[Poll] The fannish baby boom.

[thefourthvine]

Okay, first, I want to thank everyone for the snowflake cookies. It was awesomely fun, particularly as that's the only snowfall we'll be seeing this year. (I know, I know, everyone who is currently buried in snow is saying, "Oh, my heart bleeds for you." Let me keep my snow fantasies, people!) Also, um, it turns out there's a setting you can have turned on that notifies you when someone you have friended gets a virtual gift. I totally did not know that. And a lot of you got snowflakes. A lot. That comment notification lockup? That was probably partly my fault. I'm still getting backed-up notices about snowflakes.

...I'll fix that setting now.

But that is unrelated to the subject of this poll. Allow me to make a sharp left turn, here.

I'm curious about the fannish baby boom. As in, is it real? Unfortunately, I can't go back in time and run this poll on fans ten years ago, but I can at least be nosy today, and that's good enough for me. Tell me about your next generation!

[Poll #1497731]

Comments

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

I would bet that fans are probably having the same number - or fewer - babies now as ten years ago, but ten years ago, we were mostly on mailing lists, and so wouldn't have discussed it as regularly etc. So it just seems like more, because people post about it to their LJs instead of leaving it for private mail or off-topic list posts.

[apetslife.livejournal.com]

*points up* What she said!

[sdwolfpup.livejournal.com]

My fannish circle seems to be having more children since I started LJ in 2003, but my fannish circle is also quite a bit larger than it was. This sure seemed like the year for babies amongst friends and acquaintances, though.

Also, we THINK we want another one, but we want to get through the first two years with this one first before we decide. *g*

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I mean, I know more people having babies than I did the first year I was really active in fandom, but then I also know more people. And have access to more friends-locked posts. Plus, the people I met when I came in are older now and more likely to reproduce.

Also, we THINK we want another one, but we want to get through the first two years with this one first before we decide. *g*

That's exactly what we're doing: waiting until he's two to make the choice. I approve of this plan!

[ninasis.livejournal.com]

I said I have 2 and am expecting, but that might seem misleading since the one that I'm expecting will make #2. But since that's a week away I'm counting him as fully cooked. :)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

You definitely get to count him as a full baby, since even if he decides to pursue an early exit strategy he's still going home with you.

And, awwww, new baby. *hugs* to all four of you.

[cathalin.livejournal.com]

I almost wasn't going to fill this in for time reasons, but saw "have three children" at Zero and just had to, because I like being different or something? *such a ~rebel* (and also because there are too many sane people responding, and obviously you needed someone insane, aka someone with more than two children).

I answered that it seems like more are having kids, but thinking back, I'm not sure if that's true, or it's just that lj brings out the talk about that kind of thing more. Yeah, you know what, I'm thinking it's the latter and maybe my vote should have been "it's the same as always."

If I haven't said recently, I love your musings/polls/recs/side-splittingly funny thoughts/child postings.<333

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you filled it in. We need the voice of the crazy! Without it, how can the rest of us all congratulate each other on how sane we are?

Um. No, really, it's wonderful to have three children. I'm sure after a while you just don't even need sleep anymore, right?

If I haven't said recently, I love your musings/polls/recs/side-splittingly funny thoughts/child postings.<333

Awww, thank you. That is awesomely good to hear.

[redhedlvr.livejournal.com]

You need a ticky for grandkids!

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Obviously the grandbaby boom should be its own poll!

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Seems that way to me... but I became fannish when I was around 14, and I'm now 22. So it's not a totally whacky proposition that my circle of fandom, which has usually been within spitting distance of my own age on the whole, would be having more babies now than 8 years ago, without necessarily changing the dynamics of fannish baby-having as a whole.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I do think it's a thing where, the longer we spend in fandom, the more likely our particular fannish friends are to have kids, but it probably doesn't change for fandom as a whole.

[suchthefangirl.livejournal.com]

I bet I'm as much to blame as you are for the backlog, I forgot about that feature as well, and it took days for me to be told about all the people that were getting cookies!

