I mean anyone that tells me they're 100% certain of anything outside of basic facts, the BS meter starts going off, so that feels like a bit of a trap. It's a total game changer, but I'm 3 years in, and would not change it. I'm way more certain of having kids now than I was 5 minutes after finding out we were having kids, that's for sure.

It does change you, and it is a lot of work. But it's been the most contextualizing experience of my life. I don't want my old life back, even though I was very happy with it. A lot of things that I was happy with were relatively meaningless in a big-picture sort of way. I'm not partying on the weekend? Oh, well, thank god, I should have had kids earlier!

> even remotely enjoy your life, DO NOT HAVE KIDS

> If it's less than 100% (and it usually is) I tell them not to have kids.

I need to disagree with your first point, I loved my life before kids and I love my life with kids.

I think the key is your second point, make sure you're ready.

>> They are in incredible burden that you cannot imagine or conceptualize prior. The company you founded, the marathons you ran, your PhD thesis, etc., these are all peanuts.

Haha .... I agree.

The first kid is the hardest. For the second one, you think you've wised up, and it is still difficult for different reasons.

It is like every time you think you have solved the parenting issues and leveled up, the kids evolve too and present you with entirely new issues you were not prepared for.

And yet, like the other poster said, I'll still do it and go through it again.

[EDIT] Children are a joy, if you understand and respect them. Sometimes they need to be treated like adults, sometimes like the kids they are. The trick is to figure out which to apply when. To paraphrase Antoine de Saint-Exupéry [1].

"Children exist to remind adults, what it is to be a child again."

[1] All grown-ups were children first. (But few of them remember it.)

As an only semi-related aside, I've always thought it was interesting that my friends who didn't want kids when we were younger because of the responsibility have nonetheless spent the last 10 years having dogs. Kids are far more expensive than dogs, for sure, but I feel like logistically, dogs and kids are more similar than people think.

You have to take care of a set of daily tasks to keep them happy and healthy. If you work, you'll have to send the child to daycare, which you don't have to do with a dog, but for me personally, there's some mental stress associated with leaving a dog home alone all day. Other than that, you can't just up and leave your house for longer than a work day without making arrangements for either kids or dogs. Naturally, there are certain kinds of vacations that you can't take with children, but in my experience, most people vastly overestimate how much time they'll actually spend travelling the world over the next decade or two.

Dogs have to be walked regularly enough that I don't think it's unreasonable to say that a lot of people will spend more time actively caring for their dog than they would caring for a child once the child is older than 5 or 6, at least when the child doesn't have a ridiculous amount of extracurriculars, though that's far from universal. Some kids are quite self-sufficient, though.

In my mind, the major thing that makes dogs less of a responsbility is that they don't live as long, but then no one ever just has one dog, they tend to string together 30 or 40 years of dogs, whereas kids are theoretically out of the house after 18 years.

Lest it be said that I must not have much experience with kids, I have 4 and have been a stay at home dad. It must also be said that I derive much more joy from interacting with my kids than I do from interacting with my pets so my whole perspective is certainly biased.

All in all, I think culture has instilled in us this fear that we'll ruin our children's lives if we just let them be children and that has made having children so much more daunting and intense and exhausting than I think it needs to be(though babies, I fear, will always be intense and exhausting).

I'd rather have a second kid before I ever get a dog. Kids grow out of diapers after a couple of years. You have to pick up a dog's crap for its entire life. Kids eventually go off on their own and do things, get their own food, and take more and more care of themselves. Dogs will never do that. And lastly, if you raise 'em right, your kids will eventually take care of you!.

I’m gonna go with: ummmmm, fucking nope.

I occasionally leave my two dogs at home, outside, alone, over night.

Their water is on a timer.

Dogs can go days without food.

You can leave a dog at home alone.

Dogs can eat rotting food, including meat.

Dogs can be trained to sit and wait in silence.

You can put dogs in a cage for hours and they just take it and wait.

If I can’t be arsed running with them I get in the car and they run on the footpath beside me for 10k.

If a dog gets to ill or too physically incapable you can take it round to a mates place and shoot it in the head.

Good choice. You should probably not have kids anyway.

I’ve got one of those too.

Thank you! The comparison of kids being easier than dogs is so misleading I don't even know where to begin.

I didn’t say they were easier, I said that I thought the disruption to a person’s life was a lot more comparable than people think. If you’re footloose and fancy-free without a kid or a dog, both a kid and a dog will require serious lifestyle changes and will take up a ton of your attention. My contention is that people overestimate the responsibility required for kids and underestimate the responsibility required for dogs, or any pets for that matter.

I found having kids added more context to my life. Prior to kids I was doing things for my wife and my self, which is fine, but after kids I was forced to grow into myself more and really set my values and my priorities. I matured significantly after having children, to the point where I even look back at my childless antics as childish.

