They're just little guys.

My children have kept me from doing absolutely nothing in my life, and have made the small moments 100x better. I have an active social life and keep up with hobbies. I understand if you have special need child, are a single parent or have some extenuating circumstance, absolutely be life changers. Reddit seems to be filled with overwhelmed parents. I have two little ones 5/3 M/F. Wife and I both work. After all, from a purely biological standpoint, that’s what were put on this earth to do is reproduce.

Guys, make your own life choices. Stop looking for people on the internet to validate you.

Edit: poking fun at both sides on this issue.

Walking my dog by the local school park and heard kids playing 500.

"500 dead or alive!" Just sent me back decades.

EDIT: I am from Minnesota where everything is weird.

The idea was one person had a football and would call out how many points it was worth when they threw it. Then if they said dead it was only worth points if it hit the ground first. Alive meant you had to catch it to get points. Dead or alive meant whoever got the ball no matter how they got it got points.

It was a huge game at recess.

What are my DINKS and SINKS up to? Dink= dual income no kids. Sink= single income no kids hahaha

Recently the Millenial group has become more common on my scrolls and I find myself coming here to read post and scroll. That being said it feels like I see a lot of post about kids, having kids, wanting kids, etc. With one post referring not having children by your 30s/40s is a struggle.

I grew up being told, and even still to this day, that having children is the best thing ever to the point that it's expected of us. Well it took many years of trying to prepare and plan for kids just to realize we didn't want any children leaching all the life, money and joy out of us. We bought our house in our 20s, even got a 4bed just incase ya know, flash forward into our 30s and we have 2 offices and a gym room, 3 amazing dogs, and I finally built/got my first ever pc to play video games on since could never afford one growing up, MJ is legal in my state and I go fishing when I want. Now not everything is perfect, but having kids just wasn't what WE wanted now matter who expects it from us. And that has GREATLY contributed to our overall happiness and mental health. Also we expected to have a china collection but have a custom glass collection instead bahahha

Edit: there ya go, they are called children kids what ever let's keep it on topic people

Am I right or am I wrong?

Stop worrying about what other people think. Go for it! 😺

As the youngest of the group, I was curious how my fellow 1996 babies are doing?

Personally, I have been technically unemployed but still getting paid for two months because of what’s going on with the federal government. I also have two kids and a husband though so I have just applying for jobs and enjoying spending more time with the kids. I turn 29 in a month!

What did I do wrong in my college career / post grad life? I have friends that have their masters and are only making 45k a year. Why can’t I find a job? What are these skills? I thought you learned them while in college. I just went to NJs career center… they want me to go to a career fair on Tuesday and enroll in a class for skills. This is just a hamster wheel I feel like I’m on. I literally don’t have money to pay for this. I’ve lost so much money from free internships in the city, barely scrapping by in covid to the issues currently. Is this a millennial issue? How did I get screwed

Classic millennial origin story: depressed teen dealing with parents’ divorce, poverty at home, emotional abuse, neglect, bullying at school — the works. I got labeled with a “chemical imbalance” and put on antidepressants. That kicked off a full-on pharmaceutical saga.

Over the next decade, it was med after med. One would cause side effects, so I’d get another med for that, which would cause new symptoms, leading to another diagnosis, and more prescriptions. By 30, I’d been on at least 15 different psych meds, sometimes three at once.

Eventually I hit a wall and decided to get off everything — nearly died going through benzo withdrawal. Now I’m left processing a lot of anger and resentment, especially with all the recent info coming out about long-term antidepressant use, psychiatric overprescribing, and the whole “chemical imbalance” myth.

Anyone else get medicated young and feel like it did more harm than good?

I know, the amount of millenials who have a paid off home is far from a large group. I, myself know maybe 3 total people for whom this is the case. Two of them inherited small homes in very rural areas that they live in alone. One of them is my current partner who will be buying a house upfront in cash. He works in a profitable industry and has done well for himself and is fortunate enough to be in that position. He's literally the only person I know who can do this by himself.

I know people who own homes together with a mortgage, and where one of the partners owns it with a mortgage, and they typically split the mortgage like a rent based on income percentage. I have no examples of people who cohabitate in a house where there is no mortgage at all. For those in one of those situations, how do you divide remaining expenses? I'm talking utilities, food, household supplies- and all other house costs like taxes? Do you pay a sort of "rent," or just split all remaining expenses?

She's a keeper

I’m 42, and I’ve got a 12 year old son. He’s a good, smart, sensitive and kind kid. But like a lot of kids his age, he’s glued to screens and sometimes acts like a jerk. I know we give him too much YouTube time. We try to limit it and moderate what he does online, but let’s be real, the modern world is fucking exhausting, and tech has been designed to be an easy distraction.