I'm old and my kids are old (both in high school this year) but they are not alone. I know lots and lots of people in fandom on both sides of the tables and it seems to me that at a certain age, people start having kids. Or they don't. As you get older, there are more people around with kids. As the fans age they might take some time off to be a parent, but then they are back again when they have more free time. And then their kids get involved. I've seen generations. (my kids might not like Man from UNCLE, due South, or Sports Night, but one is obsessed with Veronica Mars, Buffy and Pushing Daisies, etc.; and the other is equally passionate about Avatar The Last Airbender, Inuyasha and Death Note, etc. It goes on)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

We can be ashamed of our failure to notice the appropriate ticky box together! And, wow, it's amaaaaazing how many people got snowflakes. Go, us!

Age definitely has something to do with it.

As the fans age they might take some time off to be a parent, but then they are back again when they have more free time.

I find this one interesting - I mean, almost no one leaps right back into fandom after becoming the parent of a newborn, but some people are out for a month, some three, some a year or two. I'm kind of half-in, half-out; I keep thinking I can do more than I can.

[merryish.livejournal.com]

I think there's something in the water!

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

...Semen?

*cringes and tries to block mental images*

[claire.livejournal.com]

Well, I have half a child, since he's still percolating. When I say I'm fine with the number of kids I have, I mean one though. I am assuming here that he will fully cook and come out of the oven as 1 person rather than half a person.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

*nods* He will fully cook and come out as a full person. It is an ORDER.

[terriaminute.livejournal.com]

I waited until my 40th year to have mine (great pregnancy) because it takes awhile sometimes for all parties concerned to be grown up enough for a kid. LOL

I know many much younger people who are childfree by choice. Totally fine with me. I would far rather they actively decide than bring an unwanted child into this crowded world. (Every last one would make a great parent, of course. It's the ones who thoughtlessly procreate who, IMHO, really ought not to have.)

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

When I was a teenager, a shrink told me that worrying about whether or not I could be a good parent was a sign that I'd be a good parent. I am still not sure she was right about that, but I do think that people who are 100% sure they are right all the time and never think about their choices probably shouldn't be parents. Parenthood seems to work better if you put some thought into it.

And I seriously could not imagine having done this at, say, 16, because you need so much emotional control and comfort with delayed gratification, and as a teenager, I was not so good at either of those.

[sprat.livejournal.com]

I got mine a year ago, but he came partially grown. So...I am only sort of part of the fannish baby boom? (Which really does seem to exist, to me -- there's been a boom on my flist lately, anyway.)

[tartanshell.livejournal.com]

Complete stranger here, but if your comment means what I think it means, I'm so very sorry. ♥ I was unsure how to fill out the poll, too.

[vsee.livejournal.com]

I've never been interested in having my own children, but I've always rather liked them, and I enjoy having kids in my life. I find it hard as a single woman with no kids to make real life friends with other women my own age (i.e.major childbearing and raising years). Women in marriage/partnerships who have kids always seem to jump to the conclusion that I don't get it or don't like kids.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

That's one conclusion that fandom would save me from, mostly because there are lots of fan who are not parents but are still pro-kid. But I do understand where those women are coming from, largely because there's a lot of - I don't know how to put it. It's kind of like the tension between working mothers and stay at home mothers - mostly, it's not a big deal, but occasionally it will rise up and smite you so hard and so meanly that after a while it's hard not to flinch in the presence of a mother who made a different choice than you did. (LJ helps with this, too.)

And it's the same with women with children and women who are childless by choice. You only have to encounter a few of the more vitriolically childfree before you start making unwarranted assumptions, unless you have a place like LJ with lots of voices to act as a counter. It's sad.

[malnpudl.livejournal.com]

Heh. I've always been the person who visits the household with the new baby and lavishes attention on the dog. Hey, somebody's got to do it, right? *g*

Though I am convinced that the Earthling would trump even cute canines. He has superpowers.

Re the question at hand: It seems to go in waves. People I "met" online as young twenty-somethings are now closer to thirty, so it makes sense that some of them would be doing the babies thing. And so on...