Sure, things in my life peeled away after having children, but I also gained a tremendous amount as well.

It’s all perspective. Enjoy the ride, don’t regret your children.

Indeed, up to the prevalance of birth control in the last century, living with hordes of small humans was the default mode of existence for all humanity.

Nowadays it's rare to have more than 2-3 siblings. In the old days, everyone pretty much had older and younger siblings, and lots of them. So the "dealing with children" skill was well practised and common.

I juxtapose that situation with myself. Although I had neices and nephews, I didn't spend any significant time with children until I had my own (late 30's). And wow what a shock! I had lived mostly for myself, for decades prior. All the work and responsibility for dealing with babies and toddlers was a real surprise. If I knew anything about kids, I'd long forgotten it.

It's been one hell of a learning curve. My kids are really creative and clever. They can be kind and generous, they can be little fiends. They can be sweet as honey or ornery as can be. But they're PEOPLE. When you make kids you make PEOPLE. Miraculous and banal all at the same time.

I agree. I'm 46 and do not want children. When my coworkers with kids talk about all the things they have to do with their kids on the weekend I say, "you know what I'm doing this weekend? Whatever I want!"

Of course I'm also single and never been married so this may be a "me" issue...

My grandmother used to run a general store out in a small rural village where I grew up. She had the only store in town, and she sold everything from groceries, to gas, barbed wire by the spool, salt licks for cows, nails by the pound, you get the idea. It was a super busy place.

One time, my grandmother asked her father to look after his three young grandsons so she could get some work done in peace.

He sat them all in a row on the counter and gave them candy to keep them busy as he started to tell them a story.

A customer observing this scene said: "Look at you, you must be so proud to have three such beautiful grandsons!"

To which he replied: "Yeah, you couldn't pay me millions of dollars to part with a single one of them...but I wouldn't give a dollar for another one though..."

Kids are absolutely a ton of work.

But when people say kids are terrible because they take up too much time, stress you out, cause you to loose sleep, yes, all of that is true.

But it would be the same as saying “Dogs are terrible because you have to pick up their food, you have to find someone to watch them when you travel, their vet bills are so expensive.” Again, all true, but those statements completely ignore the positives.

I have 12 kids. FYI, they mostly neglect running the farm. I got a nice little watermelon, some tomatoes, and some herbs.

Fortunately I'm not a disinterested farm investor. The kids bring meaning to life.

I have a boy that is soon to be three years old. I enjoyed my life before I became a father, and I enjoy it even more now. I like my work, but I always look forward to leaving early and pick him up from daycare and spend the rest of the afternoon together with him. And he’s the best things with my weekends.

Of course I don’t train as much as I used too. And most of my old hobbies are on hold for a couple of years. But I haven’t regretted a second that we got a child.

I sent this link to my daughter, who is raising an 18-month old baby.

I do not agree with the "don't have kids" advice. I have two grown-up kids; no regrets whatsoever. Neither child was planned (yeah, two accidents!) You have to be quite unlucky, I think, to have kids that don't make you happy.

Having said that, there's a good argument that the world is already full-up, that the world is getting worse, and that bringing kids into the world is not a kindness. I'm OK with not having kids for those reasons; and I'm also OK with not having kids because you have better things to do with your time. No judgements, be happy your own way.

Nobody is a good parent; we're all beginners, none of us has ever done it before. It works out; kids can deal with crap parents, otherwise our race would have died out.

BTW, I used to spank my kids when they were naughty. Word of advice: do not do that. Even if it's legal where you live, it is just a way of expressing your anger, it solves no problems. Grown-ups should never beat-up children, not even gently.

Um, dawgs, no thanks. I'm not enthusiastic about hoovering. I'd sooner change nappies (or become a school governor).

Child-rearing only takes about 15 years. It really isn't a river of tears; a lot of it is fun. Children can be a total gas. When it's over, they leave, and chances are you'll be on your own again, with nothing left but photos and memories.

I mean - no one can talk outside anything outside their experiences but I completely, emphatically disagree.

Nothing I've ever experienced can match the pure joy of coming home and having my kid run up to give me a giant hug. Everything else pales next to it. I went though a lot of job angst a couple of years ago but none of it could overshadow the happiness I felt just being able to read my kid to sleep at night. It's incompatible.

As a fellow father I agree with this as well.

And still if I had the choice, I’d do it again.

Why is that?

It would kind of feel like killing them if you went back and didn't have them.

How would you feel if your children saw this when they grow old enough to process it?

Good point; I should at least reply to him here so that he doesn't think I hate him, which of course I don't. But more to your point, it's the self-censorship you're describing that perpetuates the myth that having kids is for everyone.

Arthur! I love you buddy! And I am also allowed to not like being a parent, it's a weird thing, but trust me it has nothing to do with you, you are the best! The best analogy I can give is that it's like how even though you have teachers you really like, you might not like that you have to go to school every day.

