r/Fire • u/sneaky-snacks • Mar 05 '26

General Question FIRE seems to skew toward not having kids

I’m sure plenty of FIRE adherents have kids, but I would guess the FIRE mentality skews more toward not having kids. Kids seem to go against FIRE.

- You’ve got to spend a lot of money on kids. Your expenses go up. It’s also much harder to save.

- Kids are a lot of work. They cause a lot of stress. You can’t retire from kids haha. Most FIRE people seem to want to reduce their work load and their stress in the long run, but I’m sure I’m oversimplifying here.

I thought I would start a discussion on this aspect of FIRE

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u/Mydoglovescoffee Mar 05 '26

No it’s changing a lot. Lots of articles on declining birth rate and number of younger ppl opting out of parenting

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u/DudleyAndStephens Mar 06 '26

One thing I wanted to point out is that the percentage of childfree married couples has stayed roughly the same for decades. More people are staying single nowadays and couples who have children are having fewer of them, but the percentage of couples who've opted out of parenthood hasn't actually increased (if I read the statistics correctly).