Have you heard the expression, It takes a village to raise a child? We don't have villages, so many people have to be a village for their child, and it's very hard and requires a lot of sacrifice. It's good to question whether it's worth it.
As you point out the support network is gone for many people, especially more ambitious people who moved for career reasons and likely also have student debt...
On top of that though it seems like requirements for parenting have gone through the roof. Between helicopter parenting and all the activities one is supposed to do these days the effort must have gone up tremendously.
It's like this because people are inclined to instant gratification. In America this effect with respect to raising children augments the inclination toward selfishness (disguised as individualism).
Looking at birthrates in other countries I'm not inclined to believe this phenomenon is limited to the US. In fact it seems weaker than in many other developed countries. I'm also not sure if I would call it selfish to decide against reproducing yourself. The other extreme of having children just because you want them for yourself and then not being able to give them proper opportunities is much more selfish to me. I think we should try to avoid moral judgements of people we don't know especially on something this intimate.
I'd be more inclined to agree with you if the language of people who eschew children weren't so often focused on their selves ("independence", "freedom", etc.) or simultaneously accusational ("how could you bring a child into this world!"). "Selfish" isn't a moral judgement in this case: it's an accurate description.
I think having children is pretty selfish also. You bring a child into this world... for what? To see yourself continued in the next generation? To make some future friends for yourself? To have that experience? How are these not selfish things? Both choices are selfish in different ways. The fact that one requires some personal sacrifice doesn't make it selfless.
I think it's partially a outcome of work getting more specialized. You need to move to find work that's a good fit and you need to move before that to acquire that skill set at a good University. If you don't get very skilled you likely will end up poor at some point which brings its own issues. It's true in any developed country I know of. Fingers crossed that this is temporary till remote work and education becomes the norm and we maybe even get guaranteed basic income.
Can you give some other examples of this mentality on display? Have there been other articles on HN? This sentiment has been prevalent among my peer group (b. Late 80s/Early 90s) for at least a decade. Very few of my friends outside of the very religious are looking forward to having children.
As far back as June 2014, Pope Francis spoke about this phenomenon.
There are also subs devoted to how much an individual character in a book series sucks (eg, /r/fuckmoash). The existence of a subreddit does not really imply a dominant cultural phenomenon.
From the first page of a google search for "reddit parenting": /r/parenting, /r/parents, /r/raisingkids, /r/askparents, /r/newparents, and /r/parentsofmultiples. I suspect it depends on what part of reddit you hang out on.
Sorry, "then problem" should be "the problem", and the "sister comment" is the one about how we (in America, presumably) no longer have "a village" to raise children: parents are mostly on their own for the task.
My point is that folks who have the "get a dog" mentality are supporting the forces that make child rearing increasingly burdensome.
I'd say that the "get a dog" mentality is more of a symptom of the root forces than support of them. Others have already explained it but essentially the trend of tribe/village -> urban neighborhood multigenerational/extended family single home -> suburban nuclear family -> transplanted dual-career couple has eroded any support network parents had. On top of other lifestyle, economic, and environmental pressures, the "get a dog" people are just saying "fuck it." Sure they add some social/peer pressure but that's blue on black compared to everything else.
We're mostly in agreement. By "fuck it" I meant "fuck it" to having kids, not towards contributing to the greater community. Anecdotally the "get a dog"/DINK married couples I know are probably the most active in community building, local political and social issues, helping out the underprivileged in their area... all that good stuff.
It's a side-effect of modern societies. This is actually a trend spanning at least several decades. As societies become more modern, they start wanting fewer to zero kids.
This is actually the main reason why I've never been so worried about those overpopulation predictions, or worried about what happens if the technology starts allowing us to live hundreds of years.
Well, if we knew for sure that we would live 500 years (and continue to be young and health), nobody in their right mind would want a kid at 30. And you'd likely still be able to die from accidents for the next 100-200 years.
Sounds like you want (or already have) children to fulfill your own self-interested goals ('to leave a legacy'). That's a recipe for disappointment.
If you have children you do it for them, not for yourself.
And there are better, more predictable ways to leave a legacy. Having a kid is a shot in the dark; sure maybe they'll cure cancer, but maybe they'll be the next hitler, or more likely, they'll be an average joe with no lasting impact on humanity.
I haven't seen any massive upsurge in the sentiment, and I pay attention, because I'm someone who gets grief about choosing not to spawn.
But what's surprising about that "mentality"? Breeding is something some people indeed come to regret, and having the self-awareness to recognize that likelihood in one's self leads to better outcomes for the not-parent and the not-child[1].
A big part of what what I've seen in having these discussions is people resenting those who made different choices. A lot of people follow a script - get married around this age, acquire home, make a kid or two once you can afford the tax privileged accounts, etc. Some of those people resent those who saw they can write their own script and fail to look unhappy about it.
[1] I always hear, "but what if you're wrong?" To which I reply with some variant of, "You should go to medical school. Sure, you're a bit old for that, it is expensive, a huge, somewhat risky commitment, an enormous change in your life for a long time, and you think you'd hate being a doctor. But what if you're wrong?"
As a person who doesn't want children, I still hear much more of the "you're deluded to believe you don't want kids," "you'll change your mind," "you're a bad person for not wanting kids" and (from coworkers) "your personal/work-life balance needs must always be immediately and completely subjugated to mine because I have kids" mentalities.
This was my reaction. I was surprised to see all the sentiment in these comments that this is _counter_ to the popular narrative. I see articles like this all the time, and hear it expressed by friends in person.
I think this might be one of those things like atheism, where your ideology becomes generally accepted enough that you forget you're not being rebellious anymore.
I'm not sure why this is so surprising. Having children just because everyone else has children is not a good plan. If that's not what you want to do in life, why wouldn't you regret it? It eats out enormous chunks of your life for something you apparently don't want to do. Some people genuinely want to do it, some people genuinely don't...
Also: It is pretty irresponsible to have a child even though you know you don't want to take care of it.
I find t hard to believe anyone genuinely doesn’t want to. I suggest they’re wrong about their feelings. They only exist because every ancestor of theirs has children. Every person who exists today shares that quality. It seems like a critical part of life to have kids or a kid at least.
We haven't had to make decisions solely based on survival and bloodline continuation for a long time.
We're also capable of meta-cognition, so even if some realize that they may want children, they might reason that it's an infeasible idea.
Further, some people simply would rather spend the time for themselves. Personally, I grew up in a below poverty line single parent home and would like to spend time and money for myself and my SO now that I'm doing OK financially.
Nonetheless, common misconception that everyone on earth is having children. Nearly half of women in the U.S. have never had children. The exponential population growth that would follow from every single adult having at least one child every generation would be insane and absolutely unsustainable.
It seems like it could be a natural response to crowding in populations that people stop having children, or it could just be a result of people feeling uncertain about their future. Not sure, but either way, I know for an absolute undeniable fact that right now, I could not want anything less than having a child. I'd rather go to prison.
Besides, not everyone should be a parent. There's plenty of criminals with mental disabilities that make them hugely unfit parents even if they wanted to be. The world really would be a better place if said people simply chose not to procreate.
Isn't it perfectly sustainable if adults have, on average, two children per generation? (Since each child has two parents, you can account for them twice.)
That case (<2) is the case for most of the developed world.
No - because the U.S. life expectancy is somewhere in the ball park of 80 years, whereas adulthood is reached in a forth of that. So before the average parent dies off, they will have seen around 2 or 3 generations of adults who are all having children, and their children having children. Also, in the U.S.'s case, you have to consider externalities like immigration, and the fact that some areas are already massively overpopulated.
Though I was definitely wrong to say 'exponential growth' since that isn't actually true.
USA is one of the most under-populated country in the world. Even its densest populated areas in the North East is still "expansive". From arable land to person ratio, US has lot of room to grow.
The over-population problem is not of US, or even not of even Americas (North and South) they are pretty much stabilized at around 1.1 Billion. The coming population "boom" is in Africa which will likely grow from 1 Billion to 4 Billion.
I don't think at all that the U.S. is overpopulated, but I think that there are areas of the U.S. that are severely overpopulated. The distribution of the population isn't equal, most people would not be able to thrive at all in rural areas.
Americans use such a grossly disproportionate share of the world's resources that the US is drastically overpopulated compared to African nations. We could fit the entire world's population into a city the size of Texas at a perfectly liveable density, but we can't magic up more oil or copper or neodymium. We have enough arable land to easily feed 20 billion people, but not if we squander 95% of those calories by raising cattle. Population growth is a total non-issue if we're halfway sensible about how we use finite resources.
The current economic systems seem to be built on the assumption of constant growth all the time always. If the population dipping for a while leads to economic despair, then fine, bring on the despair; it's GOING to happen.
Well, what if our current economic structure in itself bears a fairly large responsibility for the declining birthrate though? It's something I wonder at times.
Declining birth rates may not be a problem per se. But if they are, many economies I think need to adjust some of their policies. Certain countries seem to have paradigms that are not terribly friendly towards the idea of families and raising children.
Lack of flexible and part-time career posts for women
Lack of affordable and publicly funded (free) child care
I'll add that education expenses are rapidly rising for some countries. Also, said career paths often come with a financial penalty for mothers (particularly for college women -- it is well known that motherhood in itself is a big reason for the pay gap between the sexes -- https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/upshot/the-gender-pay-gap...).
Small wonder that the birthrate is declining. In fact, in some countries, you might postulate that the economic system in itself is actually hostile towards having children.
I'm getting married to my long term partner in a week, and that's the biggest things that's weighing on our minds. We both want to have children, but we live in a big city, just bought a house, and our economic situation is quite dreary.
We'd like one of us to be able to stay home with the kid, but we just can't. Where I live a programmer isn't the best paid position, and both of our jobs are important to our financial success. It'll probably be a matter of getting back to the workforce as soon as possible, and that's really disheartening when you want to give the little one as much of a chance as you can.
I agree with your other points but, every person having one child would not even sustain the population. The birth rate per woman needed to keep the population stable is 2.1 as each parent needs to be replaced and some people will die before having children
You didn't change yours. If too many people choose to not have kids, their community dies. So, if you change your perspective to the community then childlessness starts to sound like:
>>> A critical part of life would suggest to me that you die without it.
"I find t hard to believe anyone genuinely doesn’t want to. I suggest they’re wrong about their feelings."
Consider that this is a failure of cognitive empathy on your part. When other people don't feel the same way we do, it's natural to believe that ours is the only reasonable perspective, and maybe even that it's our duty to enforce it on others. But it is possible to develop empathy, and discover that maybe we don't actually have access to all the data like we thought.
Essentially all of everyone's ancestors had straight sex; is this good evidence against the existence of people who dislike straight sex?
The point is that your finding it hard to believe that someone feels a particular way is very poor evidence that they do not feel that way, especially when applied to a population.
We know that longtime meditators are able to distinguish micro-expressions in others that reveal emotions that they might not even realize they are having. And they are experts in identifying their own emotions as well. Do you have any such qualifications?
If not, then your disbelief in other people's claims about their experience is likely much stronger evidence of your own difficulty empathizing.
If people can be wrong about their feelings then that seems like good evidence, save for some biological disorder, yes. I suppose you’re saying I can’t make this argument unless I’m a master meditator? And what if I don’t believe in meditation the way you do?
Your argument seems to be that all people who believe they have this feeling are mistaken about it. The fact that people can be wrong about their feelings is not good evidence that everyone with a particular feeling is wrong about it. It's usually much better evidence that the person making the claim is not yet able to take on a particular perspective that exists in others.
I don't know which part you think is a shtick. If you genuinely believe that millions of people are all wrong about how they feel and that you are right, I think it's likely that there are elements of their experience that aren't yet visible to you, i.e., that you haven't yet fully explored their perspective. This skill of perspective taking is also known as cognitive empathy.
I have no doubt that some are wrong about how they feel, and that would have been an interesting discussion. If I've been misunderstanding this whole time, I'm sorry. Best wishes.
If any can be wrong about their feelings then so can millions. I don’t find your argument by popularity convincing, and I’m annoyed this whole time that you decided to attack me than even consider my point.
Is there something to their feeling? Yes. Is it how they say it is? I don’t think so.
An argument by popularity would be "millions of people say that they like Britney Spears, so she is the best singer." The argument I'm making is that "millions of people say that they like Britney Spears, so it's likely that at least one of them actually likes her."
I'm a person who has no desire for children. I haven't engaged your argument because I believe my existence makes it moot.
Likewise, if I were to make an argument that nobody can feel genuinely annoyed because [insert any argument here], I don't think your first step should be to engage my argument. I'd expect you'd help me see that I'm likely misunderstanding you, because you genuinely felt annoyed.
If you'd like to talk more, maybe we can find a channel better than HN.
It's not so simple, because the concept of parenthood is cultural, so a person grows up under a sort of brainwashing.
Note that brainwashing is not an attribute of the people ("those who like children are brainwashed"), but of the culture, where opposition is rejected. As a matter of fact, people who openly don't like children are (at the very least) frowned upon.
I know at least a couple of fathers who clearly "are not children lovers" (to put it mildy), but they had them, and they even think about having more than one. There's no pressure on them, and they're not fools; they just think it's "the way" - in this perspective, it's no different than a religion.
Probably, a hypothetical world where the opposite would hold true - people would be brainwashed that children are a burden - would be better placed, since only (more) motivated people would be parents.
It's aggressively reinforced on a cultural level. There's a huge stigma against not having children, let alone advocating that other people should consider following suit. If you've consciously made the decision to not have children, people feel quite free to call you selfish or immature. You're likely to be bombarded by relatives asking "when are you going to have children?" People with children often take your decision as a personal attack on their choice. The top comment on this thread can be surmised as "Having children is hard, but ultimately worthwhile", but the commenter felt the need to use a throwaway account. A lot of people find it easier to lie and say that they're infertile.
Really? In this comment page alone we have shit like:
"Final point, and one that I am cautious to make for not wanting to offend anyone needlessly: I know plenty of singles and couples who are childless, and several that are childless by choice. Suffice it to say that my anecdotal view is that sadness, eccentricity, and empty hedonism seem to develop over time in these couples, especially in the women."
"Spot on with the final point. I have 3, now aged 22, 19 & 16. I like to joke that I have parentdar: it's like gaydar, I just know if someone is a parent or not without them telling me. There's a selfcentredness about the childless that gives itself away in a thousand minor tells. It's more pronounced in women than men."
Nothing can prepare you for what it's like to have kids. Since it's essentially a big jump into the unknown, some people will find out (too late) that they were not meant for this. Hence the regrets...
> She never wanted children (“I was very independent,” she says)—her husband did.
Premarital counseling would have caught that.
> “It would have been a deal-breaker.”
IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN!!! Now you made a new person that you don't want! Shame on you and your husband!
Kids, money goals, debt, work goals, travel goals, where to live; these are all HUGE things that need to be discussed, while in the presence of a trained counselor, before saying "I do."
Absolutely agree, though I don't think its necessary to have done so in front of a counselor.
Before we got married, there were a number of things that we discussed and had to make sure we were on the same page. Of those, the most important were children and religion.
I personally made it a point to get an understanding before we were even serious.
Now that we're married, the question isn't "Will we have children?", it's "When..." and that's much easier to figure out if both people are playing the same endgame.
Counseling may have revealed an incompatibility. She married him and had a child in spite of her own desires, though. Perhaps her desire for that relationship would have clouded counseling as much as it did herself anyway.
> in the presence of a trained counseler
I agree with your sentiments that people need to be more open and have these harder types of conversations with their prospective spouses, but you shouldn’t need a counseler to have an adult conversation.
It's hard enough to know what you want when you have it. Knowing whether you want something that you've never had and have only experienced vicariously is basically impossible.
The only things I really regret are things I asked for and found out I didn't actually want.
I believe that relationship and marriage counsellors are treating symptoms rather than the root cause.
This is anecdotal, but:
I attended family counselling with multiple counsellors for many years, I found those sessions helped only for as long as they were scheduled. Rather than gaining tools to assist in resolving future problems, we were provided with solutions to our immediate problems.
Personal counselling is a different story, and I think the root cause for these marital issues is that people don't have an understanding of themselves, or what they need in order to be happy.
Personal counselling can teach you how to express yourself and your needs, which would obviously go a long way in helping you structure your relationships.
