I get that, but my friends are starting to have kids and I'm rather looking forward to being their crazy uncle and teaching them how to solder and take things apart etc. I love kids, I just don't want to be the one primarily responsible for them

I cannot fault you. Most days I wonder why I decided to have kids. I realize that I didn't decide it in any sort of logical manner that implies normal decision-making. If I went purely on logic and rational thought, I certainly wouldn't have done it. Alas, that wasn't in the cards. I wouldn't take it back, but I tell everyone who is on the fence about having kids to very strongly reconsider if they want to go through with it.

On its face, it's an incredibly dumb choice. But biology wins out, sometimes..

It depends how big the field you have to plow is. Having many kids helps in keeping and maintaining the field then using it to grow food (for you and your free plowering kids).

Some kind of bootstrap if you will.

I don't really know about your situation and if you are actually doing it now. But based on experience, people who get married usually dismiss friendship with singles and instead look for friendships with people who have families/kids.

You certain thats not bi-directional, or more likely - the other way around? As a single person who can go do fun things at the drop of the hat without having to get permission from someone else, or set up a babysitter, or any other number of roadblocks, trying to set up an outing with married with kids crowd is incredibly irritating, time consuming and often fruitless.

A lot of this is simple scheduling pattern differences.

As an example, my no-kids friends typically schedule things like dinner parties starting at 8:30pm or so. The ones with kids would aim for 5:30 or 6 instead.

Well... in order for you to wonder at how "biology ruled over your logical processing unit" a lot of people had to sacrifice their freedoms, before you. Don't beat yourself over it, it's such an important thing that it is equal to "being alive". And what you lose as a person, your DNA gains as a living system. DNA is such a chump. I never realized how much work it does. Every protein in our bodies is copied from DNA. It does so much copying and processing, it's amazing. And for such a hardworking pal, it's OK to sacrifice yourself. It's busting its ass too, in order for any of the billions of processes in our bodies to happen.

What if you value your consciousness and the here and now more than the idea of your DNA staying alive well after you're dead?

To me, my consciousness is my identity (myself). The body is just a vessel for it, and once it craps out, and takes the consciousness down with it, I couldn't care less about my DNA (a bit of a tautology, but you get the idea).

Yes, I agree, we can value our consciousness more than the idea of DNA survival, but the reason it exists in the first place is to protect the DNA. It's just a mechanism to adapt and accommodate the organism to the changing external conditions.

I wrote it in so nice way. I'm usually more harsh to people.

Deciding not to have kids because it's too much of an effort is so selfish act. You're throwing away all the effort your ancestors put in to get to the point of you being alive.

Let's not get caught up on what dead ancestors may think. The world is already overpopulated. Overpopulation causes depletion of natural resources, degradation of the environment, conflicts and wars caused by such lack of resources, and there being less resources per capita. Adding people when it is causing problems like these is harmful.

However, people having 2 or 3 or thereabouts children isn't something to be worried about too much, so go ahead if you want to. But people who have lots of children has to stop. This is per person, so it includes men who have children with different partners. If it is left too late, then less can be done about it.

Just in terms of numbers isn't a man having a single child each with 10 women better than 10 couples each having two kids?

In response to your question, have another question. Does a man having a child with woman mean she won't have other children? I don't see any reason it does.

Would a man having a child with 10 women cause huge social problem? It certainly does. Do you want to be a single woman with kids? Doubt it.

Why should men get special status over women with the number of children they have? I really don't see any reason for that. There are men who deliberately get women pregnant and then leave them because they think they are great and winning life because they have so many children and let other people care for them. Those sort of people would support only having limits applied to women.

> Why should men get special status over women with the number of children they have?

I never said they should.

> There are men who deliberately get women pregnant and then leave them

What in the world does that have to do with anything?

> Those sort of people would support only having limits applied to women.

What are you talking about? I never said anything about any sort of limit.

Having kids is a far more selfish act than not. Our species and our planet would be way, way better off if about 9/10 of us elected not to reproduce for a few generations.

You are presumably delighted to know that Europe is in fact dying off with only France having a fertility rate of 2.0 (2014) which is not enough to sustain the population. One wonders who's going to be paying those taxes to fund the pensions of the elderly and the other massive liabilities of the European welfare states.

At < 2 replacement rate, the populations of Portugal, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria just won't be around in a few generations. The cultural identity of Europe will disappear on present trends.

Relying on fertility to prop up the welfare state was never a sustainable model to begin with. The adjustment will not be pleasant whoever is left in 200 or so years will be a lot better off because of it. To say nothing of all the non-human species with whom we share the world.

> One wonders who's going to be paying those taxes to fund the pensions of the elderly and the other massive liabilities of the European welfare states.

Can't pay for it. It's all gonna collapse =)

Couldn't agree more.

That's one of the reasons we decided to not have kids. There are too many humans consuming too many resources in an unsustainable lifestyle.

You are normally "way more harsh to people" for making the very personal decision as to whether they will have children?

You do realize just how offensive you are being? Whether other people have children is not for you to decide or deride.

I wrote "...because it's too much of an effort" was a really selfish reason. If you decide not to have kids on some grounds, I don't mind at all.

It amazes me how shallow has people's attention on HN become. Not even bothering to read the whole sentence. I feel like I'm on Reddit.

> I'd put this up there with racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination.

This is probably the most offensive thing in this thread.

You are allowed to disagree with other people's choices. You are allowed to voice that disagreement, even publicly. People are allowed to think you're stupid for caring whether or not someone else has children.

Nothing about any of that is even remotely "discrimination" and to imply it's anywhere in the same universe as racism or sexism is offensive to real problems everywhere.

I'd argue that being harsh to women for their reproductive choices is a key component of modern sexism.

Discrimination has a variety of forms.

It takes a man and a woman to have a child. Stop trying to shoehorn cries of sexism into everything.

Sure. And women and men can both obviously face discrimination over their reproductive choices. The discrimination just disproportionally falls on women. Ie. less likely to be hired because she may have children. Expected behaviours and judgements if she doesn't.

What do women have to do with it?

> You're throwing away all the effort

How many children must one have before one is morally absolved of this sin?

Zero. I only wrote that for those citing "it's too much of an effort" as a reason not the have kids.

I intended to ask: how many children must I have before I'm allowed to cite "it's too much of an effort" as my reason for not having another child?

The topic is deciding to have kids or not. I doesn't matter how many.

As I understand it, though, the argument applies almost equally to deciding whether to have fewer than $n$ children, whether $n$ is 1 or larger.

You have no idea what his ancestors wanted.

I have two kids and whether or not they have kids makes no difference at all to me. Likewise, my parents never pressured me to have kids.

Most of our ancestors didn't get to reproduce all that offspring by being nice guys.

If you think about it for a moment they can't nearly have been as noble as they're made out to be, by far.

Reproduction is not a virtue in and of itself. There will come a moment when the next generation will not forgive us for this overpopulated earth.

But of course I never tell my friends what I really think when they tell me the happy news of their expectancy ...