both parents will need to work to fund raising a child, so the mother necessarily has to do 1.5 or 2 full-time jobs
grandparents most likely don't live in the same city so you're reliant on strangers to raise your children
increased risk of autism / ADD / lack of focus because of the internet
the world is already over-populated, and however hard it is for you to compete with your peers, it'll be even harder for your children
etc etc etc (to name but a few)
- Family time is enjoyable, certainly helps cut down social media addiction and replace it with something meaningful (unless your perspective is that you'll die anyway so nothign is meaningful, but then you have other issues).
- Having kids forces me to push myself to be better, control my emotions, be a role model that inspires my kids. Without kids, I would find it harder to have such a clear drive to consistently be the best of myself every day.
- Kids are not independent. A priority that tops everything else shifts your perspective from you being at the center of your world to something else. That something else is fragile, needs care. That helps bring focus, consistency and growth to everyday life.
- Helping someone discover new things brings me joy. I can do that almost every week with my kids and I love it.
Does that make it a good choice in terms of cost/benefits? Depends who you are and how you see your life I guess?
Edit: reading another comment - the list about is indeed a descriptions of the symptoms of what it takes to bring joy and happiness to a new counsciousness in this world. I like the perspective of that other comment and wanted to highlight it too.
So that's my "answer": You created a baseless hypothetical. The hypothetical itself is the problem here, not the concept of kids. Nobody can name benefits that outweigh the "costs" here because the costs are complete fiction and designed to be insurmountable.
Your perspectives seem incredibly negative and you seem to be super pessimistic about your future & the world's future, so it makes sense for you.
Other people have optimistic perspectives about their own future (making more than enough money in the future, building a social circle and "competing with their peers" ~ not sure what this means & how you're competing with your peers) so it makes sense for them to have children.
+ Being a parent is fun. Kids are super funny. Teaching them stuff is a treat, and seeing their interests emerge is a wonderful feeling. Assuming you love your spouse, you get to see this chimera of the best parts of you and your partner walking around in the world.
+ Kids are also familial and social glue. Even if you live a ways from parents, it's an easy excuse to stay in touch, a place to plan trips. One of the crazy things that as your kids grow they look and sound like different relatives. It's a cool experience.
+ Selfishly, it's nice knowing you'll have some influence on the world, no matter how small, after you pass.
I'm know some childless billionaires and honestly I wouldn't trade the decade-long headstart I've had with my daughter and her brother for all their worldly fun. Everything people say about parenting being the best thing you'll ever do is right – and they're underselling it.
FWIW, I understand the cynicism. You seem like someone who has suffered through tough times. I hope you find peace.
I find that hard to fit into either of what I find your very unpleasant framings of the question:
> What are the benefits to having children nowadays?
> why one should choose to procreate nowadays
p.s. I'm 51. I don't have children - I've never felt the desire to, but figure I will have kids one day if I want to. I've always thought it would be better for kids if their parents felt like they wanted kids!
Doesn't need to be true. A woman can take a year off or so to breastfeed and recover from the birth, at that point you can send the kid to daycare and split the child care duties. In my house my wife prefers the child care stuff so I pitch in by doing most of the other household chores, but since my daughter was 1 I've changed as many diapers as she has. Really she doesn't have to work, but she didn't like staying home with the kid and the household budget we would have to meet for that to work out.
> grandparents most likely don't live in the same city so you're reliant on strangers to raise your children
This part sucks, I agree.
> increased risk of autism / ADD / lack of focus because of the internet
You choose what your children get to do in their free time. It's really easy to sit them down with a tablet and walk away, but nobody is forcing you to do it. There is an old saying, "You can be friends with your children when they are 14 or when they are 40, not both."
> the world is already over-populated, and however hard it is for you to compete with your peers, it'll be even harder for your children
It isn't overpopulated with people like your children will grow up to be. Children in the west benefit from public health measures and educational opportunities that will potentially enable them to be net contributors to solutions for overpopulation. The world can't be overpopulated with geniuses, with enough of them we can make new worlds.
People who don’t have kids have low regret rates not having them. People who do have them either won’t share their regret having had them, or genuinely enjoy the experience. Do what you think is best for you, and own the decision once made.
Having kids means that your life is no longer yours - your kids become the primary focus. When you cannot complete a 20 minute task uninterrupted because your kids require your attention. Or the only free time you get is at 9pm and you're ready for bed. At least for the first few years.
