Get a therapist for therapy, not a child.
> But I do feel like you don't get a chance to understand what being a parent is all about.
That's 100% accurate.
There's a pretty much infinite number of possible life experiences I'm not going to get to experience personally and will not have the time/money/ability to fit into my lifespan. The wishlist of things I'd love to do or experience someday continually grows longer - no matter how much I try to fit more of them into my life.
Taking on what amounts to a lifetime commitment and a massive investment of time and money for an experience that I have zero interest in and think I would actively dislike, seems like a terrible use of my finite resources.
> It forces you to change, maintain a good relationship w/ your partner, be a good role model, etc.
Perhaps it inspired you to do that. But the divorce rate and number of parents out there are terrible role models, suggest that it's not exactly the case for everyone.
I'll also suggest that people who don't have much interest in becoming parents are probably a whole lot more likely to wind up on the negative side of those possibilities should they wind up having children anyway.
If you consider maximizing your experience the best use of your resources, I suppose not.
This is a naive way to think about it. In the grand scheme of things, as TFA hints at, kids don't take up a significant portion of your life. If you're goal is to focus on striking off entries on a wishlist, there are many, many things that can be sacrificed to make room that don't involve children.
It's not as bad as you make it seem.
Lastly, I don't really care about experiences the way I did when I was younger. Going on a trip to an exotic locale doesn't really excite me as much as, say, taking a good picture of a friend or family member and sharing it. Or hearing a good story or joke.
Kids expand to fill the space in your life you make for them. I have more fun with my kids than possibly anyone else. I want to share experiences with them, not for myself.
Have you ever been excited when telling a friend about a cool spot they've never been to, and subsequently taking them there? Kids are like a revolving door of those opportunities. They start from scratch.
I’ve experienced what you described with my pup, but that’s because she is exactly the bond and the responsibility that fits my life. It revolves around her, every day, all the time. No amount of parenting a human would ever change that.
No, it doesn’t actually, as any kind of even approximately universal effect, force any of that, and even a casual look around at society would demonstrate that pretty clearly. It may or may not have motivated that in you – but plenty of people who would describe themselves as having those traits in their own relationships / parenting objectively don’t, so self-assessment is pretty clearly not a reliable gauge here. I would agree that there are people whose combination of innate personality, life experiences, etc., will lead them to actually be nudged in those directions by having children, but there are plenty who won’t be. And there are plenty of people who will be nudged in much more negative directions by the experience.
As a parent myself, it amazes me how many people who are parents are drawn into a bizarre evangelization of parenting as some kind of universally ideal vocation, with stories about the effect it will have that are trivially refutable by looking outside of one’s own internal narrative of their own experience with their own kids at the rest of the world around them.
Regarding opting out, I get it, but I don't agree personally. Not having kids, can enable some pretty great lifestyles. But I do feel like you don't get a chance to understand what being a parent is all about. No amount of being a great aunt / uncle / whatever, gives you that feeling of needing to nurture or protect your child.
It forces you to change, maintain a good relationship w/ your partner, be a good role model, etc.
If I was do it again, I'd try to do it earlier.