That sounds rhetorical, but I'll bite anyway.

Some women really long for the experience of childbirth. This may not be entirely psychological. Giving birth has significant impact on a woman's physiology. In addition to changing the shape of the hips and often other details like that, it leaves a woman a chimera for many years. Because her blood and the blood of the baby mix, she carries cells from the baby for many years afterwards.

I have a genetic disorder. I have two biological sons. I was not diagnosed until they were about 12 and 14 years old, so I didn't (consciously) know about my condition at the time that I was making reproductive choices (though I did know I was always "sickly").

My first pregnancy significantly impacted how I eat. I removed a number of things from my diet to cope with my difficult pregnancy and many were never added back into my diet. I have reason to believe this did my health a lot of good. For example, it cured the chronic, sever vaginal yeast infections I had for more than two years prior that pregnancy. I never again had chronic, severe yeast infections.

I have read up a bit on pregnancy-induced chimerism and talked a bit with people online about it and talked a fair amount with my sons. I have come to think that some women long for a baby because it can have a profound impact on a woman's body in ways we don't fully understand and perhaps sometimes that longing is rooted in some subconscious awareness that going through the process of carrying a child to term may alter their body in ways that are potentially for the best.

This would be really hard to prove. We have no means to see what the biological outcome would be for the same woman with and without the pregnancy experience. But I am in remarkably good health for someone with my genetic disorder and I credit my two pregnancies with some portion of that fact.

Imo: that goes to show that mother and baby share feelings during the childbearing process. If negative feelings are pushed down to the baby. Then it would make sense that positive feelings are too.

Artificial wombs are coming. I was under the impression that women considered pregnancy as a burden which carries risks, is painful, causes all sorts of negative hormonal / physiological effects, etc.

I think that artificial wombs will initially be challenged by feminist and conservative groups, but will end up being accepted, first with wealthy Western women, but eventually by everyone else.

I have never considered that women might choose to carry a child, if they weren't required due to technological and scientific advances.

It does that, and is also something many women desire. Some thigns are both really hard and painful, and also very rewarding.

I really doubt you are going to get any challenges from feminists, or at least not very many. Feminism is all about empowering women to be able to do what they want, which includes having a baby using an artificial womb. Conservative groups might be against it, but it will depend on which group. Not all conservative groups are against IVF, which is similar in the sense that it allows a woman who would otherwise not be able to have a child have a child.

The types of feminists that you'll see negative responses from, are those that use feminism as a platform for controlling others. For example, the kinds of feminists (some people would call them fake feminists) that get upset when a woman chooses to shave her armpits, or likes to wear lipstick or heels, etc. etc. Those types always look for opportunities - no matter how absurd - to proclaim something is the latest attempt to enslave women to their biology, and so on and so forth.

It is one of the reasons I spend so much time on Hacker News. Most men are less aggravating for me to deal with.

It is also part of why I do not self identify as a feminist.

My wife who is also a homemaker and stay-at home mom. She has heard remarks from family, acquaintances and even random parents playing with kids at the park how she was throwing her university degree down the drain and how somehow she doesn't "need to stay home" and can do whatever she wants. They don't seem to understand that what she wants to do currently is to raise kids.

Women who work outside the home get rude comments, women who stay at home get rude comments and you can't even avoid it by opting out of childbearing entirely, those women get rude comments too.

I fail to understand what that has to do with feminism or much anything else.

BTW, staying at home is the more socially acceptable choice.[1]

[1] http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/04/08/after-decades-of-d...

In this day and age? Does that still happen? Asking because honestly that’s so far from my personal experience.

Which is to say, I have the highest respect for SAHM moms because it's a damned difficult job.

Any feminism that cannot honor, respect and support the importance of full time parenting is an ideology I want no part of. To my mind, the only good feminism is one that insists that full time parenting should be an equally legitimate choice for either parent, not just the mother.

I love this quote.