So if you are asking what are the benefits - there are benefits as some other posters commented. But if you are asking the question, it's probably not the right choice for you.
For instance, asking others what the benefits are to getting a dog. Yes, there are benefits, but if you haven't reached the point of wanting a dog simply because you want a dog, then getting a dog probably isn't the right choice.
When I look at it clinically, whether or not to have children feels pretty much like a selfish decision these days; everything is about the parent's fullfilment/needs, not the childs. Perhaps it always has been: free labor for the farm/factory/shop, carrying on the family name and/or genetic legacy, and free care in your dotage.
Since none of these applied to me or my wife, and I know I wouldn't have been a good parent (something indirectly validated by helping to raise nieces and nephews), we're not parents. No regrets so far.
Deep down, you don't want children. If you figure out the reason why and cut through your social-programming, then you'll have them.
Otherwise, thanks for playing!
I'm a dad who decided with my partner to have our first kid, and then they turned out to be triplets. Just for context.
All of the things listed by parent below resonated with me. Here are a couple additional ones I didn't see:
1)Kids are an amazing lens through which to see the world brand new. Even spending time with a kid (not even yours) will let you discover new things your jaded grown-up brain has missed.
2)Moreover, society needs young people for this reason. As we get older we get less flexible in our thinking, less effusive in our ability to love, less hallucinatory in our creativity (all of which are important for running companies, governments, societies, etc.) Kids and teenagers (who are like kids matured in a cheese cave so their flavors and smells get more complicated) bring radicality and imagination back to society. If you're thinking about using hallucinogens to change your perspective as an older person, consider that kids/young folks basically bring this energy to the party without the drugs.
Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in "Braiding sweet grass" about how many indigenous societies around the world recognize the separate "wisdom of toddlers" and "wisdom of teens" - I feel like we need to talk about this more.
As a man still open to having kids, I've come to believe that the internet imbues us with contempt for one other via a kind of false familiarity, and it's also a source of literal mind viruses that make mutual trust and respect very difficult to maintain in the face of aligning to increasingly absurd narratives we think we need to support. It's a form of captivity, and almost nothing in nature breeds in it. I'm certainly guilty of it as well. Biologically, only a fraction of a given population reproduces anyway, and it's neither here nor there whether one does so or not, but evolutionarily selecting out over something we read on the internet seems like an avoidable fate.
I still believe kids are worth the challenges of sustaining an intact nuclear home for them, but I'd enter into it the way I have other things, which is that they will also cost almost everything, but it's a bet on ourselves and the hope of making and then being a part of a life. It's not a rational decision, which I think is the point. If it were, our species would have died out millenia ago.
Well I can’t give you any reason why you should have children, but my life isn’t in any way worse for having a child, and while I certainly have regrets in life, my son isn’t one of them. Ymmv.
As far as I have seen people mainly pop kids because they want to (the same way people who are hungry want food regardless of any knowledge about nutrition), because they want their kids to deal with their old age crap instead of dealing with it on their own, or because it's the usual path laid by the environment
If you don't wanna drink soda then just don't drink it
I'm a dad with two kids and it's fair to do that my wife AND i both have 2 full time jobs: yes, as a man, I do laundry, bathe the kids, put them to bed, drive them to activities, cook, do dishes - as much as she does (some more, some less but it evens out). Welcome to the 21st century - turns out parenthood can be 'man's work' just as much as it can be 'woman's work.'
Onward from that initial poor and sexist assumption. . .
If you want to read up on the empirical reasons for having kids based on 'happiness' as the criterion, check out 'Stumbling on Happiness.' In that book, it documents that, yes, parents are overall less happy than non-parents (moment-to-moment).
Despite this fact parents arguably can have deeper moments of happiness (however less infrequent).
As my mom once said wisely - "no one ever reasonably decides to have kids."
If you're using reason and rationality as deciders, most likely you won't have kids. . .and that's fine since our planet seems pretty full and humans consume way too much.
Unfortunately you're seeing in this thread a reflection of how the world reacts to people who don't want kids. People are incredibly shameless about how intolerant they are towards the idea and shameless in how they stigmatize not having kids: for example saying "you're not ready to be a parent", assuming that being a parent is something that should even be done in the first place, rather than sincerely discussing whether or not being a parent is best for a particular person
I’m not sure this is true. Most modern economies in the world have a declining birth rate.