In group counselling everyone still has opportunity to believe they're not the reason for the dysfunction.
If given the choice I would choose to have my daughter again I would. But even so I can definitely empathize with many of the people in this article.
My wife and i have always been very open communicators. After having a kid when people would ask us if we are enjoying parenthood we've always answered honest.
"It's the most work we have ever done in our life" (and I build startups!)... "We got no sleep last night, she woke up at 2 AM and wouldn't go back to bed."
And it is amazing to me the backlash we got. People who plan to have children were telling us "all I ever here is the bad stuff!" and essentially saying we should lie and say everything is perfect.
The fact is, having a child is the biggest life commitment you will ever make and if you and your significant other are not prepared, you're in for a bad time.
But at the same time I think this whole "you're not allowed to say anything bad about parenthood" is unhealthy.
This article talks about people who are willing to speak their truth about parenthood and I think overall that is a good thing.
Edit:
If more people talked honestly about he burden of parenthood we'd maybe have less unwanted kids. We as a species are well past the point where we have to have 10 kids just to ensure the bloodline continues. Be honest with people about how difficult being a parent is. Some people like my wife and I will choose to do it anyway knowing exactly what we are getting into and other's won't. And that's OK.
With some reflection I don't think I was 100% ready. But I did at least make sure my finances were in order, I knew what it would do to our budget, and my wife and I had expectations set going in who would bear what responsibility. It sounds like the people in this article didn't think of that stuff. And I'm not sure I entirely blame them. We as a society make it a taboo to talk about anything but good stuff when it comes to parenting.
I live an puerto rican neighboorhood in chicago. People live here in combined family structure with many generations living in the same building.
I've become acquaintances with many of them and i've noticed that parenthood is much less of a burden for them since they have extended family to support them. Not just a matter of practical convenience but the immense moral and pshyclogical support you get from living next to your parents, cousins is immeasurable. I always see kids playing outside and everyone keeps an eye on them, you are not dealing with your kids 24x7 nonstop.
I am convinced that if you are going to reproduce this is the way to do it. Even though I make significantly more money than them I am jealous of their lifestyle :D . These parents take vacations without their kids, which I know many of valley friends think is impossible.
This is honestly one of the biggest factors that we did not fully appreciate.
Moving away from home and having kids away from your family is a much bigger task than having kids in your hometown where all of your family lives. I get that it's normal mode of operation for a lot of people to move all over the country for jobs, but IMO that is where the biggest struggle comes from.
You take for granted being able to call a grandparent to pick the kids up from school if you're working late, to come over for a bit when you need to do something during an evening, to drop the kids off if you need to run an errand or even keep them overnight if you have to go out of town for work. That's before even figuring in extra-curricular activities and trying to get each child where they need to be.
My in-laws moved closer to us last year and it has been life changing for my wife and I who both work.
I have extended family helping me. I'm beyond grateful for it. I'd die without them. But there is a something you don't see. There is a lot of inter-family politics going on. For some people, it's no big deal. For others, it is a real drag. Personally, I'm a no big deal person, but i empathize with people who don't like it. To some Americans, it's like a never ending thanksgiving dinner.
The prime example would be how you raise your kids. Alone, you the most influence, in a family, you have a little less. For some that is OK, for others it's red flags.
Just wanted to open your eyes to what you may not be seeing.
I was raised like this (of Russian background) but I will not have the same benefit, there is no extended family from either side anywhere near me or my partner. And this applies to most of my social circle, all of whom have moved around for career and/or restlessness.
It's nice to finally understand that yes, for a couple (especially where both have careers), raising a child is harder than it should be and harder than it used to be, because of this lack of tribe, and no we are not just self-pitying moaners. I don't think this trend is going to reverse itself, which makes me hope in some vague way that some sort of communal tradition emerges, where the tribe is formed by some social grouping (close friends) other than the extended family.
This is a major factor. I have a 2-year old girl with another baby imminent. I have 6 households of my family all within a 20 minute drive. Like you say, aside from the practical benefits and savings on childcare, clothing etc., the psychological benefit of knowing we have that support is immeasurable.
Given the impending arrival of my second child, I find myself wondering about those with less support. What does a pregnant single mother of one do when she goes in to labor? Where does her child go? In to state care??
I have great respect for parents with less support than I have.
> What does a pregnant single mother of one do when she goes in to labor? Where does her child go? In to state care??
Crazy to think, isn't it? It is hard enough during those first few years for a couple with a stay-at-home parent. I can only imagine how hard it is for a single parent who has to not only pay the bills, but take care of somebody who needs an adult 24/7.
I don't think people can begin to fully appreciate this stuff until after they have kids.
I wonder if it is also the experience the kid get raising their younger siblings. As the oldest boy in my family when my parents were away I was taking care of my baby brothers and got to see the terrors they would get themselves into.
I was just thinking about this the other day. Large familial units have pretty much been the modus operandi of humanity since the beginning. It's not just adults taking care of kids, the kids take care of the kids also. Each generation has their own sense of responsibility for the generation before them because that's the established culture. After a couple generations, the responsibility loses its feeling of work and simply becomes an expected aspect of life.
Dear god yes. We have no family nearby and even with my wife as a stay at home mom, it's brutal. We're super jealous of her sister who lives with the grandparents and can just leave the kids at home whenever or wake up at 10 or 11 on a weekend because they just go downstairs and hang out with the grandparents when they wake up. Every time we visit my parents we get a taste of that and it's absolutely glorious. We're at the point where we're considering a move and probably a major pay cut just to be within reasonable driving distance of them.
You have hit the nail on the head! African villages are pretty much the same. Kids play in age groups and whichever adult is around looks after the kids. This gives parents time to hang with other adults and the opportunity to actually miss their kids. In the city it is different spending 24 hours with a 5 year old can be taxing.
I try to always reply honestly when talking about having kids. And I'm lucky to only have friends who do the same.
Usually I say something like "It's really hard, but it's so awesome at the same time that you forget how hard it is all the time. In the end, you feel like it's worth it."
I confess I wasn't that positive when I was totally sleep deprived. I also have the impression that no two situations are the same... Some parents have it very tough while some others have quite an easy time with their kids. You gotta have some luck...
I totally agree with you. I have a 5 year old - I love her, she's great, and if I got to choose again I'd do it all over. But the first year is the hardest I ever worked. We knew it would be a lot of work, but nobody ever talks about just how much work it is with any kind of detail. Parenting has a lot of good, but the bad parts really do suck - lack of sleep, running to the doctor, the ER trips, etc.
The story I usually tell my friends who are just becoming parents is about this one night the first month, we were up constantly most nights. I don't remember on this particular night what I was up doing, it's not important, but what I do remember is being in the bathroom, sitting on the can, and looking down and seeing the floor move under my feet. Vividly. However, that memory sticks as a turning point for me - I didn't have a whole lot of self doubt about doing a good job as a dad after getting through sleep deprivation induced hallucinations!
> but nobody ever talks about just how much work it is with any kind of detail.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard young parents talk about anything else. If I am to believe the stories, until the age of 3 it’s not blood running through a child’s veins, but pure high-grade Colombian roast.
To the point where I’m considering sardonically suggesting we suspend driver’s licenses for new parents.
It’s not a bad idea. Sleep deprivation combined with distraction is terrible. Try driving safely with them choking on something or screaming about something. It’s not good.
All in favor of being open about the ups and downs of parenthood. What I do resent is when parents try to make their struggles look like some sort of noble sacrifice they've performed for the greater good, when ultimately having children is just a personal choice they made. I can sympathize up to a point, but when parents complain that they hate their lifestyle (or lack of one) now that they have children, it's hard not to think "well, gee, maybe should've considered that before making such a momentous decision."
That’s a bit harsh. First, you really have no idea what you are getting into when you have a kid, no one can prepare you for it, all of what you think you know about having a baby is probably wrong (unless you’ve had one).
We are also biologically inclined to ignore thinking about what kind of pain we are in for and just be...excited. Otherwise, I doubt anyone would have kids and humanity would just go instinct. Likewise, once the kid has arrived, nature pulls more tricks to keep us parents motivated (evolved cuteness, for example).
You can definitely be prepared for what it is like to have a child before having one. Everything you know is not wrong. Yes, it may be a lot of work but it is not beyond the realm of comprehension for us mere mortals.
We went to all the classes and read all the books. And no, we weren’t prepared, had way too many misconceptions about baby behavior, and this is above all babies being different.
To strengthen your point. This is ultimately my problem with any statistically based thing. If parenthood was deterministic, then it would be easy.
So, is it possible that some folks are "fully prepared" for parenthood? Almost certainly. I'd expect that the numbers work out such that people like this do exist. Parents that were fully ready for the children they got.
However, this is like expecting someone can know exactly how to play poker, following the rules on when to bet and when not to, and then getting shocked to see that you still don't win every game. Statistically, you will lose games. Best you can do is have the game setup so that the losses are small and the wins are leveraged.
This is like saying you can learn to write a perfect program, without ever writing one. Sure, while maybe theoretically possible, I'll take someone with 10 years of experience over 10 years of study everyday. Because at some point, experience is a thing; having lived through the event and having the scars. And that experience is really an irreplaceable part of being human and the learning process.
HA HA Ha obviously you don’t have a kid .... otherwise no way you can compare the most intelligent program in the universe with the thing you call program that you type in a terminal
The variables with children are nearly impossible to prepare for. No amount of preparation will do handle:
1. Development/physical disabilities, or overall health issues
2. Reaction from others, will immediate/extended family help? It's one thing to ask, another for the reality to set in. Overall support base in general.
3. Employment realities. Will a lot of employers have explicitly stated policies, the day-to-day realities often differ (and can be very different between mum(s)/dad(s)).
4. Just general variations in children/growth. I have two, one eats but doesn't sleep well, the other doesn't eat well but sleeps soundly. One enjoys time to himself, but has a temper. The other is far more social (so much social) but is very even-tempered and empathic. No amount of preparation can provide enough knowledge/experience to deal with these qualities, not withstanding 1/2/3.
As others said, we read books, attended classes, looked after nieces/nephews, younger siblings, baby sat etc. We were still woefully unprepared for our own.
I disagree. I have three kids, and before them being born I was aware that being a parent means a lot of work. But I realize now that I was not really understanding what being a father really means. It's much more laborious, complex yet satisfying and marvellous than I could ever have imagined.
This is not practically true. Imagine if the same could be said for romantic relationships:
"You can definitely be prepared for what cohabitation/marriage is like before your first relationship. It may be a lot of work, but it is not beyond comprehension."
Yes, the brain is capable of comprehending life in cohabitation, as proven by the current mental state of all who are currently in the situation. Getting to that mental state without experiencing cohabitation is practically impossible.
Now swap out "romantic partner" with "small person completely dependent upon you for survival for the next 18+ years".
You're not wrong, but in most areas of life there's a reason we make a distinction between education and experience. Knowing that there will be sleepless nights with a crying baby is very, very different than surviving sleepless nights with a crying baby.
> First, you really have no idea what you are getting into when you have a kid, no one can prepare you for it, all of what you think you know about having a baby is probably wrong (unless you’ve had one).
I guess this is the result of having so few children nowadays. But not so long ago, many people got a very real and practical first experience by helping in raising their siblings. And depending on how large the family was, I assure you it could prepare you very well.
> First, you really have no idea what you are getting into when you have a kid, no one can prepare you for it, all of what you think you know about having a baby is probably wrong (unless you’ve had one).
I dunno...to me that's just a cop-out excuse to avoid simply admitting that you didn't do your research, or that you turned a blind eye to warning signs of what parenting is like. Do people go through life not knowing other people that have kids and not see what they go through?
I don't have kids. I had a vasectomy earlier this year to make sure I don't have kids. I watched my brother have them. To call them a handful is like calling Hurricane Harvey just some light rain and winds. They require constant supervision. Can't even spend 5 minutes taking a dump or they'll scribble on the walls with a Sharpie (Yes, that happened).
> (evolved cuteness, for example)
I don't think babies are cute in the slightest. To some people, that makes me a monster.
I like baby animals. Kittens, puppies, even baby elephants. But baby humans? Nah, I just see some creature that is probably about to decide to start screaming or shit itself.
Do you apply same restrictions on other livestyle complains? Should people never complain about job, because they picked it up voluntary? What about social club, Facebook that read voluntary and complain about constantly and so on and so forth.
What it us about parenthood that makes people think we should just present only happy side of it constantly and ever talk about side we don't like or cost us?
> What it us about parenthood that makes people think we should just present only happy side of it constantly and ever talk about side we don't like or cost us?
This seems like an unfair interpretation of the above. Absolutely talk about the parts you don't like, just acknowledge that you followed a path of your own choosing (whether the consequences were expected or not).
Kind of like smokers getting cancer, or needle-sharers getting HIV: the social context requires a little humility.
Complain about your job or management, but acknowledge each time that you have chosen it. Complain about Facebook, but acknowl edge each time you sign up voluntary ...
No one sane expect smokers sick with cancer to acknowledge they smoked each time they want talk about cancer. For christ sake, seriously.
And I don't even think that having children is like sharing needles. There we are getting into category where you imply that having children is somehow morally bad (or is it having children while not being 100% happy about every aspect of child raising? )
I feel like parents are humans too and some times just need to express their emotion. It doesn't mean they regret their decision necessarily. They might just be going through a difficult day or time. We could use a little more empathy.
Again, I think you're being uncharitable and attacking straw men.
One doesn't need to "acknowledge... each time they want to talk" (whether it's smokers, needle-sharers, parents, or whatever). Rather, it's just a matter of how one phrases things, e.g. avoiding a sense of entitlement or being condecending.
> And I don't even think that having children is like sharing needles.
I think it it, in precisely the sense that I mentioned it: that it's avoidable, and may have severe negative consequences. No more, no less.
> There we are getting into category where you imply that having children is somehow morally bad
Not at all. I wasn't passing moral judgement, I was giving examples of situations where someone complaining about problems they're suffering may have to choose their language carefully, to avoid being judged harshly in a social context. No more, no less.
> or is it having children while not being 100% happy about every aspect of child raising?
What if it something that you thought you wanted, but it turned out to be much more than you bargained for? I agree than people shouldn't act like they're making noble sacrifice (because for all intents and purposes, it was your choice), but sometimes you can only prepare so much a priori.
My wife and I spent years talking (as a married couple) before having a kid, because as stated elsewhere in the comments, it's the biggest commitment you make in your life.
If you're a good person (sweeping generalization), having a kid is pretty much the only thing you can't walk away from in your life.
In America, at least, having children is most definitely a sacrifice. "Noble" is a subjective qualifier that's actually irrelevant. The fact is without kids the thing that fuels our economy, consumption, disappears. In many ways parents are subsidizing the childless. It isn't a bad thing to note that.
Also, nobody knows the extent of what one must give up to parent. No matter how prepared a person thinks he or she is, they aren't. Having kids is very abstract right up to the point that it's not. The concrete realization starts to happen earlier and more intimately for the mother because of the gestational period, but that realization sets in eventually for both parents.
In many ways parents are subsidizing the childless
What complete nonsense. There are 7Bn+ people in the world. Making more people is not a problem the human race has. Far from subsidising the child-free, you are destroying the ecosystem with your selfishness.
Honestly, having children is one of the most selfish things you can do. I.e. thinking your genetic material is special and passing it on to another person in an overcrowded world. Any “sacrifice” in raising a child is not — they are half you and an extension of self.
Not so sure having kids AT ALL is an immoral choice in an overcrowded world. 1 kid, or 2 kids; is replacement level at worst.
I would have a bone to pick with folks who feel entitled (or "commanded by $deity") to have 6, 7, 8 or more kids. That's just absurd stupidity.
I, personally, found parenthood to be enormously rewarding. And that may not be something one comes to grips with when kids are 3. Or 10. Or even 18. Having kids with medical problems, or mental health problems, can be a challenge, and you can miss out on the immediate sense of accomplishment when it's overwhelmed with "just get through today". This is a big-picture thing.
I'm also not blinded by illusions of; having a legacy, having something that is a "permanent" accomplishment, or even just having someone else in this world who I can relate to. My feeling is that my kids turned out to be pretty good people, and the world as a whole is a better place with them in it. In Net. Considering even their resource consumption. They are part me. They are my intention and will. But they are their own beings as well, with their own hopes and dreams.
