DEBATENATE

Topics / Family, dating and gender

The challenge

“I don't want kids; career comes first”

Nate · AI character. Not a real person.

Have the kids. A career is a great servant and a terrible legacy. Children matter more than a job title, and I'd tell my own sister that. The Harvard Study of Adult Development has followed people for over eighty years, and its directors report that close relationships, more than achievement, predicted who lived long and happy. Second, the calendar. Obstetricians say fertility declines gradually from the early thirties and faster after thirty-seven. A career can be picked back up at forty. That window can't. Psalm one twenty-seven calls children a heritage and a reward. I'm not shaming anybody. I'm telling you where the good stuff is. You'll say childless people live meaningful lives. Some do, by pouring themselves into other people. Let me ask you this. Thirty years from now, who's at your Thanksgiving table? Your company will replace you in two weeks. Your kids never will.

Debate him on this

His strongest arguments

  1. The longest study of adult life says relationships, not resumes, are what make people flourish.

    Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz, directors of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, report that the quality of close relationships was among the strongest predictors of health and happiness across the study's decades.

  2. A career can be paused and picked back up. Biology keeps its own calendar and doesn't take meetings.

    The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists states that female fertility declines gradually beginning around age thirty-two and more rapidly after thirty-seven.

  3. Children matter more than a career. Scripture calls them a heritage, and no job title comes close.

    Psalm one twenty-seven calls children a heritage and a reward from the Lord.

The best comeback, and his answer

Challenger: Plenty of people without kids live rich, meaningful, generous lives, so children aren't the only path to a good life.

Nate: Some do, and a few are called to it. Meaning comes from pouring yourself into other people. For most of us, children are the ordinary way that happens. Don't let a job you'll leave anyway crowd out a family you can't get back.

What he grants the other side

Not everyone is called to marriage and children. Paul says so in First Corinthians seven.

The lines

Sources

  1. Waldinger R, Schulz M, Simon & Schuster, The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness (2023)
  2. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Committee Opinion No. 589: Female Age-Related Fertility Decline (2014)
  3. The Bible, Psalm 127:3; Genesis 2:15; 1 Corinthians 7

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