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Growing Up Poor Convinced Me to Never Have Children
The impact of poverty on my psychological growth
My wife and I have been married now nine years, going on ten. We do not have kids. Though the temptation has occasionally crossed our path, it’s never been something we really toyed with beyond a sort of bemused wistful daydreaming. What would it be like? Some of my friends have great children, little boys and girls that are simply a joy to be around, and occasionally they’ve made us consider that it would be cool to have such a presence in our own lives. But then, after the dopamine fades, we would think about things like kids crying in supermarkets and the reality check of our own pasts, the things we still wanted to do with our time, and the desire would dissolve.
Both my wife and I grew up poor. I can’t speak much on how this impacts her thinking, but I know it had a huge impact on my perception of the risk and added expense of bringing a child into the world too soon. We are both from Kentucky. Rural Kentucky. Right now I’m reading the book Hillbilly Elegy, and I’m astounded at how much I connect with that text. While I didn’t grow up in Appalachia, I recognize so much of my own experience in what Vance describes about his childhood in Kentucky.
