You’ll wreck your career.
You’ll feel ready for a kid.	You’ll walk right into a trap.
You’ll be the median age of most first-time parents.	You’ll have found yet another way to be completely average.
You’ll have life experience.	That experience will tell you to run away.

This is one of the worst stages in life to try to overdo it. If you’re an overachieving parent in your mid-to-late twenties, not only will you waste all your extra money on those pointless upgrades, but you’ll also have less energy to chase your kid. Eventually, you’ll just lie down in the middle of the floor while your child rampages around you. Accept it. This is their house now.

You can still be a bare minimum parent at this stage, but it’ll take more effort to do less work. You’ll be tempted to use your increasing resources to try to make your child’s life better. Resist. Spending more money on your kid won’t turn them into a more functional adult, but it will turn you into a poorer one. You have my permission to be cheap, guilt-free. This book just paid for itself.

Thirsty Thirties

If you make it to your thirties before having a kid, you most likely have an incredible life. You travel, excel professionally, and have an extensive network of cherished friends. If you’re an overachiever, it’s the best time of your life. Too bad it’s over.

There’s no law that says you have to give up everything that makes life worth living when you have a kid, but for over-achieving parents, it happens anyway. If you lived for work, you’ll have to cut back. You can’t put in eighty hours a week at the office and eighty hours at home with your kid. Well, technically you could, since there are 168 hours in a week. That leaves eight hours a week for sleep, which is a normal amount for a new parent.

Or maybe your pre-kid focus was on overachieving at your social life. Perhaps you met your regular crew every night at a bar where everybody knows your name. The best friends are the ones who enable your functional alcoholism. After kids, you’ll lose touch with those people, both because you’ll develop different interests and because friends are work. Even if they’re willing to come over to your place, you’ll just silently count down the minutes till they leave so you can go to bed. Not that you’ll stay asleep if you have a baby. The key to a full night’s rest is starting your insomnia early.

Pros and Cons of Raising a Child in Your Thirties

Pro	Con
Other people will think you had a kid at the perfect age.	You’ll know that’s a lie.
You likely did this on purpose.	What were you thinking?
You’ll have even more life experience.	You’ll miss experiencing life.
People will get off your back about when you’re going to have a kid.	They’ll get on your back about when you’re going to have another.
You won’t get ID’d at the off-license anymore.	People will see how desperately you need a drink.

Most overachievers wait until their thirties because, no matter what they were passionate about, they thought a kid would ruin it. And they were right. That’s why people who put in the bare minimum at everything have the right idea. By not being passionate about work or a social life, they won’t have anything to painfully give up, not even in their thirties. Kids can’t ruin your life if you never had one in the first place.

Frantic Forties

Starting a family in your forties isn’t usually on the radar for either overachieving or bare minimum parents, but there are plenty of reasons why it might happen anyway. Maybe you didn’t find your partner until later in life. Or perhaps you had a partner, but the baby-making process didn’t go as smoothly as you’d like. It’s tough to know which parts go where, even with the instruction manual.

Whatever the reason, this isn’t a position most parents end up in by choice. Even the procrastinators usually have their first kid in their late thirties. But the deadline for kids isn’t as hard and fast as you might think, especially for people old enough to think they don’t need to think about preventing kids at all. That’s when they sneak up on you. Past a certain age, all surprises are bad surprises. Defend yourself accordingly.

If you have your first kid in your forties, you’ll feel more pressure than ever to overachieve. Tragically, you won’t be able to use poverty or youth as an excuse to cut corners. You’ll have more financial stability and life experience than at any other stage. You’ll be the adultest of adults. That might sound like a blessing and a curse, but it’s actually just a double curse. Those aren’t covered by your health insurance.

This is when the exhaustion that’s been creeping into your life for the last two decades will finally reach its full potential. Add kids, and the only time you won’t be eager for a nap is when you’re already taking a nap, and even then you might dream about napping. The parent version of Inception would just be a tired mum slipping into a double coma.

Your body will give up, but your pride won’t. Rather than doing the bare minimum on your own, you’ll be tempted to use your midlife money to hire a nanny to overachieve on your behalf. What could go wrong? Every kid needs a parental figure who can be fired at will.