Hell: we're all worm food in the end. It's not pleasant facing or contemplating death. Maybe we all would have liked to have been asked permission before being brought into this world against our will. I think the main difference it made for me was that I participated in life. The process of life. The continuation of life. The strife for survival. I did not look at the world, and decide to simply persist until I perished. I lived. Even if I have another 30-50 years on this world. I gave it a shot.
Replacement rate is a smidge over two _on average_. That doesn't mean that it's wrong to have more than two children, any more than it means it's wrong to have fewer than two.
If you look at my wider family, you'll see some people with no children and some with five. But even on such a small scale, we average out at around replacement rate.
> I would have a bone to pick with folks who feel entitled (or "commanded by $deity") to have 6, 7, 8 or more kids. That's just absurd stupidity.
I have to laugh at this, because 3 years ago I was this person and I know exactly how the conversation would go. I had 3 kids and planned for 6-7 of them, then I left the Mormon religion.
But I would love to hear the conversation. I can't speak for everyone, but in Mormonism at least you literally believe that having children is commanded by deity and any environmental offsets are not an issue because the Second Coming is soon and the earth will be cleansed by fire at that time anyway. Besides, God created the earth, he would never let man destroy it.
There just is no real discussion to be had with somebody who believes those things. Fortunately, higher education and sex ed are highly correlated with lower birth rates, so I'd push for those if you're looking to reduce birth rates - even in Mormonism or other religions.
Odd. I wonder how many not so thoughtful people think your way and act upon it. To the extent there is a genetic component to "thoughtfulness," or even a trait that can be nurtured by other thoughtful people, is the extent that thoughtfulness will be selected against and disappear.
I have 4 and I really hope that makes you feel bad.
If everyone adopted your rationale, the human race would go extinct. We haven't gone so far that we are indifferent to the survival of our own species, have we?
I am a father myself and don’t think you are a “bad person” or anything like that. But seriously, we have no shortage of humans - you are not doing mankind a favor by having lots of kids.
Get in car. Drive to work. Wait in line on the freeway for opportunity to use freeway to get to work. While we're waiting in line; burning fossil fuels and contributing to carbon buildup in the atmosphere; which is essentially permanent. All - to spend a day earning imaginary money - whose value is arbitrarily and capriciously set by others.
But the world is not, and will not be, overcrowded with the kind of people who are on Hacker News. Birth rates in basically all advanced countries are under replacement, and it's even worse for the subset of high-IQ people who we need to build and run the future. This is an objective fact.
If everyone stopped having children, well yeah. But you and I both know that that's not going to actually happen.
All I'm saying is that our current population growth is unsustainable and we're killing the environment. Until we adapt to only consume renewable resources, or at least sufficiently reduce our consumption of non-renewables, and stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, the best thing to do is slow down reproduction.
Social Security is one example of the young subsidizing the old. Medicare is another. Old folks homes are another.
Seems to me there is ample evidence of the young supporting the old.
Consider what your aged life would be like if everyone suddenly elected to not reproduce. What would it be like to be 70, when the youngest person is 60?
The young, by definition live in a world built by their elders, benefiting from all the infrastructure and institutions they created. So it’s not nearly as one-way as you think. Any care of the elderly is merely a part payment on that debt the young owe them.
Cultures are going extinct due to lack of children. A good number of cultures in Europe and East Asia have close to 1 child per woman, meaning that the population is cut in half with every generation.
In many ways parents are subsidizing the childless.
My tax bill sure indicates otherwise.
I decided at an early age not to have kids - at 12-13 I figured out that I was not suitable to be a father - one, I wanted the chain of crappy childhoods to stop with me, and two I have various conditions that I believe are largely genetic - I didn't want to pass those on.
No, your tax bill does not indicate otherwise. Credits for children are a tiny, tiny fraction of tax subsidies for people in lower income brackets, and property taxes are generally quite low and cover much more than schools.
Even if they were a huge fraction, you're considering one single axis. You're not considering population support or economic contributions by and on behalf of children, both of which are arguably much more significant than tax bill distribution.
> Credits for children are a tiny, tiny fraction of tax subsidies for people in lower income brackets
The tax-funded support for “people in lower income brackets” are themselves very much slanted toward support for parents with children, largely because the American public is broadly fine with blaming poor adults for their condition, but somewhat less so for children in poverty.
The tax code is geared up to help people who are married and have children - my married friends pay 20% less than I do, my married friends with kids pay even less then they do. I take umbrage with this.
You benefited when you were a child. You took those benefits. You might say it wasn't your choice, but your parents made that choice on your behalf.
Having benefited yourself, you shouldn't be bothered that others also benefit. It is only fair.
BTW, you can earn a 6-figure income and have negative taxes. The key is to have a double-digit family. This is what I do. Nothing is stopping you from doing likewise.
I don’t know about America, but it’s the childless that subsidise the parents in the UK. Having kids is a massive draw on the state - the vast majority of people go from being net contributors to net drains on the public purse when they have kids.
Given that parents need to buy diapers, kid clothes, and other stuff needed by babies, if UK still has VAT I do not believe that parents are «net drains».
Really?! Then I should consider moving from Italy to the UK! (I am a father of three, and here there are no exemptions at all for diapers, baby food, bottles, and so on. VAT here is 22%.)
There are plenty of choices in life that are hard to assess until you're fully invested in them.
Choosing a life partner? Choosing a stock? Scoping a programming project??
Choices in the above can seem great at first - but maybe they turn out better over time, maybe worse, probably a roller-coaster mixture of elation, unknowns, and heartache.
But you'll never fully experience them until you've fully lived through them.
That’s a good point, but it worries me that with just a change of nouns we could be talking about taking a speedball, taking bloody revenge, or eating rocks.
You come from a very long line of parents that reproduced. It's a biological imperative to do so (i.e., we think we have a choice, but in fact have much less than we think we do).
To help you understand how absurd your position is, consider if even one of the hundreds of thousands of reproduction "decisions" that are in your line had not been made, you wouldn't be here to express your point of view that it's "just a personal choice."
> It's a biological imperative to do so (i.e., we think we have a choice, but in fact have much less than we think we do).
I chose to get a vasectomy. I'm 35 and have never in my life desired reproducing. I do not feel that supposed biological imperative.
I do feel the imperative to have sex, but having sex and producing babies are entirely different things. You can have one without the other.
> To help you understand how absurd your position is, consider if even one of the hundreds of thousands of reproduction "decisions" that are in your line had not been made, you wouldn't be here to express your point of view that it's "just a personal choice."
Caring for and raising children is a sacrifice. It’s a difficult and unpaid 24/7 job that you’re locked into for 18 years.
You’re constantly putting the needs of a tiny human ahead of your own. If you do a good job then they benefit far more than you do. And they won’t realise the extent of your efforts until (or unless) they have children of their own.
Seeking praise is pointless. But it’s driven by the same themes the parents in the article talk about.
While I agree with you, it is a personal choice, I think that’s not the framing most people are in.
For instance my parents strongly believe that having kids is a duty, the more the better. They will brag about having 4 kids and they’ll tirelessly push married people to make them (the endless “is it on the way yet ?”). I also saw a lot of people of their age care a lot about the family lineage not disappearing. Some even atrocely cared about the name being carried on.
Even trying to have serious discussions about it just ends in “that’s how the thing have been, that how they should be” kind of rethorics.
I sympathize with couples that have their surroundings constantly repeat them they should have a baby, and wouldn’t fault them for thinking it was part of their duty to do so.
> What I do resent is when parents try to make their struggles look like some sort of noble sacrifice they've performed for the greater good, when ultimately having children is just a personal choice they made.
This really gets me.
We as a society do not need more children. Popping out a baby is not an accomplishment. Hell, most babies these days are accidents. It seems strange to me that someone would choose to do something that a lot of people do accidentally, and then expect some sort of recognition for their supposed sacrifice.
We as a society simply don't need more babies. The "sacrifice" is unnecessary at best, and possibly egotistical at worst.
> What I do resent is when parents try to make their struggles look like some sort of noble sacrifice
In that respect maybe it is not that different than climbing a mountain, or achieving mastery in a fencing or long distance running. Would you tell those people "I resent your complaints, you brought this upon yourself, should've stayed home and bother bother with your marathon running" say when they the talk about how hard it is and how they got injured or weather was bad.
This comment is a spot on example of the behavior stdbrouw was advocating against further up in the thread. The nobility of having a child should not be factored into the decision. There is no "greater good" agenda pushing people to reproduce. It is a personal decision that each and every one of us need to come to terms with.
I try to give both sides. It's easily the hardest thing I've ever done by a good margin. You pour work in and potentially don't see anything for it, or at least very little, for years. It's a huge lesson in selflessness and humility. It's required a lot of changes, and a lot of opportunities have come off the table, or had their overall "cost" adjusted (e.g. moving cross-country is still possible, but we'd think about it a lot more), because I want to make sure I invest appropriately in my family.
And simultaneously, it's just about the most rewarding thing I've ever done. Watching them grow, seeing some of the hard work finally paying off, having little conversations with my 4-year-old, glimpsing the kind of guy he might grow up to be. There's this amazing bond that is really hard to describe.
Whoever you are, you deserve to know the truth on both sides. Depending on your values, kids might be easily worth it (for us, they are), or you might want to wait, or you might decide that it's not the right choice for you.
Fatherhood has made me keenly aware that there isn't just one sort of undifferentiated pile of warm emotion that we can call "happiness."
I can feel exhausted and wrung out when my daughter responds to my attempts to make her life better and more comfortable by screaming at me and throwing things. I can feel angry when she does things that she knows are naughty and ignores our rules. And at the same time I can feel proud of her and connected to her and love her and be in awe of her learning and feel incredible when she tells me she loves me.
And I don't think it makes sense to sort of try to treat those like they are just positive and negative numbers and say what does it sum up to, positive or negative? They coexist, they don't cancel each other out. No matter how much I feel great when she tells me she loves me, that doesn't make it less exhausting to worry about the absurd hoops that I have to jump through for an education for her. And no matter how upsetting it is to have someone kick you when you try to help her feel safe after a nightmare, that doesn't make me feel any less deep satisfaction that someone that I help create and teach will (hopefully) survive me and always be part of my life.
For a job this important, I find it remarkable that there is so little guidance on the matter unless you are a highly-motivated parent. We force kids to go to school but we don't force teens to learn the "Best Of" parenting facts. The closest thing I had in school was "Home Economics" and that wasn't even close.
> You pour work in and potentially don't see anything for it
I guess it depends on what you expect in return. I was so crazy amazed at the process of watching my daughter solving the 3D puzzle of putting the dummy back in her mouth. Plus just watching the process as a crying baby gives in to tiredness and falls asleep.
The first three months were a nightmare, but the payback was also there at the same time.
My dad missed out on this and I'm sure his life was poorer for it.
> "It's the most work we have ever done in our life" (and I build startups!)... "We got no sleep last night, she woke up at 2 AM and wouldn't go back to bed."
what do people expect when they have babies? that it will take care of itself? There's a thing called Postpartum Depression that is real and usually occurs right after having kids. Raising babies are hard but once they become toddlers it gets far easier. I don't have sympathy for anyone who complains about not getting enough sleep in the first 6 months.
I was watching The Walking Dead at 1am in the mornings because baby woke up and had to feed him till he slept again. Oh and then right to work at 8am for almost 2 months. He's 3 now and now attempting to wipe his own ass for a change.
I don't understand the "no sympathy" part. When a friend runs a marathon, yes, they expected to be totally out of breath and have jellified legs, but I still cheer them on and help them recover and celebrate. I don't think I'd be a very good friend if during the race I were saying (or even thinking) "I have no sympathy for you, what did you expect?" -- even if they're complaining.
To me, this seems related to the purpose of the article: being a parent requires a stiff upper lip according to our culture, unlike most everything else in life.
I think the difference in perception, as compared to running a marathon, is that parenting is more an equivalent of entering a marathon where you have no option to stop, regardless of circumstances, and your performance has a massive impact on the life of another person.
If that were the way marathons worked, I think the reaction of the audience to someone's struggle to finish the race would be different.
> ...your performance has a massive impact on the life of another person.
Not really. There are bad people who had wonderful parents and great people who had bad parents or no parents at all.
Child is separate new fresh human being, getting to human level from the level of vegetable over 18+-3 years.
The fact that it got some half of your genes doesn't make you special and if you don't let it die or get malnourished and give it chance at some positive human interaction and variety of fairly safe objects to tamper with it'll be fine and won't be much better off even if you tried you hardest.
> People who plan to have children were telling us "all I ever here is the bad stuff"
That's how I felt. Now I see that parents either sugarcoat everything about parenting, or are eager to relay their current source of misery: "you think it's hard now? Just you wait until they are 2/3/5/10/12/16/18!" The truth is every stage of child development has its own unique joys and challenges, with previous challenges being replaced with new ones before you even get a chance to feel a sense of relief. But, if you aren't a parent, you don't really know this, and probably ask questions that bring out the sucky parts of parenting, and remember other people's negative experiences more.
Now that I think about it, it seems difficult to really convey the full emotional experience of being a parent. Only seeing parts of it makes it easy to get an overly optimistic/pessimistic view of things.
The first few times I casually mentioned I had never been interested in having kids, the reactions were unreasonably vitriolic: "Well, you aren't a good person and should stay away from them then!!" and "You look like the sort of person who doesn't want kids", etc. I eventually learned not to bring it up.
Thankfully I was never forced into it by marriage or otherwise. People who want children can have them and people who don't want them should not be shamed into it. Kids would be better off being genuinely wanted.
I personally was an accident kid, born before abortion was legalized and there was always a subtextual theme of being unwanted in my childhood. I decided early that I would not have a kid unless I really wanted one. And I never did have the desire. I'm glad I stuck to it and didn't give in to the immense peer pressure.
More people should feel free not to have kids. There's enough humans as it is. We don't need everyone reproducing. Only the people who really want to and can support their offspring properly should do it. It's dumb to have a social pressure to reproduce when there are 7.5 billion of us.
I would draw the line at "really want to". An argument could be made that only rich people should have children and that would be fascist in the other direction.
What's fascist is to forbid people from having children based on arbitrary criteria, which is just one obvious but wrong way to address an otherwise reasonable idea, that not everyone is fit for parenting. It doesn't mean the idea itself should be discarded. Here's another solution that doesn't trample on anyone's freedom: better informing people about the costs and benefits of parenthood. That would go a long way to prevent people from having children without the means to raise them.
We basically do. If half the population chooses not to bear kids (pretty normal) and the other half has like on average 2.5 kids, then social safety nets are going to collapse without massive immigration. If the WHOLE WORLD does this (which will become possible some time this century due to everyone thankfully getting richer and more urbanized), then there's nowhere for the immigrants to come from, and our social safety nets for the elderly will collapse.
Japan has managed this fairly well, considering, but it's just going to get harder and harder for them, Western Europe, and soon the rest of the developed world, China, and even the US and on to what is currently the developing world.
People don't know it yet (although they should, since it's pretty clear where the demographics of urbanization and development are headed), but population decline is going to be the problem of the 21st century, much as the population explosion was a problem in the 20th.
> Not everyone agrees social safety nets are a good thing. Some of us think properly preparing ourselves for retirement is more important.
I think you're missing the point. It doesn't matter if the State or the Individual is paying for it. Ultimately, services and care provided during retirement is provided by the young and healthy. If there aren't any young people, then no one will be available to provide care no matter who is trying to pay for it.
Not sure if you're serious. So if you believe that, why haven't you already killed yourself? That would be the best you could do, right? Unless you have some plan to 'take out' others besides you. But I can't believe you really believe that.
Some people don't want to have children - this will of course lead to the entire human race shrivelling up into a crisp and going extinct! Reductio-ad-absurdum for the Lose!
You're right. The future belongs to the descendants of those who have children. But you're attacking a strawman by ignoring what he's actually replying to.
No, the best I can do is continue living and convince as many people as possible to not have children. If I kill myself now, many more people might be created than if I die later. Natural reduction in population without resorting to violence is entirely possible. Open your mind to ideas that don't involve killing anyone.
