Newly minted parents of AskMe, what made you decide to have kids?

September 30, 2016 10:16 AM

Why do educated people continue to have children given the dire state of the world? Why did you decide to have kids?

My girlfriend and I were discussing having kids recently and honestly both of us feel pretty ambivalent about the idea because of the sorry state that the the world is in and will likely be in the future.
Our discussions centered around global warming, but there's really a pretty long list of things that could make the future uncomfortable (at best) for any offspring that we might have.
And yet our friends, both of which have PhDs and are intelligent, worldly and insightful people, are having a baby in January. I guess I'm having trouble making the cognitive leap between 1) knowing how bad things are and 2) still bringing a person into the world that will be around if (when?) things really fall off of the rails.

How did you make that leap?

posted by Fister Roboto to Human Relations (49 answers total)

I grew up in the Cold War on the edge of nuclear disaster.

My kids are going to hopefully find amazing solutions to today's problems. In other words, hope and faith. It's not really a rational thing.

More than that too, it was also a really gut-level desire. Being a writer isn't always helping the world, or making art, or owning a car, or getting on a plane. There are some things I do to help the world or with a view towards protecting myself. And there are some things I do because I have a deep drive to do them. Lots of people want to build bridges & make buildings instead, and I don't.

I realize very much (more than some people as I had to make very difficult decisions about my deceased daughter's quality of life) that you are also creating a person who will have to live in the world as it is now and as it might be in the future so that's where the qualities above come in.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:26 AM on September 30, 2016 [8 favorites]

I have two daughters who are four and two years old respectively. I sincerely believe that both have given and received enough joy to make their lives worthwhile, even at their age. A lot can happen in their lives and mine, but I'm glad I have them as companions. Perhaps I'll ask them in thirty years how they ended up feeling about it.

The question of "is it better for someone that they existed" seems to me like it's kind of impossible to answer in most cases.
posted by selfnoise at 10:30 AM on September 30, 2016 [4 favorites]

Here's a recent comment that addresses this question:

One of the reasons I did decide to have children is that we need a strong next generation to continue working to right the wrongs of the past. Their lives won't be easy, as ours are not. But young voters and activists helped push through the social changes we see today, and young scientists, artists, and activists are needed tomorrow, for this and other challenges facing the species.

posted by aniola at 10:33 AM on September 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

Short answer: Because I wanted them and was just that selfish.

Long answer: I like to think I am mostly a decent person who will raise mostly decent children who will help the world be a more decent place than it is currently. This may be naive or impractical or unrealistic.

Clarified answer: My long answer is not the reason I had kids. My short answer is, but my long answer is the hope I have for my short answer.
posted by zizzle at 10:35 AM on September 30, 2016 [7 favorites]

I was in interested in the experience of being a parent.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 10:40 AM on September 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think you are greatly discounting our biology here. As a species we have a strong drive to procreate. It's not exactly rational. Just because someone has a PhD doesn't mean they are immune to the drive to have kids.
posted by FireFountain at 10:41 AM on September 30, 2016 [15 favorites]

The world has always been at the brink of disaster if you read the media of any time period. We wanted to raise good people, build a happy family around us, to increase our love by adding to it, which having children has certainly done. Screw CNN and the talking heads of doom. Raise your children to be people you'd like to spend the day with, no matter what challenges and joys that day brings.
posted by toastedbeagle at 10:43 AM on September 30, 2016 [24 favorites]

I thought about how I envisioned my life 20 years out, and would I have wanted to have had a child in it. And the answer was "yes". I tend to take a very long view of history, which means that I don't think the world is particularly worse now than it's ever been. Always some bad things, always some good. On a day to day basis, though, it's nice to have a clear source of joy in my life.
posted by bizzyb at 10:45 AM on September 30, 2016

We have always lived at the end of history and on the precipice of disaster. Now isn't any worse than any other time. Mozart's The Magic Flute premiered today in 1791, 225 years ago when you wouldn't really expect to live past 50 and probably half of all children born were dead before they turned one. In spite of the world being a relative shithole at the time it's a pretty great opera.