Pros and Cons of Raising a Child in Your Forties

Pro	Con
Your life is stable.	Your life WAS stable. Now you have a kid.
When you go to school functions, you’ll be the experienced parent.	That’s just a nice way of saying “old as hell.”
You won’t have trouble falling asleep at night.	You might not wake up.
You’ll get to vicariously feel the joy of youth.	You’ll feel older than ever.
Your midlife crisis will make you ready for a change.	Kids are a whole-life crisis.
You’ll be old enough to tell “back in my day” stories.	Only use them if you want your kid to run away.

In a shocking turn of events everyone saw coming, throwing money at your problem will only backfire. Normally, even when your kid blames you for everything, they still love you, which will almost make up for how difficult they make even the simplest things in your life. But if you pay someone else to parent for you, you’ll still get all your kid’s blame but none of their love, which will go to the nanny or robot butler depending on how far into the future you wait to reproduce. As for self-sufficiency, if you can’t take care of your kid, how do you expect your kid to take care of themselves? They’ll try to solve all their problems by outsourcing them to the lowest bidder. While that might be an admirably lazy approach, it’s not a sustainable one. Eventually, they’ll end up broke and bitter, just like you. They’ll experience all the shame and disappointment of being a parent without ever having a kid. Maybe they’re on to something.

In your forties, it’s critical that you find just enough energy to be lazy. Don’t overachieve, and don’t pay anyone else to overachieve on your behalf. Parent with whatever you have left in the tank and you’ll achieve the bare minimum for your kids. The easy way is always the best.

Too Old for This Stuff

If you’re in your fifties or up and you’re raising a kid, chances are they’re not your own. If they are, congratulations. You’re living proof that science can pull off almost any crime against nature. But in the more likely scenario, you’re looking after someone else’s offspring. Somewhere along the line, a biological parent dropped the ball and possibly the child, too. Luckily, both bounce.

It’s doubtful this is your first time as a parent, but it’s probably a surprise nonetheless. The child-rearing phase of your life is like chicken pox: Once you’re over it, you’re not supposed to get it again. But if you do, it’s a whole lot worse.

By the time you’re a retiree, you’ll be well past your earnings prime. A lifetime of bad choices likely will have left you with a fixed income and little else. If you’re forced to raise a kid on that, you might as well take your money and light it on fire. At least that will help with the heating bill.

Pros and Cons of Raising a Child When You’re Old as Hell

Pro	Con
No idea.	Cons don’t matter. You’ll be dead soon anyway.

At that point, you’ll be as poor as a teenager but with the exhaustion of the elderly. Overachieving is out of the question, but the bare minimum approach can once again save the day. No one will expect anything from you. As the guardian of last resort, you’ll be the greatest adult in that child’s life merely by keeping them alive. People will expect nothing from you, and that’s all you’ll have to give. You just might make it.

But you probably won’t. That’s good news, too. You’ll be six feet underground before the kid is old enough to hate you. When you go, they’ll still be in the age group where they think you’re amazing. Plus you’ll hit the third benchmark of successful parenting by default: No matter how badly they turn out, they’ll never blame you for anything. You’ll forever be the heroic grandparent who helped raise them, which is nice, even if it won’t make you any less dead. Expect a nicely worded thank-you card on your tombstone.

Timing Is Everything

In short, being too young or too old is no excuse to try hard when you’re raising a kid. It’s easy to be a bare minimum parent in your teenage years, right after university, and from your forties on up. As for your mid-to-late twenties and thirties, you’ll feel immense pressure to overachieve. Don’t give in. Laziness isn’t a vice; it’s a vocation. Answer the call—but not too fast. You don’t want to seem too motivated.

Now that you know when to start having kids, the next question is, “When should you stop?” I have four children, but many people call it quits after one. Do they know something I don’t? About child-rearing, that is. I’ve already proved my lack of knowledge on everything else.

Deciding how big a family to have is a deeply personal question with an individual answer specific to your life. No one can tell you how many kids are right for you. But nuance and tact are for better books. I have a one-size-fits-all answer for everybody. Time for me to plan your entire family.