My perspective on children has changed recently. We need more people and in the world to solve the problems that we’ve created. We don’t know if life exists outside of the earth and I want living things to thrive, and for that to be the case, I think we need more people.
For what it's worth:
* My wife is the primary caretaker and doesn't have a paid job. I split as much of the parental load with her as possible.
* My grandparents pretty much all sucked and so do my kids'. They're fine. We do the child rearing and occasionally have a date, so we hire a babysitter.
* What increase? We've expanded the scope of autism and are better at detection. This feels like a wild claim.
* Is it? Or are pockets overpopulated? I don't think saving the planet (or continuing to destroy it) is as much a matter of population control as it is behavior. Kids skew more liberal than their parents, on average. Maybe they can unscrew this.
But seriously, don't do it. It doesn't sound like you want to or you wouldn't be looking to have your mind changed. For some people it's everything and for some it's genuinely a mistake that can't be undone. If you think it might be a mistake, stop.
And, apart from that, your
“ I'm less interested in parents trying to rationalize what deep down they know was a bad decision, the perpetual "oh but I'd do it all over again" thing when clearly their life is a lot of worse and they're full of regret.”
is very judgmental.
One can be happy in the midst of hardship, difficulty and pain.
One does not have a child because “it is a benefit”. Unless one just sees life as a costly game.
That said, having a kid is always a gamble. It may turn out they have a very bad character, some grave illness or other serious problems. We all gamble hoping it will happen to someone else, but there is no any guarantee. And if it happens to us, we basically have to live with it until the end, and frankly it's a miserable life.
Raising them can be challenging, but kids themselves are great. "What's in it for me" isn't really a great question, though, since it's not about you.
Kids have grown me as a person. They have made me much less selfish and self-centered than I was. (Kind of by necessity...) I am a better human being for having kids.
But if you've got a selfish and self-centered mindset, and you want me to justify having kids within that selfish mindset, I can't do it. "It will help you grow into someone less self-centered" isn't a reason that a person thinking in a self-centered way will accept.
But, for the record: It wasn't a bad decision. My life is not a lot worse, and I'm not full of regret. And don't presume that I'm rationalizing - that's you trying to rationalize my life to make it fit in your existing view.
But, let's set that aside for a moment. Assuming you believe in evolution and natural selection, you know that every environment has stressors and great filters. With life existing on Earth for 4.5 billion years, do you really want to be the evolutionary dead end of all the ancestors who came before you? In the great dance of life, are you the dodo bird?
It it worth noting, I don't have kids (don't like them, they have no conversation)
For a person in twenties or thirties, kids are often a far off idea since happy to just focus on work and gain independence and having money but source of satisfaction change I would think for most as they get older.
People are social animals and that's the reason we spend time in Hacker News. No person no matter how introverted enjoys being alone all of the time; some people get their most enjoyable social interaction with their own family.
One could argue that it doesn’t make any sense to have children. It is more work, costs more money, and can cause more stress at times.
But people still do it. People still say it is worth it.
I for one never thought I would have children, but I cannot imagine my life without them.
Your partner may want it, your parents may want it, no circumstances change the biological need to procreate.
Also, people do it during war, during draught, during ice age and on falling planes. You doomers aren't living in the end times. This isn't even close.
For what it's worth, I'm in my 40s and don't have children and likely never will, though I do hope to adopt. In my case, I'm a man, can't have children because of that, and my wife didn't want to for various reasons. It's ultimately up to her, and I'd rather adopt than divorce her. Is that a good enough reason? I don't know. But I don't personally see anything about the world and it's future making it bad enough that future human existence isn't worth it. I plan to continue existing as long as I can, and if I could exist long into the future, I would. If it's good enough for me, it's good enough for new humans, too.
Also, my wife has ADHD, and as far as I can tell, her existence is still worthwhile. Not bringing people into the world because you fear they'll develop ADHD doesn't seem like a good enough reason to me. If you expect to pass on some congenital condition likely to result in a short life of nonstop suffering, sure, forego that. But I don't feel like the common diseases of affluence, i.e. anxiety, attention span disorders, obesity, make life not worth living. Humanity has some work to do in order to figure out how to reconcile our evolutionary history and learned behaviors and mental proclivities with a dramatically changed modern world, but we should actually do that work, not give up and end the human experiment.
...or maybe... there is something beyond a life of self-indulgence after all? Maybe the sacrifice in time - which is the largest sacrifice, all that money-talk is secondary in my opinion - is worth the gains? You might have to skip a few festivals and you might not always have the latest iGadget but you will not miss these because you have far more interesting and challenging prospects, namely the raising of the next generation.