Would you rather the problem be too many young people or too few? At least with too few, the environmental problems are lessoned. What's the point in having enough workers if we degrade the biosphere and change the climate too much to survive? That's the danger of an increasing population.
And we just can't rely on an increasing population indefinitely, even if we lived on Jupiter-sized planet. At some point, there are more people than the planet can support.
We are extremely far (in the developing world) from there being too many young people. We're rich as a society, so we should be able to handle more than in the past when we had fewer productivity-enhancing innovations.
I'm just talking about maintaining a stable birth rate.
EDIT: If you have two nations, otherwise identical and self-sufficient and cut off outside contact, and give one too many young folk and the other too many elderly, then 100 years later, the one that starts with too many young folk will be richer than the one with too few. EVEN on a per-person basis due to returns to scale.
Will this argument apply in mid-century when we top off around 10 billion (hopefully), and the full effects of climate change, pollution, and degradation of the biosphere the past century start to really hit us?
Right now we're doing okay, but we haven't seen whether the planet can support us long term like this (or more accurately, whether 10 billion people can adapt successfully to a world we've changed).
Already, we're worried about the decline in pollinators, frogs, insect splatter, coral reef loss, and tropical forest deforestation. What do you think just that looks like in a few decades with 2-3 more billion people?
10 billion people with a broad mix of ages will be more capable of coping with those changes than 7 billion people without anyone younger than their 40s.
The human population is ultimately independent of the biosphere through technology. And, in fact, some of the worst impacts on the biosphere are when we lean strongly on the biosphere to provide for us (for instance, cutting down forests to provide fuel and to clear land for inefficient farming practices vs using solar/wind/nuclear to provide energy while using dense and hyper-efficient farming practices).
Technology has huge returns to scale, and technology is how we're already able to handle our current population. So I'd say we are indeed better off with more people than less, particularly if we reduce agricultural land usage (which we're already doing) and switch to non-burning energy sources (so no fossil fuels and no biomass). An effectively vegan diet (either truly vegan or using lab-grown meat and dairy and eggs) would, by itself, drastically reduce both our reliance and impact on the biosphere. Vat-grown staples (think specialized microalgae) substituting for field-grown staples like corn or wheat or soy would further drastically reduce our impact.
The Earth ought to be a garden, but not one empty of people! And a human society without children would be some kind of dystopia.
Your reductio-ad-absurdum assumption is that because some people don't want to have children - no one else will either. But the fact remains, there are people who genuinely want to and those who don't. It should be personal choice, not something forced upon them.
I don't think that at all. Please read my comment in its context.
It's a good thing for some people to choose to pursue other things and not have kids. There's plenty of room for both kinds of people. But choosing to have kids in today's society is a huge challenge, and society as a whole should help women (and their partners) who choose to have kids. We should, as a MINIMUM, make healthcare free for children and mothers (and really everyone). We should also make it easier for mothers and fathers to balance family and work. Women shouldn't have to choose between their career and the normal (and very important) decision to bear children.
Arguably, it is the young people in a society who are most concerned with these long-run environmental impacts. If there's going to be a political (and scientific and technological) mobilization to address them, it's going to require young people.
EDIT:
And we can't get too far down this road before asking the question: Are humans fundamentally a bad thing or a good thing?
This is obviously subjective. But if we say some things have intrinsic value, such as the quantity and diversity of life, then we can make some progress:
From Gaia's perspective, if humans evolved, wiped out a bunch of species, then disappeared, then humans are like an asteroid. Bad at first, but ultimately just changed the direction of evolution, not the actual presence or absence of life.
BUT, if humans are able to go beyond the Earth and establish niches for life beyond Earth, then from Gaia's perspective, humans are a net-good. Sure, there's a lot of terrible habitat destruction as humans become a technological species capable of interplanetary travel, but now humans are capable of seeding life far beyond what other species have been capable of. Humans could create diverse, rich niches for life on other planets and moons that otherwise would never experience life. Humans would then be a net-good.
That becomes impossible if we just view humanity's impact in a zero- or negative-sum way. The more humans, the worse it is for life. BUT 10 billion may be just about the minimum needed to support a large-scale interplanetary capability that's able to establish a foothold for life to flourish across the solar system and eventually the galaxy. Therefore: have children! And reduce your impact on the Earth by eating smart and using efficient energy and transportation options.
> ...then social safety nets are going to collapse without massive immigration.
Value doesn't come from humans. It comes from machines. Workers income tax is just historically convenient way to tax machine owners as long as machines need operators.
We just need to find a better way to tax machines.
>Only the people who really want to and can support their offspring properly should do it.
It shouldn't be possible to get a full time job and not be able to support kids. If it was possible in the 60s it should be possible now. GDP has gone up 400% since then and the dependency ratio only went up 15%.
Following on from a sibling comment: it's in society's interests to help parents to pay for their children. Not just because those children will be working to look after and provide for the older generation in retirement, but because the better educated they are, the more able they'll be at doing that.
Everyone should be happy to pay for schools because everyone benefits from being able to be paid a pension. And being able to spend the money they get from their pension on useful things, like food.
I have three boys, aged 6 months to 4 years. It is extremely hard work and a major life change, especially if you get started in your 30s (as I did) after having already established yourself financially and professionally (yes, the resources makes it easier, but you've also had the time and resources to habituate yourself to a comfortable and self-oriented life, and you're not quite as robust as you were in your 20s, when an all-nighter was not a big deal). It also puts strains on even strong marriages.
But it has lots of irreplaceable moments and provides a general sense of satisfaction for well-spent effort. I echo several comments on the joy of seeing my boys develop as people, learn, ask questions, and explore. Even the squabbles bring back fond memories of my own childhood tussles with my two brothers, and how those interactions are part of children learning how to relate to other people.
Aside from all that, once they are born (and beforehand for my wife and me), the profound sense of duty to care for them compels putting any thoughts of self aside. We alone chose to create them and we alone are responsible for raising them to be good adults. I'm not going to shirk such an important duty in life. Such a sense of duty is a cultural norm encouraged by community moral condemnation of those who fail to adhere. I reluctantly support such condemnation as essential for the successful continuation of our civilization. As such, I say that parents who shirk their duties are committing a moral wrong and should be criticized.
The article doesn't come out and say it, but it seems to suggest that this is widespread. I don't think that is true. Watching my parents' generation embrace grand-parenthood, and the explicit statements that many of them make about the importance of family, convinces me that the vast majority push through the tough parts and find the overall experience to be the most important thing they did in life.
Final point, and one that I am cautious to make for not wanting to offend anyone needlessly: I know plenty of singles and couples who are childless, and several that are childless by choice. Suffice it to say that my anecdotal view is that sadness, eccentricity, and empty hedonism seem to develop over time in these couples, especially in the women.
Spot on with the final point. I have 3, now aged 22, 19 & 16. I like to joke that I have parentdar: it's like gaydar, I just know if someone is a parent or not without them telling me. There's a selfcentredness about the childless that gives itself away in a thousand minor tells. It's more pronounced in women than men.
In my anecdotal evidence many of the childless couples I know seem to be composed of the happiest, healthiest, and high achieving individuals I know. I live in a large American city. It is probably different out in the boonies but I'm quite envious when I see couples in their 30's without little ones.
Sometime in the 40's and 50's, American marketing worked to convince everyone that parenthood (and especially Motherhood) are this beautiful, sanctified experience. They did everyone a disservice when they did this; such a belief was not prevalent before then. Before that, having kids was seen as a duty to continue the family line at worst, and at best a pretty intense effort that one willingly engaged, because well life is about duty and hard work.
Modern society is all about the individual, in very pervasive and insidious ways. And that's what your final point speaks about: Having kids gives us a reason to think beyond today, beyond money, beyond MY wants, MY needs, MY life, MY MY MY MY MY.
Having children is selfless, in ways that people without kids cannot comprehend. And it is not a glorious, noble sacrifice. It is painful, scary, hard work. And it's worth it, because of the person you become when you matter to someone more than just yourself.
Most of the comments I saw in the article I consider selfish, childish, and shortsighted. "I hated fatherhood and I don't like the people my kids became." Well gee, maybe those things are connected. "I resent my kids because I keep thinking about all the things I wanted to do." Speechless. Like a 4 year old screaming on the floor of WalMart because they want a piece of candy.
I was raised to think about others and about my place among them. In almost ALL the comments in the article, I see otherwise. I can't respect their position even if I understand it. They're just a bunch of adults who never learned what being adult means.
My brothers and I (we all have quite 3-4 kids) joke that kids ruin everything. It's hyperbole, but feels true a lot of the time.
They are also fun, goofy, beautiful, and potential life long friends. It's also hard to see that sometimes when you're kids are screaming at 2am and you're seeing a shitty day at work or caring for kids ahead of you.
When asked, I always give a honest and unbiased response. I tell my friends and family the truth: it's hard work, you won't get much sleep in the 6 months and the nonstop crying is a huge huge source of pain. but, I talk about the good stuff too. Kids says the cutest things. And, in my opinion, parenthood gets easier every year because the child's behavior improves every year.
My little one makes me so deeply happy that none of the downsides are really that bad, but I tend to overplay them because I feel like doing otherwise would be gloating.
I noticed a similar pattern with other parents I talk with. They all have complaints, they got no sleep last night, child cried all morning, wouldn't eat dinner, etc. but behind all those words you can see a glimmer of something in their face that tells me they are downplaying as well.
>I tend to overplay them because I feel like doing otherwise would be gloating.
A lot of life events are the same way.
When someone asks how work's going, I don't want to be honest and talk about how goddamn happy I am seeing that fat number land in my Mint sidebar every two weeks since that promotion. So I say "It's hard work!" instead.
> But at the same time I think this whole "you're not allowed to say anything bad about parenthood" is unhealthy.
I tend to agree, but I think the limits apply to voicing regret for having specific children, especially in front of said children.
I think about the most sickening thing that anyone has ever described to me is meeting somebody who, in front of his own (tween and teenage) children, referred to them as basically a regrettable burden foisted upon him by his wife. It's bad enough suspecting that your parents don't care for you, I'll bet it hurts more to know for certain.
Still, it is nuts to receive backlash for saying that it's incredibly hard work. Of course it's hard work!
When you're up to your neck in hard work, it's kind of hard to sugarcoat how damn tired you are. Anyone who "only here's the bad stuff" sounds like someone who isn't prepared to work harder than they've ever worked before.
Worth noting that extreme difficulty of being new parents is in large thanks to the weird NA/EU habit of raising kids without extended family. I think that's a relatively novel "disruption" of how kids should grow - and a fairly failed one.
Even people that think they want children are sometimes unprepared. My son is now 17, but when he was in grade school he had a friend that was always in trouble and generally a very unhappy kid. I understood perfectly when I hung out with him and his friend at the park, when his mother was around. She was well meaning, but one of the worst parents I have ever witnessed. She constantly threatened him with punishment, but it was clear she never followed through with it, so the kid basically completely ignore her. At one point, she turned to me and commented how good my son was and how she really just didn't know what to do. I firmed bit my tongue and said nothing. Those conversations never go well.
As a parent, I was appalled how much bad advice there is out there. Some was from books and some from other parents or family. It seems to be that every human (at least here in the US) starts from scratch and uses their gut to guide them in parenting. Most people don't learn much from previous generations, and that seems crazy to me.
If I were to do it over again, I would definitely do better the 2nd time around, but I have no interest. Raising my son (with my wife) was the hardest thing I've ever done, and I'm enjoying life now that he's 17.
I don't like to say insulting things on this platform that values civility. But this is one of the most naive comments I've read this year. Perhaps I speak from stories, but many of the parents I know in my family aren't involved in their children's lives, abuse their children or just plain weren't in appropriate social and economic conditions to have children. Many, maybe most, parents are just not worth appreciating.
That's really terrible. I lost my mother to mental illness a little younger than that, she's still around but she's not my mom, she's terrifying. I'm honestly not sure which is worse.
Well, sentences tend to become a lot more awkward when all the necessary caveats are inserted. There is something healthy in the comment, if you're willing to find it. If you're reading naiveté, perhaps it comes from your own pain, and I'm sorry.
Most things in life that are worth it are hard. I find that Occam's razor is deeply misleading - when it comes about the important life decisions, the exact opposite applies: the easy path is one of superficiality, short-term gratification, that you will come to regret later.
Yes, raising children is difficult (especially the first one, since in radically changes your life, you're no longer independent). It's also rewarding, but it _is_ difficult. And that's for the best case, when you get a normal child - I don't know if I can even grasp the difficulties of raising a problematic child (e.g. diabetic).
You should absolutely not do it on a whim; but if you do it, I'd say "go all in and enjoy it". Don't regret your previous life, fully embrace the new one. It has its perks, too - and they are not few. And (at least I hope so), it only gets better as times goes by.
Well, I have three, and the oldest is going to be heading to college soon. So it's not a completely uninformed hope :) - though it is, of course, a deeply subjective one.
(I think you edited? People do have a tendency to over-apply it, from my observations. To extend from "chose the simplest model that explains something" to "when faced with a choice, chose the simplest solution")
I wasn't trying to say that it's bad/ that's it's an useless mental model. I was trying to say "don't apply it to important life decisions, if anything, the opposite of it is true there".
Yes sorry I edited right after just to soften the tone.
Yeah I think if anybody thinks that Occam's Razor is anything other than a way to give weight to two competing theories, they're misunderstanding it entirely.
However if we were to apply the same logic to life decisions, you need to note that the premise of the Razor is "given the same outcome...". So even if you were to apply it to life decisions, it would say "given two paths in life that take you to the same place, choose the simpler one". Which I think can still be useful, even if a completely separate idea than Occam's Razor. Having kids and not having kids are not equal outcomes.
Nah, most things that are worth it are easy, but the easy worthwhile things you just do day-in and day-out and reap the benefits without reflection or even much notice of it as “doing something”. You only notice then when adverse conditions make them hard or impossible.
Most things that you need to put notable effort into (and that therefore don't fade into the background) that are worthwhile are hard, but the worthwhile part of that is superfluous, since the first part is equivalent to being hard.
It is very difficult for those who have already had children to consider, if in retrospect, it was the right decision. Once you have children it is no longer a cool, abstract decision. The subject in question (the child) has been made real and it is difficult to reflect on the decision to have children without considering the living, breathing person in front of you and how that person would not have existed had you chosen otherwise.
Society has lost its way if arguably one of our most fundamental, carnal functions is too burdensome to carry out. Whether the burden is monetary (day care, cost of goods) or social (sports, parties), there's got to be a reckoning coming. There's no way we can sustain this way of life.
On the contrary, this is probably good news as we are nearing the carrying capacity of our planet. I don't think birth rates will ever decline to the extent that the global population collapses but a declining birth rate is really something to celebrate.
They "give a shit" but at the same time pollute a thousand times more (per capita). So one less American and one more Indian is a net positive for our green earth.
I'm not sure about that. USA has a lot of nature preserves and strict environment laws. 3rd world countries may experience runaway population growth where no land left undisturbed and nothing is preserved.
If we take CO2 it's another thing, but low emissions won't save you once all the biosphere is literally eaten.
Preserving biosphere is precious. "Cost to earth" is meaningless by itself - the planet isn't going anywhere. The only fragile thing here is biosphere.
I can see that you don't actually value Earth, just pity that it's so small you have to ration it.
One of the funnier aspects of the stereotypical basket of progressive views is that they end up holding their own societies to high standards and criticize qualities of those societies that were necessary for the fostering of their own worldview.
The main problem there, the elephant in the room, is that we live till 85 but the decision about having each and every child has to be carried before 45, and 'soft limit' is a decade lower. Subtract your own childhood, education and getting some money and experiences, and you can see it becomes very very narrow.
Demographics will shift dramatically if we are to prolong youth instead of prolonging old age.
I agree. This may be one of the most deranged articles I've read on HN. One thing to decide not to have children for a number of reasons. To go forth and regret it after the fact and use a bunch of complacent excuses is rather sickening. These people need to really do some soul searching.
Why "damn"? And why the downvotes? You have children to have/start a family. Nothing to do with difficulty, that is relative. Life is difficult, get over yourself.
I can't image a friend, partner, colleague, family member..whatever. With such little heart they regret their own children. This is the kind of person that believes in "shithole" countries because they lack all the qualities that make up compassion.