There are an awful lot of things that can go wrong in a child's life that can potentially lead to a need for enormous resources at state expense from medical to mental health to behavioral, which can go very differently if there is a sufficiently knowledgeable full time parent to handle it before it goes so very wrong.

You are in error. More education is not wasted on raising kids. Your opinion sounds incredibly ignorant to me.

What baffles me is the amount of people in the US, usually in parochial cultural settings, who lack significant formal education or pedagogical background and are nevertheless deemed fit to home-school their kids. How is this legally possible? Now can a high school drop-out single mom (absent some extraordinary characteristics) possibly provide a well-rounded and adequate curriculum in a variety of general education subjects, ranging from math to literature, to world history, to biology?

If anything, the problem is that there aren’t nearly enough PhDs teaching kids.

Freedom.

Absent abuse, in the US we allow a very large degree of freedom in ways people are allowed to raise their children, no matter how unconventional and ill advised.

You're legally allowed to mess your kids up in many ways, such as by not teaching them life skills, encouraging teen marriage and pregnancy, teaching them bad manners, withholding critical information from them, giving them misinformation, disallowing them to be around unapproved peers, having tons of kids, raising them to be hateful (Westboro Baptist Church, KKK,...) etc, etc, etc.

BTW, I actually know of a high school dropout single mom who homeschools her kids. Of course, since she's unemployed^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H a stay at home mom so shes entirely dependant on her own mom for every single thing, there's no father in the picture. She's a 35 year old child. Her kids are going to be so screwed up and entirely ill prepared for adult life, but it's legal, her "homeschool" is registered with the state.

For better or worse in the US individual liberty is valued over almost everything else.

All this "freedom" has much to recommend it, one can hardly deny, but it has it limits.

If anything I think parents are best suited to teach their own children until high school given the parents have a reasonable IQ.

Doubtless, some parents who home-school their parents have an adequate foundation for this. However, some of the greatest proponents of home-schooling I've met most definitely do not, and it boggles my mind.

But that's part of the point, as I see it. Lots of modern institutions are a bit unnatural and require some contortion for humans to squeeze themselves into. Public school is valuable in teaching that, or at least it was to me and many other people I know, as we reflect upon it years later.

I am not comfortable with the suggestion here that a parent needs advanced education to successfully homeschool. There are support systems for homeschoolers. I was involved with that at one time.

If you homeschool gifted kids, even if you have a lot of formal education, you can find yourself really challenged. You can find yourself dealing with a child who knows more about a subject than you do, even though you have had college classes in the subject.

One way to handle that is to become a resource person for the child. Instead of instructing them, you participate on email lists and what not, learn what books and other materials have a good reputation and make sure the child has access to such materials. There is no reason a high school drop-out cannot take a similar approach.

A bigger problem in my mind is that when women go to college and have difficulty with a subject, they are often actively steered towards early childhood education. One outcome of this fact is that a high percentage of elementary school teachers are not only bad at math, they are math phobic. They pass this math phobia on to impressionable young children and may not be really qualified to teach math.

My oldest son likely has dyscalculia. By the time I pulled him out of school, he feared and loathed math. When he asked questions in school, his teachers often read him the explanation in the book. He read well above grade level. If the book explanation were going to help, he didn't need the teacher for that. It never helped him.

Fortunately, I had more college level math by the time I graduated high school than most people with non STEM bachelor's degrees have. I also have a background tutoring it and I can find novel ways to explain it. I was eventually able to get my son over his fear of math and give him a solid grounding in the subject.

When men struggle with subjects like math in college, they are not encouraged to give up and "go do something easier, like teach small kids." My ex is not good at math. I tutored him when he took college math classes. No one suggested he give up. They expected him to man up and do what it took to meet the standard to complete his goals.

This is very much a gendered difference in student outcomes and it has all kinds of negative consequences for not only both genders -- because men don't get support for making other choices if they genuinely can't do something -- but for the entire fabric of society.

One thought:

I am not comfortable with the suggestion here that a parent needs advanced education to successfully homeschool.