[giddygeek.livejournal.com]

It makes me happy to see so many responses to the last question at the 3 or 4 mark. And the 5, too, but I assume those are people who got really really good news today. *grins*

[anoel.livejournal.com]

Right now I definitely don't want kids for the next ten years or so. But I'm leaving the end decision up to my partner, if he or she wants kids, I'm fine with having ONE (and only one) and if not, zero is fine too. Because I'm pretty cool either way. at least right now.

I don't know about the old days of fandom but from 2003-2008 I didn't know anyone on LJ who was having a child and this year I know four. So it seems like there's a current baby boom to me.

[busaikko]

And because I think it's relevant, I'm 38 years old. Statistically, I would expect that you'd find fewer fans under 20 and over 40 having kids (um... yeah) and probably most of them in their late 20s/30s (because so many people seem to be university educated, and then you go and work for a while before starting a family, and... yeah).

[bleedtoblue.livejournal.com]

I always assume I skew the results since I'm older than your average fan. My flist is fairly varied, but I haven't noticed an increase in babies on my flist. In RL I have, even though I tried to warn them!

[misspamela.livejournal.com]

I AM DONE HAVING CHILDREN.

They're behaving fine, why do you ask?

[sentientcitizen]

Should people not in relationships/just barely old enough to reproduce without societal shunning be bothering to take this poll, or would that just skew the results?

[elucreh.livejournal.com]

No intention of 'em, but fully intending to thoroughly love all the children of my friends as well as making kids my career; I made an exuberant post about a baby coming a month or so ago because I'm going to be a GODMOTHER for the first time! \o/

[sapote3.livejournal.com]

I just present the information that I'm one year older than most of the Harry Potter girls, so that means that the oldest of them are in that spot around 22 - 23 when people who have kids right after college do their thing. Though absolutely none of the baby-having fans I know are in that age range at all.

For the record, there was also a huge baby boom in my town this year. Everywhere you went, everybody was pregnant.

[carnadosa.livejournal.com]

I kinda of wanted a button for never ever ever, I'd get my tubes tied right this minute if I could.

It almost seems like there are more people having kids right now then when I was first in fandom, but I didn't start out on LJ, so I think it's just a function of the medium.

[sinquepida.livejournal.com]

I don't know, I've been in fandom for ten years (!), and I'm not sensing the baby thing as much. My first fandom was a bunch of twenty-something girls, and they had babies all over the place. I can think of fans who have had babies at pretty much every point in my fandom experience. I think it's just an age cohort thing- fandom is skewed pretty heavily to 18-34 year old women, and those are the same women who have babies! Plus, I think fan communities tend to settle into subsets, and my sense of it is that there's a group of more-involved fans who happen to have young families right now, not that more fans overall are having babies.

I think it's also partially a perception thing. I don't notice the babies as much, but I do track stuff like college graduations and graduate school admissions, because that's important in my own life. To me, it feels like everyone graduated from college in the past couple years, even the students of non-traditional age, but I think it's just my priorities.

[ravurian]

I'd love to be a father some day, but I just don't see it happening in the ordinary scheme of things. I mean, it's not going to happen by accident, and I don't have the requisite parts to grow my own from scratch (I imagine sperm is easier to come by - boom boom! - than a spare womb), and I don't really know whether adoption is available to gay single guys (maybe I won't always be single, though). So. Y'know. Perhaps godfather/uncle is the closest I'll get. I mean, that's a good role. But I would love to be a dad, and I do think about it a lot, and sometimes (like this evening, after vodka) I think about time passing, and my mum getting older, and how very much she would like grandchildren, and how very very much I would like my (hypothetical, unlikely) children to know her.

[fabularasa.livejournal.com]

Look at who I happened upon here while scrolling old-yet-interesting-to-me posts on LJ! I don't know that I knew this about you, about the father thing. Did I? Have we talked about it, and I was just drink or something?

I think you'd be a great father. And you should look into the adoption thing, sincerely, because you'd be awesome.

[basingstoke.livejournal.com]

I should answer 5, but I have all these first world problems. *whine* My car sucks and I can't afford expensive clothes and my cat doesn't have her own bedroom! And writing a novel is so! much! work! *whine!*