throwaway292961

Thanks :) I wanted to add some perspective, but felt some of the details were a little too personal to have it permanently tied to my professional identity. So more of a preference to keep personal separate from business.

Personal anecdote: My wife and I got married assuming that we would eventually want kids. We were pretty young, and that's what people do, right? We kept checking in with each other and kept not wanting to have kids. 5 years into our marriage, we were certain enough that I chose to have a vasectomy. We were so certain that my biggest fear was NOT that we'd change our minds later, but that my vasectomy would be one of the 0.1% that failed.

Our reasons were mostly personal, and it ultimately wasn't a responsibility we felt equipped to take on. There's some personal traumas that we experienced as kids and didn't want to pass along. There were some "selfish" reasons and things that we gave a higher priority in life than raising children. We had enough executive dysfunction between the two of us that we didn't think we'd be able to give kids enough attention while also juggling our other priorities. There is also nothing so special about our genes that compelled us to procreate--we could have adopted if parenthood called to us later in life. The usual reason we give is "we can barely take care of our pets, we're not bringing kids into this." That's the most concise way I can put it without opening up an argument.

A couple of years after the vasectomy, my wife ended up getting diagnosed with multiple chronic (but not terminal) illnesses, so that became a contributing factor after we had already made our decision. Economic concerns have also always been a factor--not something that I viewed as completely unsolvable, but it obviously requires a huge sacrifice to raise kids today. Climate change and overpopulation eventually became extra reasons to be thankful that we're not bringing kids into this mess, but if we ever felt a strong drive to have kids in the first place, I don't think that alone would be enough to deter us.

The article frames the whole discussion around climate change and current events, and I suppose my personal outlook for humanity has become darker over the years, but the decision to have (or not to have) kids is largely driven by personal circumstances. Some of our closest friends are fabulous loving parents, and the world needs more parents like them. Some of us, IMO, made the right choice by opting out. People love to make value judgements about this decision, as if there should be a default choice, but one thing we don't need more of is parents who don't want to be parents.