I did not mean to make that suggestion, either. I deliberately chose the language of my comment to leave open the possibility of pedagogical experience or aptitude without the corresponding formal education. Perhaps it is my mistake that this did not come across as emphatically as I had meant it.

However, I still harbour a great deal of scepticism about the capacity of many parents I've seen take up home-schooling, simply on the basis that they don't seem particularly knowledgeable, curious, or educated themselves — whether formally or informally.

There are no easy solutions for that situation. But I think it starts with having a high degree of respect for individuals and their right to choose, even under circumstances where it is challenging to feel real respect for them. Or, perhaps, especially at such times.

But despite what I'd like to believe is a generously well-rounded upbringing in a university family, I have serious doubts about my ability to home-school my son to anywhere near the same effect as an average public school—and that's bearing in mind the variation in quality among them. I wouldn't dare try.

Then there's the sheer effort and energy involved in juggling multiple subjects. My knowledge on certain subjects doubtless exceeds that of most public school teachers, but certainly not all the core subjects! And knowledge alone doesn't translate into effective teaching ability or experience with presenting information in effective and compelling ways to kids.

One parent went and surveyed what their child did all day in school. They concluded that most of the school day was spent changing classes, queing up, calling roll, etc. They estimated that only one to two hours a day was spent actually learning.

California laws allow for tutors as a valid education option. They specify 3 hours a day, not 8. One-on-one teaching is much more intense, relevant and information dense than a one-to-many teaching situation. Most teaching in school relies heavily on the kids reading the material provided. A homeschool parent can similarly provide good materials.

Learning comes more naturally than teaching. ;)

Anyway, it isn't intended to try to convince you to homeschool. It is only intended to say that lots of parents have felt the same way and then found it was more do-able than they expected.

I tried to enroll my son in college when he was 13 to get him out of my hair. His knowledge of some subjects has long been over my head. That did not work out and I had to woman up and figure out how to keep being a resource for him. So I am no stranger to feeling like "This is something I am not qualified for." But a parent with a sincere interest in supporting their child's education can be an excellent resource, even when they can offer no further instruction.

Seriously?

Your experience of self proclaimed feminists and full time motherhood is very different to mine, and it's not just a generation gap because my mother was a full time parent and a feminist (still feminist, but spends less time parenting these days) and my sister is both as well.

I am also pretty skeptical of the interpersonal understanding and self awareness of women who explain that they just never get on with other women because of the issues those other women have, and men are just so much nicer - it's usually as much about their issues as anyone else's.

Plus it’s always in continuous change. Example: currently in the U.K. there’s a hot debate between (some) feminists and trans women [1] but who knows in the future, it would be 100% feminist to accept all self-identifying females as valid females.

Slightly off topic: Feminisim is a bit of a messy subject (imo), I wonder if one can have a clearer picture if it’s expressed in logical terms :o

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/26/transgender-...

Feminism is all about empowering women to make choices that are right for them, especially with regards to reproduction and childrearing.

If your wife wasn't a stay at home mom she'd get rude comments about working outside the home - it's called the "Mommy Wars"- ever single childrearing choice gets criticized by someone.

I get a massive amount of criticism and nasty comments, from everyone including strangers, for my reproductive choices as well, even though they are firmly "progressive" - I'm a married woman whose voluntarily opted out of childbearing. I also get nasty comments about not taking my husband's name.

It's become fashionable, in the Trump era, to use feminism and liberalism for some sort of scapegoat, or reason for bad things, no matter how absurd. I was at a BBQ and one kid hit another kid and, very seriously, the mom blamed feminism. Yep, feminism caused a minor dispute between siblings.

I'm hoping that we'll be able to work towards a world have a world where stay-at home dads, stay-at home mums, surrogate pregnancies, same-sex parents, dual parental leave, etc, are all valid choices for bringing up children.

Carrying a child is often a very emotional experience, and it makes sense that reactions to those emotions would vary pretty wildly between different people.