Not necessarily true; previous income, lifestyle preferences, and assets all matter here.
> grandparents most likely don't live in the same city so you're reliant on strangers to raise your children
Not all people are “grandparents” or “strangers”. And the people involved in carrying for your children can very quickly stop being strangers even if they start out that way.
> increased risk of autism / ADD / lack of focus because of the internet
The internet doesn't cause Autism or AD(H)D.
> the world is already over-populated, and however hard it is for you to compete with your peers, it'll be even harder for your children
The world isn't overpopulated. Competition in capitalist economies may generally be exacerbated by various factors that concentrate rewards more over time, but there are enough other social forces at play that it's pretty hard to make any concrete prediction about prospects for any particular person's offspring a few decades down the road.
> I'm looking for new perspectives on why one should choose to procreate nowadays.
Why? This is so heavily dependent on your personal preferences and priorities that there isn't a whole lot of useful information directly on the question that anyone else can give you.
To the extent that there are beliefs on matters of fact underlying your existing position or questions of fact that would help resolve that position, that's probably a more valuable place to seek outside information than arguments directly for having children which necessarily presume a particular value framework which may or may not be yours.
The rich can afford to make bad choices. Everyone else needs to carefully weigh the pros and cons for themselves.
You lost me here. You're not genuinely interested.
But I have been deciding if I want a dog recently and after reading through other replies I find the reasoning the same.
A dog is like a child that’s permanently stuck at 5.
They need to be fed and cleaned, they need to be walked multiple times a day and engaged with.
My cat who’s old has started meowing while standing next to the thing he wants recently. Food, hallway, balcony, fresh water, etc. he does this on a fairly predictable schedule.
I’m a person who’s schedule is rarely predictable (except for when I was younger and single and live a rolling 30 hour day).
I like having the cat, we’re best friends. But the part of having the cat be so needy is a nightmare for me. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in months.
The meow he does now triggers some kind of paternal instinct in me that makes it impossible for me to just quickly finish my thought at work or whatever before getting up to serve him.
A dog would be even more needy because living in a big apartment they can’t get their exercise or bathroom needs met without me dropping everything to help them.
A child is even more needy, your sleep for several years is utterly destroyed, etc. and they tend to outlive you so the commitment is the longest of the three.
Your OP also doesn’t mention any of the horrific details of childbirth.
I’d never have kids for lots of reasons, the idea of putting my best friend through that horror makes it a nonstarter.
The real answer that people have kids are one or more of: 1. a mistake 2. their partner wants them so they go along with it 3. they’re convinced by social norms that they should 4. They have a basic drive to have children
Some of the people in the first 3 who didn’t have 4 may still have that drive kick in after they have kids. It didn’t happen for my parents but they’re malignant narcissists so it’s a different story.
Distilling what many other replies seem to be trying to express, in order to be a good parent you need stamina because so much of it is unpleasant.
The unpleasant parts can be rewarding or lead to personal growth so unpleasant may not be bad in of itself.
I’ve met people who join startups from FAANG and they’re overwhelmed with the demand and pace and they leave. And I’ve met people from all over who join startups and because the mission of what the startup is trying to achieve resonates with them as something bigger than themselves that will make the world a better place they embrace the pace and the need to go above and beyond.
I’ve been at startups where I didn’t sleep a lot because I was inspired or there was a critical deadline and needed to push something over the hill with the team to survive. Now later in my career I find it harder to get the same drive and satisfaction from that same sleep deprivation regardless of the reason.
People are blinded by the ambition, romance, comradely, accomplishing something difficult, etc. basically on an emotional level to overcome the turbulence of it.
If you’re looking to decide if you want to have kids or not, then not having some kind of drive makes it a gamble of whether you develop the drive after the fact or not. Without it there’s no set of clinical reasons that will make you choose to go through with it.
The idea that you have this choice is a privilege, many people have kids without it being a considered choice.
Sabine Hossenfelder: Is Elon Musk right in saying that we are too few people? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI1AaZ9OkH8
unhinged degrowth ideology
Kids are handicap, but people tend to fill void with other handicaps (alcohol, chasing skirt...).
But it is big decision and very long run. You should not make any compromises on partner (even before you start). Marrying woman over 24, with debt or mental issues should be deal breaker.