I would love to see a comparison between similarly aged mothers in countries with more equal gender benefits for child rearing (Scandinavia? France?) and those where mothers are still the de facto responsible for the day to day labor.
Part of this might be caused by the need for a two parent income to survive. It means that the default parent has two jobs, whatever their ambition might be.
Kids are hard work, expensive, a huge responsibility (it's your job to make sure they don't end up entitled little assholes) and you have to give up a 3rd of your youth. I never wanted kids.
Accidentally got my girlfriend pregnant in my early 20's got married and had another child, on purpose, 5 years after the first.
I wouldn't change anything and even with all the sacrifice and hard work the rewards run deep and i couldn't imagine the person i would be had i not ended up a father.
My oldest is heading to college in next fall and i am already feeling sad about how her daily absence is going to leave me feeling a bit empty.
It's not for everyone and i can only speak for myself but i never knew i wanted them or how much more fulfilling my life would be until i had them.
I like the concept of that book and it does a good job of explaining a very different culture in an approachable way, but its important to point out there is nothing "french" about good child rearing, and nothing "American" about bad parenting. There are plenty of American parents who can make the bold claim that book makes, but there are plenty more who refuse to listen to advice and have very low expectation so of being a parent. There is nothing magical about having your kids sleep through the night, or play quietly, or be able to behave in a public place, or eat the food you give them. You just need to put in the work.
Trying to raise your kids differently from that in the US is quite the hassle though. There are plenty of news headlines where it got ridiculous, but here's two examples from my life, with my oldest daughter (I'm sure I'll have more as her siblings get older):
Someone called the cops on me for leaving her, at 8 years old, in a car, parked in the shade, on a cool day for 5 minutes.
She was questioned by a stranger at age 10 (where are your parents, what are you doing alone &c.), when I let her walk by herself through the safest part of town for 3 blocks from my office to an after-school activity.
Anyone who had kids because they thought kids would make them happy is in for a bad time, but that's not what this is about. This is about narcissism and people not being able to learn from what is going on around them. Clearly even after kids the people in the headline of this story didn't understand life or how to live with others. Just the tale of their parenting lets you know that not only did they not have a good relationship ( claim of 90% of work by one parent, and spending most days carting the child around to "activities" ), but then the burden of this unfulfilled and damaged life is placed on the child, if you could do it again you wouldn't have a child, therefore that child will see it as their fault they have ruined your life. You can't hide those emotions for long and they end up with bitterness and resentment. The truth is even without kids the realtionship was not in good shape, and these people would have had an empty and shallow partnership. That is how human relationships work, when hard times come they don't break your relationships they revel them for what they are.
Motherhood or parenting or children aren't the problem, the basic breakdown of people being able to live and relate with other people is.
>"I love my son with all my heart,” she says. “My life revolves around this child.
Sorry, no. Love means desiring what is good for that person. Not existing is not good for that person... As well, her life revolves around her happiness, which is why her decision wether or not to do it again is answered by it's impact on her happiness.
I don't see anything contradictory in what she says. You can love someone, yet not always take actions that are best for them. Your life can resolve around someone else, while you wish it didn't.
> Declining fertility rates and older, more educated first-time mothers have also contributed to heightened expectations. The fertility rate in Canada has dropped from 2.1—the replacement level needed for the population to renew itself without immigration—in 1971 to 1.6 in 2016.”
It's interesting to contrast this concern (is concern the right word?) in Canada with articles about the same thing in parts of Africa [0]. The only difference being what side of the replacement level the population is on.
Good for them. I really dislike a lot of the cultural dogmas that exist (at least in the first world) about stuff like this. We have too many people on this planet already, and no you don't need to breed unless you and your partner are some sort genetic miracle. I think nurture is more important than nature, and if you really want to parent you're better off giving an underprivileged child an opportunity through adoption than breeding.
It's remarkable that anyone could with a straight face say that the drive and desire for children is a "cultural dogma". In the nature vs. nurture debate, not everything is a tie.
I'm not convinced. Is there evidence that the parent/child bonding only occurs if you share DNA? My personal experience suggests otherwise, especially given that my mother was adopted.
There are a lot of folks making this same argument. I studied evolutionary biology in University and can say confidently that you are on a lot shakier ground than you think.
There is not necessarily an innate drive to make a traditional family. Sex, sure. Most people have a sex drive but what happens afterword need not be familial bliss, or even sticking around to raise the child at all. In fact there a lot of very successful strategies in nature to offload that work to the other parent or even fool unrelated adoptive parents.
Evolution can go quickly if the selection pressure is high. (example: done in under 24 hours if we shot everybody without blue eyes)
Our environment has been drastically changed by birth control.
Previously, a desire for sex was essentially equal to a desire for reproduction. Selection for one would select for the other, so they didn't need to be distinguished.
So essentially we are now unfit for our environment. We will rapidly evolve to fit this new environment. People of the future will desire actual reproduction, not just sex.
This is kind of a weird comment. The author wasn't really complaining so much about the physical process of creating a child as much as the burdens and difficulties of raising a child, which would be the same or worse with an adopted child.
Those are my thoughts, not the thoughts of the author.
Edit: I should clarify, my 'good for them' comment was about how it's okay for people to have regrets about having children, even though it's culturally taboo. If more people acknowledge this, then perhaps fewer people will take on the burden.
I suspect the main reason it's difficult is because of the individualistic nature of western nations. In a society where people live with multiple generations of family raising children is probably much, much easier.
Add to this the fact that everyone wants to have the best schools, houses and things in general, and the income that's necessary to get and maintain said things and you see that having modern children is a trap.
I don't have biological children - I was never in a position where I would have considered it a good idea to have them (for various reasons, internal and external), and I've always seen it as about the biggest responsibility that you can have. However, about 9 years ago I met my current girlfriend, who had 4 kids from her 16-year marriage, and I'm now considered by them to be their step-parent.
I remember I found it absolutely exhausting when I first started seeing her - it took a couple of years for that to not be the case - and they are -not- difficult children; quite the opposite, they are all really wonderful, and we generally get on very, VERY well. But it's an immense amount of work, and every time my girlfriend compares herself to where she would have been had she not had children and committed her time to be (what I consider to be) and excellent parent, I have to remind her that she's been a full time + (and then some) parent for about 12 years. Returning to the workplace for her has been difficult as she now works a full time job as well as being a mum - and one who cooks just about every night of the week, and has generally impossibly high standards for herself as a parent; despite her/our eldest now currently studying at Cambridge University.
I can totally understand why some would regret having children; it's presented as being a utopian existence that you get immense satisfaction from in many quarters, and anyone who dares question whether it's the right move for them (or indeed their prospective children) is given short shrift. It's not for everyone, but everyone is expected to have children. I have been given long-winded lectures in the past for not having my own, and I'm sure anyone who dared to question the experience with said inquisitors would have a very hard time!
Half the genes are those of my partner... and I guess it could be that way even if they were biologically my kids? TBH I used to think about it a lot when we first got together, but now I don't really think about them other than they are my kids... not biologically, of course, but there's more to life than biology. Otherwise I'd be my Dad, and that would be Worst Case Scenario for me.
Maybe. The cost-benefit of kids never really seemed to make much sense to me. Perhaps I'll live to regret it or change my mind in future. Either way, I make my bed...
I don't know. I've got a bunch of biological kids, and while propagating my genes is not the only reason I care for them, it's an explicit strong positive for me.
You really care about their genes? What if they adopt kids or choose not to have any? Will it distress you greatly that you went through all that effort just to have your genes not continue to the next generation?
I think it's likely you're applying an evolutionary explanation to your parenting behavior, but don't really care that much about your children's actual genes. You care about your children as persons, not their molecular machinery.
If you really, really cared you would have your genes cloned and be donating massively to sperm banks and what not.
Oh, I definitely care. I'd prefer at least some of them have biological kids, but the odds of that are good with my buckshot approach.
I think mine is actually the simpler explanation, and yours is reaching a bit. We're surrounded by vicious competition for genetic reproduction, I don't know why humans would be the exception.
And I don't want a clone, I want to pick a partner with all kinds of good genes to bring to the mix and toss them together, which I did. A partner I'm attracted to in part because of a lot of cues she gives me indicating her genes.
I think when you've had the pride of a son or daughter who is the spitting image of you, or walks just like you, or is noticeably muscular in the places you are, it's hard to deny exactly where that is coming from..
You're admitting that you want someone else's genes in addition to yours to be passed on. Someone you're not related to, which is your wife. And then your kids spouses. Your genes will get diluted each generation.
Anyway, there was an interesting philosophy podcast that rejected reductionistic evolutionary explanations for human behavior. The reasoning goes that yes, evolution is responsible for creating our minds, but once we have the ability to be conscious, to reflect, ask all sorts of questions and form new ideas and what not, that this is a new level of explanation. Thus the need for psychology, sociology, etc.
Call it an emergent if you like. Evolution itself is emergent upon physics, chemistry, geology, climatology, etc.
Why do the genes matter? Human beings matter, not genes. Who really cares what genes propagate, with the exception of defective ones that cause diseases.
The outrage at saying you regret having children seems to me to be evidence that there's a nerve there to hit. It's a bit like accusing 10 supposedly straight people of being secretly gay, and one of them losses their mind screaming denials. 'Methinks he doth protest too much.'
But we've built a society in the west based around worshipping our children. Politicians can do anything if it's "for the children", no matter how draconian or insane. It's rude to ever comment on how someone else chooses to raise their children. It's considered horrible to not do everything you can to make your children happier, better, etc. Better go buy a house with a yard because your kid might want a yard, because everyone knows that kids need yards.
The really interesting question isn't whether it's okay to regret having children- it's what's going to change when society unshackles itself from this strange obsession.
> I wonder who's outraged by someone else saying something about their own life and feelings?
It's kinda violating a social contract. Everyone's the product of thousands of people over thousands of generations who chose to have kids. By choosing not to have kids you also choose to not contribute the the labor force that will likely take care of you in your old age. You can say all you want about contributing money or inventions, but money is just a claim on future labor and few people's inventions are really that valuable.
So you're saying those "outraged" parents don't like it either and don't like to see people freeloading and not taking their share of the pain? They're "outraged" because some people are getting off scott-free?
There's no shortage of humans on this planet, and by the time we're retired, automation will have advanced considerably.
We're not some small tribe in danger of going extinct. It's a terrible argument to say someone who doesn't reproduce is a freeloader. We need less people on this planet, not more. We're on pace to have 10 billion by mid century. That's going to be a challenge to support that many people while not ruining the environment in the process.
I guess the proper response to this in context of the conversation on moral imperative to reproduce, would be, "So what? Why should I care? Either I want kids or I don't, and that's the end of it for me. And since society isn't going to make anyone reproduce, go fuck off."
> few people's inventions are really that valuable
The problem is, now you're stepping into quantifying the context on heavily subjective terms. Here's how that goes then:
How valuable have most of the last 15 billion people been on average? How about the bottom 50% of those people in terms of productivity and what they contributed to the betterment (subjective) of humanity or the earth? How valuable, in similar terms, have the bottom 10% of those people been?
And that's why - among dozens of other good reasons - it's entirely unreasonable to judge a person's life in such a manner.
> It's kinda violating a social contract. Everyone's the product of thousands of people over thousands of generations who chose to have kids.
It's not actually so clear cut. In all times there was a huge sways of people who won't have kids.
Handmaids, sailors, mercenaries, servants, slaves, etc, etc. Some of them could have children but it was never guaranteed.
This was offset by other people who'll have more children. Sometimes it wasn't. At all times a lot of lines will wither. Some vast tribes will be reduced to a few dozen families.
Social contract is XX century construct and obviously unsustainable at that. Once children stopped being source of labor but labor sinks, it tried to also became unconscionable contract. As in, everybody tries to slack off their duty while praising it to other people. It's like with conscription.
Many, many species have members that don't reproduce. After all, "It takes a village to raise a child". The genes of non-reproducers are even selected for - children who share a lineage with them, do better. So the gene carries on.
It's the exact same nerve this story hit, about how the years after having a child tend to be among the most miserable and unhappy for parents (demolishing the fairy tale).
I remember seeing some of the rage reaction to it online at the time. When a study like that gets that kind of response, you know it's probably hitting close to home for the people responding.
I agree completely with the outrage being a product of people propping up denial of their own dissatisfaction with their decisions. Though I am biased having gone through the homophobic denial thing myself, it seems to be a very common pattern, and can only really only be addressed by society not signally so strongly that everyone "should" be a certain way.
Maybe that is part of it. But I think it has more to do with the enormous responsibility inherent in parenting. Because with parenting you can't just quit. Becoming a parent is equivalent to deciding that for 18 years someone else's life is more important than your own, and if you weren't willing to commit to that then you have made an unpardonable mistake by being a parent.
Now with that said, should parents be able to gripe without repercussions? Absolutely. But griping is not the same as expressing regret, and expressing regret can imply you weren't really up for the job.
> deciding that for 18 years someone else's life is more important than your own
Intrinsically, deep down, I feel in complete agreement that you're right about that statement. And then I stop and think "wait, isn't that the very point I was just trying to make above? That something is wrong with this?"
Why do children have to me more important than parents? Why not 'just as important'? Consider: if we had a friend who had a new boyfriend and constantly put the boyfriend's needs above her own saying 'that's just how relationships work, you put their needs above yours, always', we'd have an intervention for that friend. We'd say that's not healthy, that there has to be give and take, that we all have our own needs that are important too.
But make the other side a child and well, now that's just the right way to do things.
I'm not saying that we're wrong for thinking that- I'm saying we should really look at that deeply and figure out if we're sure that it's right. How far is too far? Are we past that point? Maybe our own happiness should sometimes win out over our children's happiness and that's not a monstrous thing.
The `outrage' (at least the imagined outrage) is that it's considered really unfortunate/unhealthy for your children when you say that you regret having children, because children generally will think themselves to blame.
The rest of your post...I think doth protest too much? Some people have children. Some people don't. We're a product of an evolution that makes many of us want to procreate. Strange obsession? What a bizarre statement.
Secondly, many of the things people complain about are only tangentially and superficially actually related to the child. Every Christmas some parents go to herculean lengths to get the must have toy (or the $900 stroller or only the best school, etc) not because their kid actually wants or needs it, but as a status symbol/achievement among their clique. Humans are imperfect - story at 11.
My first thought isn't about the shitty parent or my own choices, it's about the kid who's a secondary character, or whose mere existence appears to be exclusively a cause of grief for their parents. How does the kid feel? What is being done to ensure the kids aren't fucked up if their caretaker is moping around saying they'd rather have a lifetime of wine parties instead of going to soccer practice twice a week?
Do you also believe the "bullies are just jealous of their victims" story?
I'd be interested to see how the age of the children correlates with regret. That is, do parents regret having children when the child is 2? How about 12? How about 22? I don't have a hypothesis on how that would play out, but it is important to remember that people are (ever increasingly) programmed for short term reward and child rearing is the ultimate long term investment.
But you're regretting the wrong thing. You're projecting onto the child. You are actually upset about the desertion, the divorce, the ridiculous super-paced lifestyle you chose over the actual simplicity of life you could have chosen. Not the sharpest tools in the shed, these upcoming generations. Too many of you are manipulated by a faux culture that doesn't really care about you but it does care about the money it can make off you. And to that end, it indoctrinates you with the idea that you are missing out on life if you don't follow the same workaholic path to assumed value to society. That is "the script" and you just don't see it. Most of you will never be remembered by that society you think you will just die if you are not a part of its moving and shaking.
But you WILL be remembered by your children...if you don't get duped into not having them.
Furthermore, doesn't that make having kids an even bigger risk? What if they then choose not to have kids. According to the "being remembered" metric, you've been doubly duped because you had to raise children and are eventually unremembered anyway.
This article seemed more like the documentation of a cultural phenomenon (mothers able to publicly admit regret) than a sociological study. But I still want to know why mothers regret having children. The comments seemed to be filled with uncharitable explanations, but are there any publications (other than the isreali one) that summarises the reasons for regret?
As a father of three young kids I can tell you it's a lot of work, it's not always fun, it's not always rewarding and it's not always what you want it to be.
But I can also tell you I never felt love like the love I feel for my children. I never felt as proud before I saw my children do things that astonish me. I never felt as close to my wife before I had children.
