Having kids is the last straw that breaks your dreams. By that point you’ve committed to the parent lifestyle and your life as it has been is over. You now spend the rest of your days providing for your family and viewing everything through the lens of a parent.

My children are now over the age of ten. I find myself in a great place to start doing other things. I can do much more in the evenings, as long as I'm available for their taxi service. And me being out of the house has little to no impact on my wife.

The thing about having kids is that it's increased my drive. I had a few years where I failed to do things in the little time I had, so learned to push myself to do them. That's still there, in addition to having more free time.

So it's great! It only took...ooh...fifteen years?

This doesn't have to be true, though it is for many.

If you can find a version of your dreams that pays the rent and puts food on the table, you can still chase them.

Your financial metabolism does go up though, and the total universe of options shrinks. Ramen profitable doesn't mean actual ramen when you've got a spouse and kids.

I found that I've gotten much further in pursuing my dreams after having kids than before. Maybe it's just coincidence, but I feel a lot of the skills I had to learn to be the kind of parent I wanted to be translated almost 1 for 1 to improving my business outcomes.

> I feel a lot of the skills I had to learn to be the kind of parent I wanted to be translated almost 1 for 1 to improving my business outcomes.

This 1000%. I would say the same applies to learning how to be the spouse I wanted to be.

It does limit your options, but also helps you focus and teaches you to be patient and less self centered. It opens your eyes to a world that’s hard to otherwise appreciate. It’s not a panacea of meaning but for me, i’ve found myself able to achieve more growth now (two kids) because it’s forced me to confront and attack the thing that was holding me back: lack of focus and most importantly being very selective in what i choose to do.

Hard disagree.

I wasted a lot of time before kids.

All of the things I’m most proud of I’ve done since having kids.

Second this. I kicked about and achieved hardly anything before I had children.

+1. Having children causes one to be deeply, intimately invested in the future. “What kind of future shall we leave our children?” is just an abstract ideal to one who does not have children.

It's funny you say that today, I was just thinking about it. Family provides a ton of emotional cushion, perspective, and motivation. They're a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. It's far easier to motivate yourself into working hard for them than your own material desires. And you don't lose your dreams to them in the process, they become part of them.

I had my forth child 15 years after my other three, when I was well into my mid-30's.

I find that appreciate/savour/lament his growing much more than I did my others. Maybe this is because I am an older dad or maybe because I have grown 3 children already and I can appreciate how quickly those years pass.

Maybe that's true.

It's certainly true that many parents spend 8 hours a day _not_ looking after their kids, but working on something. We have an enormous power of choice in what we work on, so choose something meaningful and your life will "not be over".

What a depression notion.

My wife and I moved to the other side of the planet with four children, travelled all over the world, and so on, because we prioritized it.

(GP) I actually have a 21 year old. When I married he was 7, so I probably lost the craziness of the early years. However I raised him as my son the best way I could.

I don't particularly like the idea of having more kids though. Put them on this world?

Ugh... I know, I'm a bit too pessimistic

I think for the average person, having kids might be the best way to have a positive impact on the world. Something like selling a company sounds like a bigger deal, but in 10, 30, 50 years, what will it matter? Some money is exchanged and some customers have some need fulfilled for the moment. Having kids and doing your best to teach them to be happy, empathetic, thoughtful, etc. can have an impact for generations.

Religion is just fiction to make you feel better. Which does have a point, but once you see it for what it is, it is hard to go back to it.

The community is kind of what I miss a bit about it, and that community makes a bit more sense now that I'm middle aged. But I don't know if the rest of the crap that comes with it is worth it for the community that you can achieve with it.

> It's not too late to find the truth.

What is the truth?

Seeking to find the truth may be something that is good for some people: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/idol-words

www.zombo.com

I found this inspiring (biblical lecture from a scientific perspective) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-wWBGo6a2w

If that’s how a person without kids feels, isn’t having kids just creating another person who has to have kids to find meaning in their life (and on and on and on)?

With the certainty of climate change, it feels like adoption is the only moral/ethical way to do this.

Going to strongly push back on adoption being morally or ethically superior to having children the ole’ fashioned way because of climate change. I don’t see this as a productive train of thought and more likely solutions for climate change exist elsewhere.

It’s ok to have kids. Adopting kids is nice and that’s ok too.

> more likely solutions for climate change exist elsewhere.

Anybody who's having kids today sure better hope so.

It’s a very pessimistic worldview. While it’s true that they are great filter ahead of us I think climate change is not the biggest concern.

Look into Tony Seba to see how fast the transition to RE is happening.

We could also geoengineering the climate if it become a real problem.

> If that’s how a person without kids feels, isn’t having kids just creating another person who has to have kids to find meaning in their life (and on and on and on)?

OK, so the meaning of our lives is to perpetuate the species. Not too bad; if it's good enough for (the other) animals, why not for us too?

Ya want anything beyond that, it would logically have to be to make mankind of the future a better species than right now. Which of course you do by making your kids better persons than you are. So then you're back to them again.

> if it's good enough for (the other) animals, why not for us too?

My cat drinks from the toilet.

It's water. I drink water too. I didn't lick my kid clean when he was a baby either, but on the level of having him in the first place your cat and I -- and you -- have more in common than not.

Yeah except as people we have options for how to respond to our needs and instincts.

We can open a bottle of Evian instead of drinking from the toilet. We can cook an Impossible Burger instead of stalking, hunting, and devouring a cardinal in the front yard. We can run a bath instead of licking ourselves. We can realize having kids is a terrible choice given what we know about the world and choose to not have them.