> it's overtly obvious how much work a child is,

It really isn't. My sister lived with me on and off during her kid's first years and I saw a lot of it (also experienced the joys of being the cool uncle). But I still underestimated the amount of work you have to put in. Also: taking care of a 9-month old is possibly 81 times the work of taking care of a newborn. But evolution is funny like this: the payoff scales very close to the energy expenditure.

It's really hard to explain the benefits one gets from having kids because, well, with your mentality one doesn't get any benefits. I was almost militantly "child-free" until something I can't quite explain happened to me, and put the world in an entirely different perspective. This is when we decided to try for a baby. We were different people already when the baby came.

The differences in thinking between parents and the childless might well be larger than political, racial, ideological, religious etc. differences.

It doesn’t follow that because you had an epiphany of sorts after having children, the “childless” class are out there living an unenlightened life. Many of us have a quite reasonable understanding of the universe and what parenthood entails and have still decided not to be parents.

If you want to focus in particular on the notion of how “selfless” you learn to be after becoming a parent — this form of “selflessness” is actually just an expansion of selfishness to include your own children. It isn’t some enlightened ego free global selflessness.

I didn't use words like "unenlightened" and "selfless". What are you replying to?

> I get the same fulfillment (without all the work) by being extremely close with cousins and siblings with children

You really don’t though, the work is what deepens the relationship you have with people.

It is impossible for you to know whether it's “the same fulfillment” if you have not actually been in both situations.

Here's the problem with that: there's the chance that if you have children you will hate them. Probably more so if you've been pressured into having children. This is not a socially acceptable response, so you usually only ever see this response in anonymous "off my chest" spaces.

And if you hate your children, you're doing them a vast disservice.

There is no moral imperative to have children, and I wish people would stop pressuring the voluntarily childless into having children.

I agree with everything you said, but that doesn't change the fact that the post to which you're replying is also true.

If I always rode my bike, but didn't have a car, I couldn't really say "riding a bike is as much fun as driving a car".