The feels man. For me it makes it all worth it. I absolutely get that it's not for everyone, but for the people that are undecided: there are a lot of happy parents out there and I am one of them.
This is what I am not getting, why are all these articles that have absolutely nothing to do with technology popping up, and then making it to the front page, is the algo messed up?
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
"Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it."
Like Slashdot and Reddit, once Hacker News became influential enough it was taken over by political actors.
It makes sense from a political actor's point of view to push their message on whatever platform reaches the most influential people, and Hacker News was that platform once, but it destroys the platform in the long-term, and I don't think they care about people wanting a platform for discussing news for hackers.
In this article, the message being pushed is one of social change, and although I agree with the agenda, I don't think it's appropriate in Hacker News either.
478 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 406 ms ] threadOn top of that though it seems like requirements for parenting have gone through the roof. Between helicopter parenting and all the activities one is supposed to do these days the effort must have gone up tremendously.
As far back as June 2014, Pope Francis spoke about this phenomenon.
http://time.com/2814527/pope-francis-dogs-cats-pets/
Sorry, can you help me parse this sentence?
My point is that folks who have the "get a dog" mentality are supporting the forces that make child rearing increasingly burdensome.
Perhaps it is both? These things tend to be cyclic. "Fuck it" tends to breed conditions where more people say "fuck it."
That said, I do believe in something like a "get a dog and help care for the community" mentality that's not a "fuck it" at all.
This is actually the main reason why I've never been so worried about those overpopulation predictions, or worried about what happens if the technology starts allowing us to live hundreds of years.
Well, if we knew for sure that we would live 500 years (and continue to be young and health), nobody in their right mind would want a kid at 30. And you'd likely still be able to die from accidents for the next 100-200 years.
If you have children you do it for them, not for yourself.
And there are better, more predictable ways to leave a legacy. Having a kid is a shot in the dark; sure maybe they'll cure cancer, but maybe they'll be the next hitler, or more likely, they'll be an average joe with no lasting impact on humanity.
But what's surprising about that "mentality"? Breeding is something some people indeed come to regret, and having the self-awareness to recognize that likelihood in one's self leads to better outcomes for the not-parent and the not-child[1].
A big part of what what I've seen in having these discussions is people resenting those who made different choices. A lot of people follow a script - get married around this age, acquire home, make a kid or two once you can afford the tax privileged accounts, etc. Some of those people resent those who saw they can write their own script and fail to look unhappy about it.
[1] I always hear, "but what if you're wrong?" To which I reply with some variant of, "You should go to medical school. Sure, you're a bit old for that, it is expensive, a huge, somewhat risky commitment, an enormous change in your life for a long time, and you think you'd hate being a doctor. But what if you're wrong?"
I guess I should go with "you should go to engineering school"
Beyond medicine and the fact that it's less violent than 200 years ago, it would be incredibly hard to argue we now live in healthy societies.
I think this might be one of those things like atheism, where your ideology becomes generally accepted enough that you forget you're not being rebellious anymore.
Also: It is pretty irresponsible to have a child even though you know you don't want to take care of it.
We're also capable of meta-cognition, so even if some realize that they may want children, they might reason that it's an infeasible idea.
Further, some people simply would rather spend the time for themselves. Personally, I grew up in a below poverty line single parent home and would like to spend time and money for myself and my SO now that I'm doing OK financially.
Nonetheless, common misconception that everyone on earth is having children. Nearly half of women in the U.S. have never had children. The exponential population growth that would follow from every single adult having at least one child every generation would be insane and absolutely unsustainable.
It seems like it could be a natural response to crowding in populations that people stop having children, or it could just be a result of people feeling uncertain about their future. Not sure, but either way, I know for an absolute undeniable fact that right now, I could not want anything less than having a child. I'd rather go to prison.
Besides, not everyone should be a parent. There's plenty of criminals with mental disabilities that make them hugely unfit parents even if they wanted to be. The world really would be a better place if said people simply chose not to procreate.
That case (<2) is the case for most of the developed world.
Though I was definitely wrong to say 'exponential growth' since that isn't actually true.
The over-population problem is not of US, or even not of even Americas (North and South) they are pretty much stabilized at around 1.1 Billion. The coming population "boom" is in Africa which will likely grow from 1 Billion to 4 Billion.
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956247806063978 http://data.footprintnetwork.org/
It's a problem that across the world in cities with educated populations, they are not reproducing at a sustainable rate.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/0...
> If too low, there's a danger that we wouldn't be able to replace the aging workforce and have enough tax revenue to keep the economy stable.
Declining birth rates may not be a problem per se. But if they are, many economies I think need to adjust some of their policies. Certain countries seem to have paradigms that are not terribly friendly towards the idea of families and raising children.
This paper (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4255510/) identified some socioeconomic factors that might cause a delay of, or even outright rejection of, having children:
Lack of affordable housing
Lack of flexible and part-time career posts for women
Lack of affordable and publicly funded (free) child care
I'll add that education expenses are rapidly rising for some countries. Also, said career paths often come with a financial penalty for mothers (particularly for college women -- it is well known that motherhood in itself is a big reason for the pay gap between the sexes -- https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/upshot/the-gender-pay-gap...).
Small wonder that the birthrate is declining. In fact, in some countries, you might postulate that the economic system in itself is actually hostile towards having children.
We'd like one of us to be able to stay home with the kid, but we just can't. Where I live a programmer isn't the best paid position, and both of our jobs are important to our financial success. It'll probably be a matter of getting back to the workforce as soon as possible, and that's really disheartening when you want to give the little one as much of a chance as you can.
It depends on your perspective. For instance, if all your cells decided to totally stop reproducing one day, you'd die eventually.
>> It depends on your perspective.
You didn't change yours. If too many people choose to not have kids, their community dies. So, if you change your perspective to the community then childlessness starts to sound like:
>>> A critical part of life would suggest to me that you die without it.
Consider that this is a failure of cognitive empathy on your part. When other people don't feel the same way we do, it's natural to believe that ours is the only reasonable perspective, and maybe even that it's our duty to enforce it on others. But it is possible to develop empathy, and discover that maybe we don't actually have access to all the data like we thought.
The point is that your finding it hard to believe that someone feels a particular way is very poor evidence that they do not feel that way, especially when applied to a population.
We know that longtime meditators are able to distinguish micro-expressions in others that reveal emotions that they might not even realize they are having. And they are experts in identifying their own emotions as well. Do you have any such qualifications?
If not, then your disbelief in other people's claims about their experience is likely much stronger evidence of your own difficulty empathizing.
I have no doubt that some are wrong about how they feel, and that would have been an interesting discussion. If I've been misunderstanding this whole time, I'm sorry. Best wishes.
Is there something to their feeling? Yes. Is it how they say it is? I don’t think so.
An argument by popularity would be "millions of people say that they like Britney Spears, so she is the best singer." The argument I'm making is that "millions of people say that they like Britney Spears, so it's likely that at least one of them actually likes her."
I'm a person who has no desire for children. I haven't engaged your argument because I believe my existence makes it moot.
Likewise, if I were to make an argument that nobody can feel genuinely annoyed because [insert any argument here], I don't think your first step should be to engage my argument. I'd expect you'd help me see that I'm likely misunderstanding you, because you genuinely felt annoyed.
If you'd like to talk more, maybe we can find a channel better than HN.
Please, do go on cargo-culting your life. Some of us will be over there, trying to find our own paths.
Note that brainwashing is not an attribute of the people ("those who like children are brainwashed"), but of the culture, where opposition is rejected. As a matter of fact, people who openly don't like children are (at the very least) frowned upon.
I know at least a couple of fathers who clearly "are not children lovers" (to put it mildy), but they had them, and they even think about having more than one. There's no pressure on them, and they're not fools; they just think it's "the way" - in this perspective, it's no different than a religion.
Probably, a hypothetical world where the opposite would hold true - people would be brainwashed that children are a burden - would be better placed, since only (more) motivated people would be parents.
http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1007/s11199-016-0606-1?s...
"Final point, and one that I am cautious to make for not wanting to offend anyone needlessly: I know plenty of singles and couples who are childless, and several that are childless by choice. Suffice it to say that my anecdotal view is that sadness, eccentricity, and empty hedonism seem to develop over time in these couples, especially in the women."
"Spot on with the final point. I have 3, now aged 22, 19 & 16. I like to joke that I have parentdar: it's like gaydar, I just know if someone is a parent or not without them telling me. There's a selfcentredness about the childless that gives itself away in a thousand minor tells. It's more pronounced in women than men."
Premarital counseling would have caught that.
> “It would have been a deal-breaker.”
IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN!!! Now you made a new person that you don't want! Shame on you and your husband!
Kids, money goals, debt, work goals, travel goals, where to live; these are all HUGE things that need to be discussed, while in the presence of a trained counselor, before saying "I do."
Before we got married, there were a number of things that we discussed and had to make sure we were on the same page. Of those, the most important were children and religion.
I personally made it a point to get an understanding before we were even serious.
Now that we're married, the question isn't "Will we have children?", it's "When..." and that's much easier to figure out if both people are playing the same endgame.
Oh, and thanks for pointing out religion, I forgot that on my (knowingly incomplete) list.
Edit: I say most, but I probably should have said some.
The only things I really regret are things I asked for and found out I didn't actually want.
This is anecdotal, but:
I attended family counselling with multiple counsellors for many years, I found those sessions helped only for as long as they were scheduled. Rather than gaining tools to assist in resolving future problems, we were provided with solutions to our immediate problems.
Personal counselling is a different story, and I think the root cause for these marital issues is that people don't have an understanding of themselves, or what they need in order to be happy. Personal counselling can teach you how to express yourself and your needs, which would obviously go a long way in helping you structure your relationships.
In group counselling everyone still has opportunity to believe they're not the reason for the dysfunction.
My wife and i have always been very open communicators. After having a kid when people would ask us if we are enjoying parenthood we've always answered honest.
"It's the most work we have ever done in our life" (and I build startups!)... "We got no sleep last night, she woke up at 2 AM and wouldn't go back to bed."
And it is amazing to me the backlash we got. People who plan to have children were telling us "all I ever here is the bad stuff!" and essentially saying we should lie and say everything is perfect.
The fact is, having a child is the biggest life commitment you will ever make and if you and your significant other are not prepared, you're in for a bad time.
But at the same time I think this whole "you're not allowed to say anything bad about parenthood" is unhealthy.
This article talks about people who are willing to speak their truth about parenthood and I think overall that is a good thing.
Edit: If more people talked honestly about he burden of parenthood we'd maybe have less unwanted kids. We as a species are well past the point where we have to have 10 kids just to ensure the bloodline continues. Be honest with people about how difficult being a parent is. Some people like my wife and I will choose to do it anyway knowing exactly what we are getting into and other's won't. And that's OK.
With some reflection I don't think I was 100% ready. But I did at least make sure my finances were in order, I knew what it would do to our budget, and my wife and I had expectations set going in who would bear what responsibility. It sounds like the people in this article didn't think of that stuff. And I'm not sure I entirely blame them. We as a society make it a taboo to talk about anything but good stuff when it comes to parenting.
I am convinced that if you are going to reproduce this is the way to do it. Even though I make significantly more money than them I am jealous of their lifestyle :D . These parents take vacations without their kids, which I know many of valley friends think is impossible.
I think that sounds awesome. Realistically not everyone has those choices though, and unfortunately I don't see that changing any time soon.
My family for example, is spread out across 5 states. My nearest relative is 150 miles.
Moving away from home and having kids away from your family is a much bigger task than having kids in your hometown where all of your family lives. I get that it's normal mode of operation for a lot of people to move all over the country for jobs, but IMO that is where the biggest struggle comes from.
You take for granted being able to call a grandparent to pick the kids up from school if you're working late, to come over for a bit when you need to do something during an evening, to drop the kids off if you need to run an errand or even keep them overnight if you have to go out of town for work. That's before even figuring in extra-curricular activities and trying to get each child where they need to be.
My in-laws moved closer to us last year and it has been life changing for my wife and I who both work.
The prime example would be how you raise your kids. Alone, you the most influence, in a family, you have a little less. For some that is OK, for others it's red flags.
Just wanted to open your eyes to what you may not be seeing.
It's nice to finally understand that yes, for a couple (especially where both have careers), raising a child is harder than it should be and harder than it used to be, because of this lack of tribe, and no we are not just self-pitying moaners. I don't think this trend is going to reverse itself, which makes me hope in some vague way that some sort of communal tradition emerges, where the tribe is formed by some social grouping (close friends) other than the extended family.
Given the impending arrival of my second child, I find myself wondering about those with less support. What does a pregnant single mother of one do when she goes in to labor? Where does her child go? In to state care??
I have great respect for parents with less support than I have.
Crazy to think, isn't it? It is hard enough during those first few years for a couple with a stay-at-home parent. I can only imagine how hard it is for a single parent who has to not only pay the bills, but take care of somebody who needs an adult 24/7.
I don't think people can begin to fully appreciate this stuff until after they have kids.
The story I usually tell my friends who are just becoming parents is about this one night the first month, we were up constantly most nights. I don't remember on this particular night what I was up doing, it's not important, but what I do remember is being in the bathroom, sitting on the can, and looking down and seeing the floor move under my feet. Vividly. However, that memory sticks as a turning point for me - I didn't have a whole lot of self doubt about doing a good job as a dad after getting through sleep deprivation induced hallucinations!
I don’t think I’ve ever heard young parents talk about anything else. If I am to believe the stories, until the age of 3 it’s not blood running through a child’s veins, but pure high-grade Colombian roast.
To the point where I’m considering sardonically suggesting we suspend driver’s licenses for new parents.
Also, any excuse to avoid dealing with car seats.
We are also biologically inclined to ignore thinking about what kind of pain we are in for and just be...excited. Otherwise, I doubt anyone would have kids and humanity would just go instinct. Likewise, once the kid has arrived, nature pulls more tricks to keep us parents motivated (evolved cuteness, for example).
So, is it possible that some folks are "fully prepared" for parenthood? Almost certainly. I'd expect that the numbers work out such that people like this do exist. Parents that were fully ready for the children they got.
However, this is like expecting someone can know exactly how to play poker, following the rules on when to bet and when not to, and then getting shocked to see that you still don't win every game. Statistically, you will lose games. Best you can do is have the game setup so that the losses are small and the wins are leveraged.
1. Development/physical disabilities, or overall health issues
2. Reaction from others, will immediate/extended family help? It's one thing to ask, another for the reality to set in. Overall support base in general.
3. Employment realities. Will a lot of employers have explicitly stated policies, the day-to-day realities often differ (and can be very different between mum(s)/dad(s)).
4. Just general variations in children/growth. I have two, one eats but doesn't sleep well, the other doesn't eat well but sleeps soundly. One enjoys time to himself, but has a temper. The other is far more social (so much social) but is very even-tempered and empathic. No amount of preparation can provide enough knowledge/experience to deal with these qualities, not withstanding 1/2/3.
As others said, we read books, attended classes, looked after nieces/nephews, younger siblings, baby sat etc. We were still woefully unprepared for our own.
"You can definitely be prepared for what cohabitation/marriage is like before your first relationship. It may be a lot of work, but it is not beyond comprehension."
Yes, the brain is capable of comprehending life in cohabitation, as proven by the current mental state of all who are currently in the situation. Getting to that mental state without experiencing cohabitation is practically impossible.
Now swap out "romantic partner" with "small person completely dependent upon you for survival for the next 18+ years".
I guess this is the result of having so few children nowadays. But not so long ago, many people got a very real and practical first experience by helping in raising their siblings. And depending on how large the family was, I assure you it could prepare you very well.
I dunno...to me that's just a cop-out excuse to avoid simply admitting that you didn't do your research, or that you turned a blind eye to warning signs of what parenting is like. Do people go through life not knowing other people that have kids and not see what they go through?
I don't have kids. I had a vasectomy earlier this year to make sure I don't have kids. I watched my brother have them. To call them a handful is like calling Hurricane Harvey just some light rain and winds. They require constant supervision. Can't even spend 5 minutes taking a dump or they'll scribble on the walls with a Sharpie (Yes, that happened).
> (evolved cuteness, for example)
I don't think babies are cute in the slightest. To some people, that makes me a monster.