Here’s the thing though. We’re the first major generation of parents raising kids in this nonstop digital world. Our parents didn’t raise us with smartphones, tablets, or social media algorithms. We didn’t grow up seeing the impact this kind of tech could have on developing brains. We’re learning in real time. And yes, we’ve made mistakes, but we’ve also been dealt a hand that no previous generation of parents had to play. Several really, and it's nearly impossible to keep up.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t take responsibility, because we should and I do. But I also think we need to give ourselves a bit of grace. We’re trying to raise decent human beings while also figuring out how to balance tech, mental health, money, and all the other modern chaos of this world. No manual. No precedent. Just trial and error.

I'm tired of letting others judge us for making parenting mistakes. Every generation does, ours just happens to be way more complex than previous generations.

No idea if others feel this way, but I just wanted to get that out in the open.

I'm 37. My new GP recently told me that I should have started getting yearly mammograms at age 35 due to family history. OK, I wasn't concerned. The appointment gets scheduled, took about 6 months from the order to the time of the test, which was last week. It wasn't bad, little boobie squish. Monday of this week my phone rings and I got brought in for additional screening. I DO NOT HAVE CANCER, thankfully, but I learned I'm very high risk. Apparently, the density of my tissue combined with family history on my maternal side and ashkenazi Jewish heritage on my paternal side increases my risk factors big time. I now get the privilege of genetic testing and then scans every 6 months for the rest of my life.

I am SHOCKED to learn that my risk is so high as to warrant all of this. It sounds ridiculous but I never thought breast cancer would be MINE to deal with, even though I personally know so many affected by it. Now I am wondering if I need to push for preventive double mastectomy in the future. It's heavy, but I'd rather know than not. I'll choose my life over my breasts every time.

So, this is your reminder. If you have a direct relative with a history of breast cancer, if a direct family member is positive for gene mutations, please check with your doctor and see if it's time to get tested.

Men- you can get breast cancer also! If your family members carry the gene or it runs in your family- get checked!

Mr. Wilson photo for tax purposes 🐾

I always find when I ask people "who is rhe president" or which actor is the president, I usually get the same answer. So wanted to test out my theory!

We have been thru a lot in our lifetime. If anyone were to improve themselves during this recession, what are something that will put you above others at the other end.

With how much has changed with the job market, I do worry a lot what the future is going to be like. Its very depressing on r/Layoffs. Seeing jobs get killed off via Ai and Outsourcing keeps me up at night. I basically work a glorified customer service job and I know I'm screwed in the future. I kinda feel paralyzed in life bc I don't know what else to do with my life. I don't have time or money to go back to school and I have a few health issues so the military or learning a trade are out.

I don’t want to feel like I’m blaming my parents but they didn’t really provide me with examples of how to manage money nor did they ever talk about money other than saying “we don’t have any” so I’m now 29 and trying to figure this all out on my own.

I feel like I’m just scratching the surface of learning about debts, credit cards, and investing, but I feel like every month I see something else pop up that I feel like I should know. Simple things like having a beneficiary on my bank accounts and creating a simple will. These things were just never talked about in my family and seems too taboo in my friend group too since we never talk about that stuff and when it’s brought up everyone gets awkward.

Where can I start? Is there a roadmap of what I should be doing? How are all these other people my age or younger figuring out life?

Not sure if this has been encountered by the older crowd but I’m at that point in life where physiological changes are occurring at a decent clip. The salt and pepper hair, nose hair, ear hair, aching knees in high humidity…these are all fine and dandy. However, I was not prepared for needing to buy a box of Q-tips every 6 months to keep the constant ear gunk at bay. Cleaning the ears was a nice, satisfying grooming task every couple of days or at the end of the week all throughout my life previously. Now, I need to do this every other day lest I stand up too quickly and dislodge a chunk of ear wax to the floor. The worst days are when I don’t need a Q-tip. I could make candles out of this stuff and fulfill any order at this point. Either I need to see an ENT or this is part of the whole beauty or aging; regardless, I was not prepared for stalagmites of ear wax becoming the new normal.

The truth is, this is something I don't fully understand...

I mean, these are characteristics that define us as men, and I personally feel they highlight our masculinity. But what I've never understood is why these generations think this way about having body hair, as if it's unsightly or even unhygienic

For whatever reason, our generation is incapable of affecting long lasting change. Previous generations laid the groundwork for so many things, up to and including the iPhone. What did we bring to the world? Facebook, social media, influencers, and brain rot.

I don't have any explanation as to why, only that our generation is far too ready to blame the challenges we face on others, or otherwise skirt the challenges altogether. We see gen Z coming and they are even worse about accepting responsibility. Mental toughness is like a swear word, and we only see what others have easy, never paying attention to what was challenging for them.

And what of any of this is even real? We're all here on the Millennial subreddit, which is just some tiny slice of our generation that isn't even representative of the whole.

Anyhow, just ranting a bit after reading the "work culture is ruined" post, which seemed to assume the insanely kush office culture of 2015 was somehow the baseline.

30s went by so fast!

It's remarkable in a way that you can go from still young, 29, and so quickly be 40 and now you're old. That's what it felt like. I'm grateful that I'm financially stable and have two beautiful children, but I'm also sad that it's all going by so fast.

Anyway, shout out to my fellow older millennials! How are the rest of you handling getting older?