I hope that my own honesty about this will help you make your own choice when the time comes. The bottom line is, having kids is not the only acceptable path in life, though it is usually presented that way.

OP is certainly not politically correct, but I don't see how that is a reason to down vote. It's not like they suggested mistreating children or so. Somehow would hope HN to be open to different views.

Didn't notice (now too late to edit) that parent and grandparent are the same - Duncan. So guess I fell for the ruse here. Anyway: above statement still stands no matter who objected to the original post. Still feel stupidly manipulated ;-)

People growing up in western society have become so egocentric it's absurd. We've finally made it, we're incompatible with what human society has been for thousands of years and to some extent still is in Asia -- "discipline" has finaly become the biggest cuss-word and the most horrible thing ever.

Sure, the world doesn't need more people, you certainly don't NEED kids but come on.

The key reasons boil down to "you'll have more responsibilities, it's hard work, and will need to share your life with other people and not make it all about you". You even somehow managed to utter "the company you founded" in that same sentence.

Having done both, I'd say raising children is actually lot like starting a company, just requires a lot more discipline and is more stressful. It would happen that I tried to do both at the same time, and both are hard work, you pile on responsibilities, reduce hobbies and "me time" and become responsible for other people's lives in the process and in both you're essentially fucked without strong willpower and discipline. I wasn't good enough to do both at the same time so I sold off and left the company and got a well paying 9-5.

Btw the ticket out of the "children situation" for man-children (and sorry but you managed to paint yourself as one) also exists, it's not impossibly hard and, assuming you'd do your fair share of obligations, could possibly even benefit your wife and kid(s).

I too hated the lack of "me time", don't get me wrong. I had a hobby I was deeply passionate about and really got back to it (and still fairly infrequently) only when my kids were well into school age. I also gained about 12 kg (some 25 pounds) that it took me years of gym, running and mountaineering more-less just to halve and I don't really go down from there (tho my "build quality" did improve :) ). I've also halved my learning rate in things, had to rearrange my priorities and generally "streamline" my career in many ways.

But here's the other side of it. Had I not become a parent I'd probably have fucked up my business. Neither of the issues were me not having enough time -- most were not knowing enough, not being man enough and not being mature enough. The children might have hindered my speed of improving in the first thing but have made me surmount a Mont Everest in the latter two -- which I don't feel that I would be able to (short of some traumatic experience). I'm much more confident as a man than I would ever be without having them and knowing them.

Also children return on that investment of time, nerves and forgoing with (at least in that age between two/three and puberty) unreserved love you'll never witness (and I've had dogs and kitties so, no, sorry, no contest there really), and later, with slowly becoming men (well, people, It's just that I have two boys) and although much of their accomplishment has fuckall to do with you, you can't help but be filled with pride.

I regret a thing or two in my life, but having them was the best damn thing that ever happened to me.

I think in addition to questioning having kids as a default in life society needs to ask if it is ethical to continue having kids. We have an impending climate crisis we haven't even begun to address that will make the life of any child born today much harder and much different than life today.

> We have an impending climate crisis we haven't even begun to address that will make the life of any child born today much harder and much different than life today.

I find this argument extremely offensive. Do you think the life of a child born in a +3C USA is going to be worse than the life of an adult currently in say Bangladesh? If not, the implication is that it wasn’t “ethical” for the parents of living Bangladeshis to have had kids given how “hard” their lives are. That currently living Bangladeshis would’ve been better off never being born than suffer such a low standard of living.

Presumably, there is a standard of living where it becomes “ethical” to have children. Show me where in the happiness scale (from Norway at the top to Central African Republic at the bottom) that transition happens: https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/206468/happiest-unhap.... Italy has a happiness rating a full point lower than the US. Was it “unethical” for the previous generation of Italians to birth the current generation of Italians into such a hard life? Or do we need to go further down the scale? About a point below Italy is Nigeria. Is that the transition point? Once you can expect your kids to have a quality of life better than that of Nigerians currently, it’s ethical to have kids?

God damn rayiner you are a treasure.

Life expectancy is at an all time high. World hunger is at an all time low. More humans means more opportunity to create and discover. There is nothing unethical about having children.

Those things are true in the current climate regime. They may not hold true when global average temperatures exceed 1.5 degrees over preindustrial. In addition to decreased crop yields what we will be able to grow will be less nutritious, not even getting into increased mortality due to heat and other human impacts: https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2865/a-degree-of-concern-why-g...

Maybe, just maybe, we should ask questions about people who have 10-12 kids or something like that, but a replacement rate of 1-2 kids seems more or less unquestionable to me.

I mean, if you feel you don't want to bring kids into this turbulent, uncertain world, by all means don't, but please also recognize that one of life's biggest purposes is to beget life and we will do nothing (and have never done anything) if we didn't reproduce