I like baby animals. Kittens, puppies, even baby elephants. But baby humans? Nah, I just see some creature that is probably about to decide to start screaming or shit itself.
What it us about parenthood that makes people think we should just present only happy side of it constantly and ever talk about side we don't like or cost us?
This seems like an unfair interpretation of the above. Absolutely talk about the parts you don't like, just acknowledge that you followed a path of your own choosing (whether the consequences were expected or not).
Kind of like smokers getting cancer, or needle-sharers getting HIV: the social context requires a little humility.
No one sane expect smokers sick with cancer to acknowledge they smoked each time they want talk about cancer. For christ sake, seriously.
And I don't even think that having children is like sharing needles. There we are getting into category where you imply that having children is somehow morally bad (or is it having children while not being 100% happy about every aspect of child raising? )
One doesn't need to "acknowledge... each time they want to talk" (whether it's smokers, needle-sharers, parents, or whatever). Rather, it's just a matter of how one phrases things, e.g. avoiding a sense of entitlement or being condecending.
> And I don't even think that having children is like sharing needles.
I think it it, in precisely the sense that I mentioned it: that it's avoidable, and may have severe negative consequences. No more, no less.
> There we are getting into category where you imply that having children is somehow morally bad
Not at all. I wasn't passing moral judgement, I was giving examples of situations where someone complaining about problems they're suffering may have to choose their language carefully, to avoid being judged harshly in a social context. No more, no less.
> or is it having children while not being 100% happy about every aspect of child raising?
Again, that's a straw man.
If you're a good person (sweeping generalization), having a kid is pretty much the only thing you can't walk away from in your life.
Also, nobody knows the extent of what one must give up to parent. No matter how prepared a person thinks he or she is, they aren't. Having kids is very abstract right up to the point that it's not. The concrete realization starts to happen earlier and more intimately for the mother because of the gestational period, but that realization sets in eventually for both parents.
What complete nonsense. There are 7Bn+ people in the world. Making more people is not a problem the human race has. Far from subsidising the child-free, you are destroying the ecosystem with your selfishness.
The solution would need to happen in less than three generations.
I would have a bone to pick with folks who feel entitled (or "commanded by $deity") to have 6, 7, 8 or more kids. That's just absurd stupidity.
I, personally, found parenthood to be enormously rewarding. And that may not be something one comes to grips with when kids are 3. Or 10. Or even 18. Having kids with medical problems, or mental health problems, can be a challenge, and you can miss out on the immediate sense of accomplishment when it's overwhelmed with "just get through today". This is a big-picture thing.
I'm also not blinded by illusions of; having a legacy, having something that is a "permanent" accomplishment, or even just having someone else in this world who I can relate to. My feeling is that my kids turned out to be pretty good people, and the world as a whole is a better place with them in it. In Net. Considering even their resource consumption. They are part me. They are my intention and will. But they are their own beings as well, with their own hopes and dreams.
Hell: we're all worm food in the end. It's not pleasant facing or contemplating death. Maybe we all would have liked to have been asked permission before being brought into this world against our will. I think the main difference it made for me was that I participated in life. The process of life. The continuation of life. The strife for survival. I did not look at the world, and decide to simply persist until I perished. I lived. Even if I have another 30-50 years on this world. I gave it a shot.
If you look at my wider family, you'll see some people with no children and some with five. But even on such a small scale, we average out at around replacement rate.
I have to laugh at this, because 3 years ago I was this person and I know exactly how the conversation would go. I had 3 kids and planned for 6-7 of them, then I left the Mormon religion.
But I would love to hear the conversation. I can't speak for everyone, but in Mormonism at least you literally believe that having children is commanded by deity and any environmental offsets are not an issue because the Second Coming is soon and the earth will be cleansed by fire at that time anyway. Besides, God created the earth, he would never let man destroy it.
There just is no real discussion to be had with somebody who believes those things. Fortunately, higher education and sex ed are highly correlated with lower birth rates, so I'd push for those if you're looking to reduce birth rates - even in Mormonism or other religions.
If everyone adopted your rationale, the human race would go extinct. We haven't gone so far that we are indifferent to the survival of our own species, have we?
Seems like a criteria for overcrowding to me.
But the world is not, and will not be, overcrowded with the kind of people who are on Hacker News. Birth rates in basically all advanced countries are under replacement, and it's even worse for the subset of high-IQ people who we need to build and run the future. This is an objective fact.
She drinks milk. That comes from cows. Cows are bad for the environment. By having another person on the planet, we need that much more milk.
Isn't that simply a consequence of how people today and in the past decided to solve these problems in general? This issue is not limited to diapers.
> Cows are bad for the environment.
Interesting, so cows are not part of the environment? What separates things from being part of the environment and not being part of it?
Every child that's born is a child that will eventually need their own shelter. Will probably drive their own car. Will need food.
The best way to reduce your carbon footprint is to not have children.
https://www.npr.org/2017/07/19/537954372/want-to-slow-global...
All I'm saying is that our current population growth is unsustainable and we're killing the environment. Until we adapt to only consume renewable resources, or at least sufficiently reduce our consumption of non-renewables, and stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, the best thing to do is slow down reproduction.
Seems to me there is ample evidence of the young supporting the old.
Consider what your aged life would be like if everyone suddenly elected to not reproduce. What would it be like to be 70, when the youngest person is 60?
Clearly, the young support the aged.
The young, by definition live in a world built by their elders, benefiting from all the infrastructure and institutions they created. So it’s not nearly as one-way as you think. Any care of the elderly is merely a part payment on that debt the young owe them.
Those cultures will be gone forever.
My tax bill sure indicates otherwise.
I decided at an early age not to have kids - at 12-13 I figured out that I was not suitable to be a father - one, I wanted the chain of crappy childhoods to stop with me, and two I have various conditions that I believe are largely genetic - I didn't want to pass those on.
Even if they were a huge fraction, you're considering one single axis. You're not considering population support or economic contributions by and on behalf of children, both of which are arguably much more significant than tax bill distribution.
The tax-funded support for “people in lower income brackets” are themselves very much slanted toward support for parents with children, largely because the American public is broadly fine with blaming poor adults for their condition, but somewhat less so for children in poverty.
Having benefited yourself, you shouldn't be bothered that others also benefit. It is only fair.
BTW, you can earn a 6-figure income and have negative taxes. The key is to have a double-digit family. This is what I do. Nothing is stopping you from doing likewise.
Choosing a life partner? Choosing a stock? Scoping a programming project??
Choices in the above can seem great at first - but maybe they turn out better over time, maybe worse, probably a roller-coaster mixture of elation, unknowns, and heartache.
But you'll never fully experience them until you've fully lived through them.
To help you understand how absurd your position is, consider if even one of the hundreds of thousands of reproduction "decisions" that are in your line had not been made, you wouldn't be here to express your point of view that it's "just a personal choice."
I chose to get a vasectomy. I'm 35 and have never in my life desired reproducing. I do not feel that supposed biological imperative.
I do feel the imperative to have sex, but having sex and producing babies are entirely different things. You can have one without the other.
> To help you understand how absurd your position is, consider if even one of the hundreds of thousands of reproduction "decisions" that are in your line had not been made, you wouldn't be here to express your point of view that it's "just a personal choice."
This is not a convincing argument.
You’re constantly putting the needs of a tiny human ahead of your own. If you do a good job then they benefit far more than you do. And they won’t realise the extent of your efforts until (or unless) they have children of their own.
Seeking praise is pointless. But it’s driven by the same themes the parents in the article talk about.
For instance my parents strongly believe that having kids is a duty, the more the better. They will brag about having 4 kids and they’ll tirelessly push married people to make them (the endless “is it on the way yet ?”). I also saw a lot of people of their age care a lot about the family lineage not disappearing. Some even atrocely cared about the name being carried on.
Even trying to have serious discussions about it just ends in “that’s how the thing have been, that how they should be” kind of rethorics.
I sympathize with couples that have their surroundings constantly repeat them they should have a baby, and wouldn’t fault them for thinking it was part of their duty to do so.
This really gets me.
We as a society do not need more children. Popping out a baby is not an accomplishment. Hell, most babies these days are accidents. It seems strange to me that someone would choose to do something that a lot of people do accidentally, and then expect some sort of recognition for their supposed sacrifice.
We as a society simply don't need more babies. The "sacrifice" is unnecessary at best, and possibly egotistical at worst.
New generations innovate, and they take care of the aging.
Having kids is actually a huge sacrifice on the part of the parents that ultimate benefits society as a whole.
In that respect maybe it is not that different than climbing a mountain, or achieving mastery in a fencing or long distance running. Would you tell those people "I resent your complaints, you brought this upon yourself, should've stayed home and bother bother with your marathon running" say when they the talk about how hard it is and how they got injured or weather was bad.
And simultaneously, it's just about the most rewarding thing I've ever done. Watching them grow, seeing some of the hard work finally paying off, having little conversations with my 4-year-old, glimpsing the kind of guy he might grow up to be. There's this amazing bond that is really hard to describe.
Whoever you are, you deserve to know the truth on both sides. Depending on your values, kids might be easily worth it (for us, they are), or you might want to wait, or you might decide that it's not the right choice for you.
We can all use more of these lessons.
I can feel exhausted and wrung out when my daughter responds to my attempts to make her life better and more comfortable by screaming at me and throwing things. I can feel angry when she does things that she knows are naughty and ignores our rules. And at the same time I can feel proud of her and connected to her and love her and be in awe of her learning and feel incredible when she tells me she loves me.
And I don't think it makes sense to sort of try to treat those like they are just positive and negative numbers and say what does it sum up to, positive or negative? They coexist, they don't cancel each other out. No matter how much I feel great when she tells me she loves me, that doesn't make it less exhausting to worry about the absurd hoops that I have to jump through for an education for her. And no matter how upsetting it is to have someone kick you when you try to help her feel safe after a nightmare, that doesn't make me feel any less deep satisfaction that someone that I help create and teach will (hopefully) survive me and always be part of my life.
I guess it depends on what you expect in return. I was so crazy amazed at the process of watching my daughter solving the 3D puzzle of putting the dummy back in her mouth. Plus just watching the process as a crying baby gives in to tiredness and falls asleep.
The first three months were a nightmare, but the payback was also there at the same time.
My dad missed out on this and I'm sure his life was poorer for it.
what do people expect when they have babies? that it will take care of itself? There's a thing called Postpartum Depression that is real and usually occurs right after having kids. Raising babies are hard but once they become toddlers it gets far easier. I don't have sympathy for anyone who complains about not getting enough sleep in the first 6 months.
I was watching The Walking Dead at 1am in the mornings because baby woke up and had to feed him till he slept again. Oh and then right to work at 8am for almost 2 months. He's 3 now and now attempting to wipe his own ass for a change.
You're a parent, deal with that responsibility.
To me, this seems related to the purpose of the article: being a parent requires a stiff upper lip according to our culture, unlike most everything else in life.
If that were the way marathons worked, I think the reaction of the audience to someone's struggle to finish the race would be different.
Indeed, I would expect more support instead of less. "You should have known" may be accurate but it feels unhelpful.
Not really. There are bad people who had wonderful parents and great people who had bad parents or no parents at all.
Child is separate new fresh human being, getting to human level from the level of vegetable over 18+-3 years.
The fact that it got some half of your genes doesn't make you special and if you don't let it die or get malnourished and give it chance at some positive human interaction and variety of fairly safe objects to tamper with it'll be fine and won't be much better off even if you tried you hardest.
That's how I felt. Now I see that parents either sugarcoat everything about parenting, or are eager to relay their current source of misery: "you think it's hard now? Just you wait until they are 2/3/5/10/12/16/18!" The truth is every stage of child development has its own unique joys and challenges, with previous challenges being replaced with new ones before you even get a chance to feel a sense of relief. But, if you aren't a parent, you don't really know this, and probably ask questions that bring out the sucky parts of parenting, and remember other people's negative experiences more.
Now that I think about it, it seems difficult to really convey the full emotional experience of being a parent. Only seeing parts of it makes it easy to get an overly optimistic/pessimistic view of things.
Thankfully I was never forced into it by marriage or otherwise. People who want children can have them and people who don't want them should not be shamed into it. Kids would be better off being genuinely wanted.
I personally was an accident kid, born before abortion was legalized and there was always a subtextual theme of being unwanted in my childhood. I decided early that I would not have a kid unless I really wanted one. And I never did have the desire. I'm glad I stuck to it and didn't give in to the immense peer pressure.
Japan has managed this fairly well, considering, but it's just going to get harder and harder for them, Western Europe, and soon the rest of the developed world, China, and even the US and on to what is currently the developing world.
People don't know it yet (although they should, since it's pretty clear where the demographics of urbanization and development are headed), but population decline is going to be the problem of the 21st century, much as the population explosion was a problem in the 20th.
Not everyone agrees social safety nets are a good thing. Some of us think properly preparing ourselves for retirement is more important.
> population decline is going to be the problem of the 21st century
We have too many people already. Population decline due to reduced birthrate sounds like a solution, not a problem.
I think you're missing the point. It doesn't matter if the State or the Individual is paying for it. Ultimately, services and care provided during retirement is provided by the young and healthy. If there aren't any young people, then no one will be available to provide care no matter who is trying to pay for it.
No, the best I can do is continue living and convince as many people as possible to not have children. If I kill myself now, many more people might be created than if I die later. Natural reduction in population without resorting to violence is entirely possible. Open your mind to ideas that don't involve killing anyone.
And we just can't rely on an increasing population indefinitely, even if we lived on Jupiter-sized planet. At some point, there are more people than the planet can support.
It's an unsustainable economic model.
I'm just talking about maintaining a stable birth rate.
EDIT: If you have two nations, otherwise identical and self-sufficient and cut off outside contact, and give one too many young folk and the other too many elderly, then 100 years later, the one that starts with too many young folk will be richer than the one with too few. EVEN on a per-person basis due to returns to scale.
Right now we're doing okay, but we haven't seen whether the planet can support us long term like this (or more accurately, whether 10 billion people can adapt successfully to a world we've changed).
Already, we're worried about the decline in pollinators, frogs, insect splatter, coral reef loss, and tropical forest deforestation. What do you think just that looks like in a few decades with 2-3 more billion people?
The human population is ultimately independent of the biosphere through technology. And, in fact, some of the worst impacts on the biosphere are when we lean strongly on the biosphere to provide for us (for instance, cutting down forests to provide fuel and to clear land for inefficient farming practices vs using solar/wind/nuclear to provide energy while using dense and hyper-efficient farming practices).
Technology has huge returns to scale, and technology is how we're already able to handle our current population. So I'd say we are indeed better off with more people than less, particularly if we reduce agricultural land usage (which we're already doing) and switch to non-burning energy sources (so no fossil fuels and no biomass). An effectively vegan diet (either truly vegan or using lab-grown meat and dairy and eggs) would, by itself, drastically reduce both our reliance and impact on the biosphere. Vat-grown staples (think specialized microalgae) substituting for field-grown staples like corn or wheat or soy would further drastically reduce our impact.
The Earth ought to be a garden, but not one empty of people! And a human society without children would be some kind of dystopia.
It's a good thing for some people to choose to pursue other things and not have kids. There's plenty of room for both kinds of people. But choosing to have kids in today's society is a huge challenge, and society as a whole should help women (and their partners) who choose to have kids. We should, as a MINIMUM, make healthcare free for children and mothers (and really everyone). We should also make it easier for mothers and fathers to balance family and work. Women shouldn't have to choose between their career and the normal (and very important) decision to bear children.
EDIT: And we can't get too far down this road before asking the question: Are humans fundamentally a bad thing or a good thing?
This is obviously subjective. But if we say some things have intrinsic value, such as the quantity and diversity of life, then we can make some progress: From Gaia's perspective, if humans evolved, wiped out a bunch of species, then disappeared, then humans are like an asteroid. Bad at first, but ultimately just changed the direction of evolution, not the actual presence or absence of life.
BUT, if humans are able to go beyond the Earth and establish niches for life beyond Earth, then from Gaia's perspective, humans are a net-good. Sure, there's a lot of terrible habitat destruction as humans become a technological species capable of interplanetary travel, but now humans are capable of seeding life far beyond what other species have been capable of. Humans could create diverse, rich niches for life on other planets and moons that otherwise would never experience life. Humans would then be a net-good.