I can see feminists, evangelicals, and quite a alot of people opposing humans grown in labs.

Feminism is about empowering women to make their own reproductive choices. Giving them MORE choices is a positive not a negative for feminism.

Sure it's risky and is painful and it makes me scared sometimes, but the thought of some artificial womb producing my baby gives me the shudders.

Would it even be "my" baby, if I didn't carry it? Similarly, I don't think I could have the same kind of love for an adopted child as for my biological. I'm sure you can love it just as much, but differently.

This is not true. If the baby had AB blood and the mother had A, then the baby's blood cells would be attacked by the mother's.

The question of longing for a baby is mostly a first world problem. In most parts of the world, they still have more traditional issues, like shot gun weddings for out-of-wedlock pregnancies.

It is sort of like saying "we crave oxygen." You only are aware of that in its absence. Otherwise, you breathe because that's what you do, not because you sit around writing odes to the wonderfulness of oxygen, oh, how I long for thee.

This is part of why people are weirded out. The default state is that women are trying like hell to not get pregnant most of the time. Then you have some weird edge case where they can't just get pregnant, you discover this matters enough to them to be willing to go to rather drastic lengths to achieve it and it flies in the face of our expectations.

Or even just adoption. Adoption is far cheaper as well.

There are plenty of reasons why people want their own biological children... but this seems like it carries a ton more risk with it. With complications from the transplant and heck even just childbirth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrogacy_laws_by_country

Adoption on the other hand can be a risky path, leading to a different kind of problems, and some are very hard for parents. Everybody wants their sons being healthy and able to have a normal life but this is not always guaranteed with adoption. Some countries use shady practices and lie to the parents to obtain an emotional (not logical) choice. The cheaper the worst. Systematic racketeering is the minor of them. "Forgetting" about some important condition or omiting relevant medical information is much worse.

Basically, it's not as simple as just handing off an embryo to another person and 9 months later acting like nothing happened. There are huge ramifications to a decision like this that don't come with being the birth mother.

I think a big factor in the cases discussed in the article is that these women were told they would never ever have their own children. Unlike women who are "infertile" (which is usually just a measure of probability, and not a binary diagnosis), women who do not have a uterus obviously understand that there isn't a probability factor for getting pregnant. But then tell a woman with such a diagnosis that there is an experimental procedure that will allow her to fully experience what she had always been told was not possible. It is more for her than just wanting a baby at that point-- the procedure offers her everything she was told she could not have in terms of giving birth to a child.

I don't doubt some level of that drive exists. What feels questionable is the sanity (?) of going to such extreme lengths to pursue it? As if there is a complete unawareness of the bigger picture.

That's one hell of an understatement. It's only the primary driving force of all successful complex lifeforms. Living things that give preference to offspring other than their own die with zero remaining trace of their existence.

Are you really surprised that some men who want to be fathers would choose to have the procedure rather than using their own previously stored sperm?

Using it for non life-threatening issues would be putting a lot of stress and risk on myself and my body for little reason.

Because rule 34... someone will get off on it.

Surrogate mothers have to have artificial insemination/IVF. So would the hypothetical mother in this case. These eggs don't all stick to the uterus, so the procedure normally involves sticking 3-4 fertilized eggs inside the embryo.

So if you want one kid, you need to plan to have up to 4. That's a concern.

Then there's the chance of having a chimera, where the baby uptakes the surrogate's DNA. This can cause complications (I know with a transplant this is still the case). There's also the whole "mother not carrying the baby" thing.

This isn't as crazy as it sounds.

Ignoring that (and "not as crazy as it seems" is a pretty straw argument), I'd say that the risks to mother and child of such an extreme surgery and long term use of anti-rejection drugs during child bearing raises it's own ethical issues. Adoption seems to be completely inconsidered.

That you want to argue that many people's insemination choices are driven primarily by logic seems odd to me. I think they get off on their idea of what sex, pregnancy, and childbirth are supposed to be like based on what they hear from their friends, family, and media, along with how they want to be perceived. Only a tiny portion of that is related to rational decisions to provide societal or even individual good to their child.

