During my journey in settling to US it has been really interesting to learn how family planning differs in US versus to what I have learned previously from my close friends and family in Finland.
It may be that my perception from how things work in Finland may not be completely accurate, since I have actually not been doing any family planning while I was living in Finland. It was a dream...but for me it meant first things first, to find a partner for life :)
While waiting for my partner for life to "show up", I was focusing on my career, being a great aunt to my nephews and appreciating the time with my friends. As well as being active in sports.
Yet I do trust that having lived the pregnancies of my close friends and my sister-in-law and daily life of my god-daughters and nephews...my perception and opinion formed based on those experience is not completely "bumping into the pine tree" (Finnish saying when something goes wrong, "mennä päin mäntyä").
Family planning, as I see it from my perspective, in the very simple Finnish style is:
Do we want to have kids?
Yes...okay, then we shall have kids.
- End of planning-
See the visualization to the right - example of key things in a Finnish adult's perspective, e.g. myself. Key area, which need to be checked and balanced throughout the journey of adulthood.
Sometimes kids also just happen, despite one trying to delay the timing...which makes the previous planning part part non-existent. Sometimes they may make the parents wait for a while till the child shows up. That is the magical world of mother nature.
Statistically in Finland this means two kids in average per household. There are of course exceptions, families with 1 child or families with 3 children. In most cases, 3 children family is considered "big".
I have never heard, nor thought myself, that money would relate to the decision of whether or not to have a family in any possible way.
Generally the thinking among my friends and family have been that if one wants to have kids, one will have kids. What comes to money, one will always manage. One way or the other. But money has never been the influence factor for the decision making.
It is more about whether both parties are ready to tie themselves to the kid(s) and adjust their whole life. Also one tends to be thinking more how to balance work and family, especially if support network is not existing close by. This depends case by case, if both parents have a job where they need to travel or do shift work, one starts planning how to organize that after maternity leave / parenting / care taking leave.
Yes, we actually have maternity leave in Finland...and it is not called disability leave, like in US. It is really pure maternity leave. It lasts 105 work days, after which one can take parenting leave, after which you can take care taking leave...pretty much up till the point, when the child is 3 years old.
So, summarizing my view: there are bunch of things one may think through but money is not on the list as decision making factor, nor when one wants to retire.
So, how did the family planning go here in US.....
Luckily my husband is the finance minister of the family. He just loves doing the financial planning, which I am very happy about. Based on my observation so far, in most US families and during one's education, microeconomics seems to be common subject to select and practice.
I had my financial excel sheet too but it was nothing compared to the tools and reports my husband prepares on regular basis. I gladly took the role of Secretary of State of our family, and gave the Finance minister role to my more mathematical half.
So, one weekend (of torture) all the finances were pulled together. As-is situation was prepared by my husband and then he made an estimate, what it would mean if we have kids. Bottom line us living on one salary for a while.
That was a tough weekend for me....my brain could not bend to understand why are even considering the finances as the baseline for any decision when it has to do with whether or not we want to start trying to have kids.
It was really valuable cultural experience though. I learned to understand how many people view the decision of having kids. Through the process and number twisting I got educated that for some people retiring early weighs more on the scale when one gets to the point in relationship, when discussing whether or not to have children.
In Finland the factors, which influence decision making are everything else but that, based on the knowledge I have from the circle of my friends (see the first picture). So, during that weekend it was great experience for both of us. My husband learned about my (very Finnish) approach and I learned how some people may approach the planning in US.
After recovering from the shock, the result of the estimation: we will be "poor" when we have kids. I started to understand the benefits of such exercise. We know exactly what will be the monthly budget and what kind of changes it means compared to the situation we have today. We identified also the concrete areas, which are the ones, where the changes should occur. Which helped us already to start getting to the right mindset.
Luckily, my husband being with his behavior and thinking very much like a Finn....to conclusion of the exercise was: agree to live with the knowledge that we will be "poor" from financial perspective for some years but emotionally rich, when having a family. Pheeewwwww......... :)
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