That becomes impossible if we just view humanity's impact in a zero- or negative-sum way. The more humans, the worse it is for life. BUT 10 billion may be just about the minimum needed to support a large-scale interplanetary capability that's able to establish a foothold for life to flourish across the solar system and eventually the galaxy. Therefore: have children! And reduce your impact on the Earth by eating smart and using efficient energy and transportation options.
Value doesn't come from humans. It comes from machines. Workers income tax is just historically convenient way to tax machine owners as long as machines need operators.
We just need to find a better way to tax machines.
It shouldn't be possible to get a full time job and not be able to support kids. If it was possible in the 60s it should be possible now. GDP has gone up 400% since then and the dependency ratio only went up 15%.
Everyone should be happy to pay for schools because everyone benefits from being able to be paid a pension. And being able to spend the money they get from their pension on useful things, like food.
But it has lots of irreplaceable moments and provides a general sense of satisfaction for well-spent effort. I echo several comments on the joy of seeing my boys develop as people, learn, ask questions, and explore. Even the squabbles bring back fond memories of my own childhood tussles with my two brothers, and how those interactions are part of children learning how to relate to other people.
Aside from all that, once they are born (and beforehand for my wife and me), the profound sense of duty to care for them compels putting any thoughts of self aside. We alone chose to create them and we alone are responsible for raising them to be good adults. I'm not going to shirk such an important duty in life. Such a sense of duty is a cultural norm encouraged by community moral condemnation of those who fail to adhere. I reluctantly support such condemnation as essential for the successful continuation of our civilization. As such, I say that parents who shirk their duties are committing a moral wrong and should be criticized.
The article doesn't come out and say it, but it seems to suggest that this is widespread. I don't think that is true. Watching my parents' generation embrace grand-parenthood, and the explicit statements that many of them make about the importance of family, convinces me that the vast majority push through the tough parts and find the overall experience to be the most important thing they did in life.
Final point, and one that I am cautious to make for not wanting to offend anyone needlessly: I know plenty of singles and couples who are childless, and several that are childless by choice. Suffice it to say that my anecdotal view is that sadness, eccentricity, and empty hedonism seem to develop over time in these couples, especially in the women.
Modern society is all about the individual, in very pervasive and insidious ways. And that's what your final point speaks about: Having kids gives us a reason to think beyond today, beyond money, beyond MY wants, MY needs, MY life, MY MY MY MY MY.
Having children is selfless, in ways that people without kids cannot comprehend. And it is not a glorious, noble sacrifice. It is painful, scary, hard work. And it's worth it, because of the person you become when you matter to someone more than just yourself.
Most of the comments I saw in the article I consider selfish, childish, and shortsighted. "I hated fatherhood and I don't like the people my kids became." Well gee, maybe those things are connected. "I resent my kids because I keep thinking about all the things I wanted to do." Speechless. Like a 4 year old screaming on the floor of WalMart because they want a piece of candy.
I was raised to think about others and about my place among them. In almost ALL the comments in the article, I see otherwise. I can't respect their position even if I understand it. They're just a bunch of adults who never learned what being adult means.
They are also fun, goofy, beautiful, and potential life long friends. It's also hard to see that sometimes when you're kids are screaming at 2am and you're seeing a shitty day at work or caring for kids ahead of you.
This is the best song ever about parenting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LrZ01A6Q_M
I noticed a similar pattern with other parents I talk with. They all have complaints, they got no sleep last night, child cried all morning, wouldn't eat dinner, etc. but behind all those words you can see a glimmer of something in their face that tells me they are downplaying as well.
A lot of life events are the same way.
When someone asks how work's going, I don't want to be honest and talk about how goddamn happy I am seeing that fat number land in my Mint sidebar every two weeks since that promotion. So I say "It's hard work!" instead.
I tend to agree, but I think the limits apply to voicing regret for having specific children, especially in front of said children.
I think about the most sickening thing that anyone has ever described to me is meeting somebody who, in front of his own (tween and teenage) children, referred to them as basically a regrettable burden foisted upon him by his wife. It's bad enough suspecting that your parents don't care for you, I'll bet it hurts more to know for certain.
Still, it is nuts to receive backlash for saying that it's incredibly hard work. Of course it's hard work!
As a parent, I was appalled how much bad advice there is out there. Some was from books and some from other parents or family. It seems to be that every human (at least here in the US) starts from scratch and uses their gut to guide them in parenting. Most people don't learn much from previous generations, and that seems crazy to me.
If I were to do it over again, I would definitely do better the 2nd time around, but I have no interest. Raising my son (with my wife) was the hardest thing I've ever done, and I'm enjoying life now that he's 17.
Appreciate your parents.
Yes, raising children is difficult (especially the first one, since in radically changes your life, you're no longer independent). It's also rewarding, but it _is_ difficult. And that's for the best case, when you get a normal child - I don't know if I can even grasp the difficulties of raising a problematic child (e.g. diabetic).
You should absolutely not do it on a whim; but if you do it, I'd say "go all in and enjoy it". Don't regret your previous life, fully embrace the new one. It has its perks, too - and they are not few. And (at least I hope so), it only gets better as times goes by.
Lol!
I wasn't trying to say that it's bad/ that's it's an useless mental model. I was trying to say "don't apply it to important life decisions, if anything, the opposite of it is true there".
Yeah I think if anybody thinks that Occam's Razor is anything other than a way to give weight to two competing theories, they're misunderstanding it entirely.
However if we were to apply the same logic to life decisions, you need to note that the premise of the Razor is "given the same outcome...". So even if you were to apply it to life decisions, it would say "given two paths in life that take you to the same place, choose the simpler one". Which I think can still be useful, even if a completely separate idea than Occam's Razor. Having kids and not having kids are not equal outcomes.
You use big words and don't really say anything, therefore you're reeeeaaallllyyy smart.
Nah, most things that are worth it are easy, but the easy worthwhile things you just do day-in and day-out and reap the benefits without reflection or even much notice of it as “doing something”. You only notice then when adverse conditions make them hard or impossible.
Most things that you need to put notable effort into (and that therefore don't fade into the background) that are worthwhile are hard, but the worthwhile part of that is superfluous, since the first part is equivalent to being hard.
If we take CO2 it's another thing, but low emissions won't save you once all the biosphere is literally eaten.
If all countries start living like americans we'd need 5 times the surfaces area of earth.
I can see that you don't actually value Earth, just pity that it's so small you have to ration it.
Demographics will shift dramatically if we are to prolong youth instead of prolonging old age.
I can't image a friend, partner, colleague, family member..whatever. With such little heart they regret their own children. This is the kind of person that believes in "shithole" countries because they lack all the qualities that make up compassion.
Part of this might be caused by the need for a two parent income to survive. It means that the default parent has two jobs, whatever their ambition might be.
Accidentally got my girlfriend pregnant in my early 20's got married and had another child, on purpose, 5 years after the first.
I wouldn't change anything and even with all the sacrifice and hard work the rewards run deep and i couldn't imagine the person i would be had i not ended up a father.
My oldest is heading to college in next fall and i am already feeling sad about how her daily absence is going to leave me feeling a bit empty.
It's not for everyone and i can only speak for myself but i never knew i wanted them or how much more fulfilling my life would be until i had them.
Read this: Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting by Pamela Druckerman
Someone called the cops on me for leaving her, at 8 years old, in a car, parked in the shade, on a cool day for 5 minutes.
She was questioned by a stranger at age 10 (where are your parents, what are you doing alone &c.), when I let her walk by herself through the safest part of town for 3 blocks from my office to an after-school activity.
Motherhood or parenting or children aren't the problem, the basic breakdown of people being able to live and relate with other people is.
>"I love my son with all my heart,” she says. “My life revolves around this child.
Sorry, no. Love means desiring what is good for that person. Not existing is not good for that person... As well, her life revolves around her happiness, which is why her decision wether or not to do it again is answered by it's impact on her happiness.
It's interesting to contrast this concern (is concern the right word?) in Canada with articles about the same thing in parts of Africa [0]. The only difference being what side of the replacement level the population is on.
[0] http://blogs.worldbank.org/health/female-education-and-child...
It's not a tie. There is evidence for one side or the other. And in this case, the evidence couldn't possibly be stronger for one particular side.
There is not necessarily an innate drive to make a traditional family. Sex, sure. Most people have a sex drive but what happens afterword need not be familial bliss, or even sticking around to raise the child at all. In fact there a lot of very successful strategies in nature to offload that work to the other parent or even fool unrelated adoptive parents.
Our environment has been drastically changed by birth control.
Previously, a desire for sex was essentially equal to a desire for reproduction. Selection for one would select for the other, so they didn't need to be distinguished.
So essentially we are now unfit for our environment. We will rapidly evolve to fit this new environment. People of the future will desire actual reproduction, not just sex.
Edit: I should clarify, my 'good for them' comment was about how it's okay for people to have regrets about having children, even though it's culturally taboo. If more people acknowledge this, then perhaps fewer people will take on the burden.
Add to this the fact that everyone wants to have the best schools, houses and things in general, and the income that's necessary to get and maintain said things and you see that having modern children is a trap.
I remember I found it absolutely exhausting when I first started seeing her - it took a couple of years for that to not be the case - and they are -not- difficult children; quite the opposite, they are all really wonderful, and we generally get on very, VERY well. But it's an immense amount of work, and every time my girlfriend compares herself to where she would have been had she not had children and committed her time to be (what I consider to be) and excellent parent, I have to remind her that she's been a full time + (and then some) parent for about 12 years. Returning to the workplace for her has been difficult as she now works a full time job as well as being a mum - and one who cooks just about every night of the week, and has generally impossibly high standards for herself as a parent; despite her/our eldest now currently studying at Cambridge University.
I can totally understand why some would regret having children; it's presented as being a utopian existence that you get immense satisfaction from in many quarters, and anyone who dares question whether it's the right move for them (or indeed their prospective children) is given short shrift. It's not for everyone, but everyone is expected to have children. I have been given long-winded lectures in the past for not having my own, and I'm sure anyone who dared to question the experience with said inquisitors would have a very hard time!
I think it's likely you're applying an evolutionary explanation to your parenting behavior, but don't really care that much about your children's actual genes. You care about your children as persons, not their molecular machinery.
If you really, really cared you would have your genes cloned and be donating massively to sperm banks and what not.
I think mine is actually the simpler explanation, and yours is reaching a bit. We're surrounded by vicious competition for genetic reproduction, I don't know why humans would be the exception.
And I don't want a clone, I want to pick a partner with all kinds of good genes to bring to the mix and toss them together, which I did. A partner I'm attracted to in part because of a lot of cues she gives me indicating her genes.
I think when you've had the pride of a son or daughter who is the spitting image of you, or walks just like you, or is noticeably muscular in the places you are, it's hard to deny exactly where that is coming from..
Anyway, there was an interesting philosophy podcast that rejected reductionistic evolutionary explanations for human behavior. The reasoning goes that yes, evolution is responsible for creating our minds, but once we have the ability to be conscious, to reflect, ask all sorts of questions and form new ideas and what not, that this is a new level of explanation. Thus the need for psychology, sociology, etc.
Call it an emergent if you like. Evolution itself is emergent upon physics, chemistry, geology, climatology, etc.
But we've built a society in the west based around worshipping our children. Politicians can do anything if it's "for the children", no matter how draconian or insane. It's rude to ever comment on how someone else chooses to raise their children. It's considered horrible to not do everything you can to make your children happier, better, etc. Better go buy a house with a yard because your kid might want a yard, because everyone knows that kids need yards.
The really interesting question isn't whether it's okay to regret having children- it's what's going to change when society unshackles itself from this strange obsession.
It's kinda violating a social contract. Everyone's the product of thousands of people over thousands of generations who chose to have kids. By choosing not to have kids you also choose to not contribute the the labor force that will likely take care of you in your old age. You can say all you want about contributing money or inventions, but money is just a claim on future labor and few people's inventions are really that valuable.
We're not some small tribe in danger of going extinct. It's a terrible argument to say someone who doesn't reproduce is a freeloader. We need less people on this planet, not more. We're on pace to have 10 billion by mid century. That's going to be a challenge to support that many people while not ruining the environment in the process.
To be honest, that's a very freeloader-like mindset: "I don't have to contribute to X because someone else will take care of it for me."
The problem is, now you're stepping into quantifying the context on heavily subjective terms. Here's how that goes then:
How valuable have most of the last 15 billion people been on average? How about the bottom 50% of those people in terms of productivity and what they contributed to the betterment (subjective) of humanity or the earth? How valuable, in similar terms, have the bottom 10% of those people been?
And that's why - among dozens of other good reasons - it's entirely unreasonable to judge a person's life in such a manner.
It's not actually so clear cut. In all times there was a huge sways of people who won't have kids. Handmaids, sailors, mercenaries, servants, slaves, etc, etc. Some of them could have children but it was never guaranteed.
This was offset by other people who'll have more children. Sometimes it wasn't. At all times a lot of lines will wither. Some vast tribes will be reduced to a few dozen families.
Social contract is XX century construct and obviously unsustainable at that. Once children stopped being source of labor but labor sinks, it tried to also became unconscionable contract. As in, everybody tries to slack off their duty while praising it to other people. It's like with conscription.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/0...
I remember seeing some of the rage reaction to it online at the time. When a study like that gets that kind of response, you know it's probably hitting close to home for the people responding.
Now with that said, should parents be able to gripe without repercussions? Absolutely. But griping is not the same as expressing regret, and expressing regret can imply you weren't really up for the job.
Intrinsically, deep down, I feel in complete agreement that you're right about that statement. And then I stop and think "wait, isn't that the very point I was just trying to make above? That something is wrong with this?"
Why do children have to me more important than parents? Why not 'just as important'? Consider: if we had a friend who had a new boyfriend and constantly put the boyfriend's needs above her own saying 'that's just how relationships work, you put their needs above yours, always', we'd have an intervention for that friend. We'd say that's not healthy, that there has to be give and take, that we all have our own needs that are important too.
But make the other side a child and well, now that's just the right way to do things.
I'm not saying that we're wrong for thinking that- I'm saying we should really look at that deeply and figure out if we're sure that it's right. How far is too far? Are we past that point? Maybe our own happiness should sometimes win out over our children's happiness and that's not a monstrous thing.
It is neither weird nor obsessive.
People don't like hearing "I wish my children were never born", because it sounds a lot like desire to commit homicide.
People also don't like hearing "I wish I were never born", because it sounds a lot like suicide.
I understand the need to talk about things the way they really are. But don't be surprised if regretting life is deeply abhorrent to most.
Of course it does not. What a horrible thing to say!
The rest of your post...I think doth protest too much? Some people have children. Some people don't. We're a product of an evolution that makes many of us want to procreate. Strange obsession? What a bizarre statement.
Secondly, many of the things people complain about are only tangentially and superficially actually related to the child. Every Christmas some parents go to herculean lengths to get the must have toy (or the $900 stroller or only the best school, etc) not because their kid actually wants or needs it, but as a status symbol/achievement among their clique. Humans are imperfect - story at 11.
My first thought isn't about the shitty parent or my own choices, it's about the kid who's a secondary character, or whose mere existence appears to be exclusively a cause of grief for their parents. How does the kid feel? What is being done to ensure the kids aren't fucked up if their caretaker is moping around saying they'd rather have a lifetime of wine parties instead of going to soccer practice twice a week?
Do you also believe the "bullies are just jealous of their victims" story?
But you WILL be remembered by your children...if you don't get duped into not having them.
But I can also tell you I never felt love like the love I feel for my children. I never felt as proud before I saw my children do things that astonish me. I never felt as close to my wife before I had children.
The feels man. For me it makes it all worth it. I absolutely get that it's not for everyone, but for the people that are undecided: there are a lot of happy parents out there and I am one of them.
"Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it."
Both from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It makes sense from a political actor's point of view to push their message on whatever platform reaches the most influential people, and Hacker News was that platform once, but it destroys the platform in the long-term, and I don't think they care about people wanting a platform for discussing news for hackers.
In this article, the message being pushed is one of social change, and although I agree with the agenda, I don't think it's appropriate in Hacker News either.