Logic was applied because you need to think about actually having up to 4 kids at once. That's still entirely necessary.

The "whole not carrying a baby" thing attempted to cover the idea of carrying your own flesh. I just didn't go into detail on that because I thought it was obvious. So no, I'm not arguing about logic.

Finally, "not as crazy as it seems" was a conclusion to the three of my points - not a strawman.

Pretend there's enough sperm you don't need IVF, or something. I'm pretty sure the thought experiment is about something that only affects the man, not the woman or child.

- Guy who has done IVF before

Startup idea: Uterent™

(1) is that the correct terminology?

While impressive it feels too much like a First World Problem. Aren't there any real problems this team could have solved?

Talk to any couple who has had difficulty conceiving, and the humanity of this "first world problem" gets brought into perspective.

You "bear" a child because you have love to give and to share. It's not about you, but about giving selflessly. I'm not judging what this is, or why. But this is not that. This is about the parents. The irony is disturbing.

The problem isn't Africa. The problem is billions of people living a middle-class lifestyle - even with growth rates at or slightly below replacement.

In fact, today is the best time in history to have children (or in your phrasing, today is the least selfish time in human history to have a child). Humanity is radically more capable of supporting another baby now than at any other time. It isn't even remotely a close contest.

Questions of resources? No it's not. We're drowning in food, take a look at the massive boom in Russian wheat production as one example. Global food potential is far beyond where we're at now, likely by a magnitude. We don't know what to do with it all. And that's before we take it up another level and move to drastically more productive food output methods, including indoor farming, AI + robotics, growing meat, better information management & knowledge globally, etc; and that's while we're still acting very inefficient with our existing food (throwing vast amounts of it away). Merely developing Africa's food potential alone will feed billions more people.

Maybe you're thinking energy? Have you seen the massive boom in solar and wind? That's going to get a lot more massive yet. We're intentionally under-developing nuclear, because right now it doesn't look like we're going to need it. Renewables are making up the majority of all new energy production globally, that tilt is going to get more extreme by the year. If the world had to do it, we could collectively throw trillions of dollars at nuclear immediately, and boost global energy output substantially within a few decades.

To date, humanity is batting a thousand at not going extinct due to challenges. Climate change will be no different.

Geothermal, wind, solar, heat, tide, etc. currently amount to a staggering 1.5% of the total primary energy supply of the world. Coil is at 28%, oil is at 31%, natural gas at 22% (and climbing), nuclear at 5%, etc. CO2 emissions continue climbing year after year, and we should have started going down more than twenty years ago.

Our agricultural system is completely dependent on fossil fuels (oil). Because of that it is mostly unsustainable, and also because it tends to destroy fertile lands (topsoil loss is kind of a big issue).

You are kind of right that the current system can support a lot of people. Unfortunately, almost none of it is sustainable. So making more people is really not a good idea at the moment, because the situation will change drastically over the next 80 years.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/u-s-reports-a-maj...

Pretty sure most people who want to be parents dont really think about those issues when having kids. It might be important for you but its not for those new parents.

Short-sighted people with more money than awareness doesn't feel like a great way to describe a future parent(s).

> Short-sighted people with more money

Turns out people with money (aka developed countries) the birth rate is falling (or already has fallen) below replacement.

Population is not the problem, population with an American lifestyle is a problem.

Diversity is helpful here

I don’t think this is an issue of the “American“ perspective or something like that.

The people thinking what you're thinking must be very young or have some strange sociopathy.

Who said this was the most important problem anyway?

Are you, personally, working on solving a particularly important problem?

Most people in the world aren't solving problems anyway, other than getting money from other people's wallets into their own.

Not at all. If I'm supposing anything is that the word priorities is a word most people don't know but should.

  * IUI
  * IVF
  * IVF with egg donor
  * IVF with donated embryo
  * Surrogacy
  * Adoption (direct, not foster)