1. Climate change is most certainly not an extinction level event. 2. I spend many days with kids. They are great. I suggest you do the same and experience the human experience. Someone had to deal with the piece of crap you were when you were 2 years old, after all. 3. You'll stop praising the lack of children when you are 80 and nobody young wants to take care of you. You will have a lonely, lonely existence.

> You'll stop praising the lack of children when you are 80 and nobody young wants to take care of you. You will have a lonely, lonely existence.

I have always considered this to be a selfish sentiment. Wanting children so that you yourself are less lonely. That isn't to say it's a bad thing, mind you.

Yep, difficult to imagine a more egoistic personality. I'm afraid to be alone when I'm old, so I'll create little slaves to take care of me. I don't know how many families I know where the children live on other continents and the parents live by themselves, and see them once a year.

So you'd better brush up on your social skills, having children is no guarantee that someone will take care of you when you are old.

Some of us like alone time, just saying.

I have daily reminders that validate my choice. The fact that it's finally something people can choose is a major factor in the downtrend.

Yeah, I don't agree with the guy you're answering. I know plenty of great people who just don't want kids and don't find time with them to be rewarding or gratifying, and there's nothing wrong with that. Having kids most definitely doesn't guarantee that old age will be any better either. Even if it did, it's not worth decades of labor and costs that you don't want. Saving for retirement/end of life care is much easier when you don't have kids, too. If you don't want kids, more power to you.

The way I understand it, the modern sentiment is to have children meaningfully, raising them being a project parents actively invest into. Contraception brought choice, choice brought up consideration and planning. This all opened the can of "what are we doing" and "why do we do it" and "how do we do it right", that tended to be ignored in previous eras (where having or not having children was not exactly a real choice).

And for little I know about raising children is that it's one hell of a job, that requires extensive knowledge, skill, and constant heavy investment, all being an unbreakable commitment for almost two decades. Messing anything up means another human suffers the consequences. In my mind, a would-be parents have to be really competent to be confident to be able to accept the responsibility, and even then screwups are a given. Skipping on any of that, even unintentionally or from inadequate skills, means a person out there will be left to figure out how to deal with the aftermath of their upbringing. The fact a lot of people skip on all of that and just do it is no excuse.

And thus, personally, I never felt like having children. Not seriously, not after thinking about it in any depth. I messed up two cats already, messing up a human is unnecessary.

IMHO, if a society really needs new people because can't figure out how to support old ones otherwise, it should invest into professional parenting and employ people who are genuinely enthusiastic about doing that work.

As a dad of (soon) 3, I would say that social media/etc have raised the expectations of parenting. Keep in mind that the kids aren't the only ones growing up and learning - the parents are too. And hopefully learning from their parents too.

"Being ready" to have a child is an impossibility so you have to embrace the unknown and be ok with mistakes. Kids are resilient, and many millions have had to do with less.

I understand about the impossibility of being ready. No one is ever ready for something they do for the first time. As any complex and long project, there's theoretical preparation and there's practice with its constant ongoing course correction when (not "if") something doesn't go as planned. It's not an immediate issue or reason, at least not for me.

And another thing I understand is that some people actively want to raise children. You surely do. But I simply don't feel that way. Like, there's no inner sense of calling, or desire, or any moving thought or similar emotion or drive. Nothing like "yes, I want to do it".

And doing this not because I want it, but for the society's sake? It is an idea that makes sense, but but knowing the difficulties and stakes involved, a "why not" is pretty obvious to me. I most certainly don't want to spend significant resources of my lifespan on raising a kid I didn't even want. And thus I'm really glad that it's an option.

That all makes total sense.

To be fair, I only realized I really wanted to kids once my wife and I started really considering it and my friends started having them.

My love for my daughter and my wife enrich my life and contribute more to my happiness than anything else, by far. As you wrote, the majority of the very, very hard work has fallen to my wife. I wouldn't fault any woman, or man, for not wanting it.

Still, my wife and I both feel that parenting is the best thing we've ever done or will ever do. It's everything I hoped it would be -- and much more besides. The benefits are innumerable for us.

Honestly that's fantastic and I'm glad it turned out that way for you. The world needs parents who actually raise their kids and want to.

I only encourage people to do the requisite research to make sure they make the right choice for themselves, because for many it's not.

Agreed. Another comment in the thread describes the author's horrible, abuse-filled upbringing as the child of young parents who both weren't prepared for children and, in at least one case, didn't want them and blamed him for their circumstances. I can't fathom any of that and my heart breaks for the guy and the kid he used to be.

It's really unfortunate that people who are likeliest to make terrible choices are probably also likely to make the choice to have kids. A lot of people who choose not to have kids generally know themselves well enough to make the right choice, which also means that they'd probably be better parents than a lot of the clueless people who wind up with kids they never should have had.