That said, I became a parent roughly 18 years and a month ago and I knew I wanted to have kids - or more to the point I couldn't really visualize my adult life any other way. Perhaps I lack imagination. And the question for me was more about when to have them. My attitude was that I might as well have them young (I was 26 when my first was born, not really that young, but young by the standards of my peer group) as kids seemed pretty tiring. So my wife and I had our kids. The world is still here.
posted by GuyZero at 10:49 AM on September 30, 2016 [7 favorites]

The world has always been largely a shitty place. People had kids during World War II, when THE WHOLE WORLD was at war. I was born while the Vietnam was was going on. My great-grandfather left poverty in Italy and came to America in 1900 and lived a shitty life in poverty. He still had kids.

I was (*shudder*) conceived just a couple months after 1968 ended, one of the shittiest years ever. The day I was born a guy got stabbed at a Rolling Stones concert, bringing an end to the whole sixties peace and love thing. I have no regrets about being born into this world.

I had a kid partly because I wanted to share all the many, many, many wonderful things about the world and life with someone. I first saw his heartbeat on an ultrasound on Sept. 11 2001, just a couple hours after the towers came down. Among the many other emotions I felt, I managed to also feel joy that day. There will always be joy, and there will always be the opposite of joy. I've had no regrets that he was born into a post 9/11 world.

The world is a wonderful, amazing place where some shitty stuff happens. Shitty stuff has always happened and always will happen. I'm thankful that my parents decided to have kids anyway, as did their parents, as did their parents, etc.
posted by bondcliff at 11:15 AM on September 30, 2016 [14 favorites]

I'm having trouble making the cognitive leap between 1) knowing how bad things are and 2) still bringing a person into the world that will be around if (when?) things really fall off of the rails.

The state of things may be not super, but that's no reason to stop caring and to stop living.

I'm not saying this to sound adversarial, but have you considered that you're wrong? Maybe the world isn't nearly as bad as you think. Maybe things have fallen as far off the rails as they'll ever will.

If everyone thought the same as you, it would mean the end of human life.

We have kids because we have hope.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 11:16 AM on September 30, 2016 [4 favorites]

The world is in the best state since I have been born...

All the issues that have been repressed for decades (or centuries, in some cases) are finally exposed and things are getting done! Just because no one talked about the "sorry state of the world" didn't mean none of it existed! Quite the opposite is true, and our kids will grow up in a world that can expose and handle its problems.

But why did I have kids? Because the "purpose of life" is to create more life, I guess. :)
posted by TinWhistle at 11:16 AM on September 30, 2016 [5 favorites]

given the dire state of the world

I think you're catastrophizing. Compared to 100 years ago, or 200 years ago, the world is pretty good. Heck, things are better today than at anytime in my lifetime.
posted by LoveHam at 11:26 AM on September 30, 2016 [5 favorites]

given the dire state of the world

Steven Pinker has written on the reduction in violence and people's mis-perception of it.

Or by "dire" are your referring to Trump, global warming, and my lack of retirement pension?
posted by LoveHam at 11:37 AM on September 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Pretty much all I've ever wanted was to be a mum. Not the case for everyone, not very exciting, but plain as that. And that's not unusual - people spend thousands and thousands of pounds on fertility treatments because fundamentally, they want to be parents.

The worries you have about the future- climate change etc, are real but they are also abstract to most people. The desire for children trumps that easily.
posted by threetwentytwo at 11:40 AM on September 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

My husband and I were attending the wedding of a dear friend, whose parents share many of my morals, and who managed to instill those morals in all three of their children. Seeing them all together, honoring each other and laughing and loving and celebrating, convinced me that it is possible to raise good humans. I hadn't believed that before; quite the opposite. If you choose to bring a child into the world, it's an optimistic choice; a statement that you think the world will be better with a piece of you in it after you're gone. I didn't have a strong desire to be a parent, but I can work hard to make a good human being who can continue to work towards helping the world when I'm gone.
posted by tchemgrrl at 11:43 AM on September 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

I guess I'm having trouble making the cognitive leap between 1) knowing how bad things are and 2) still bringing a person into the world that will be around if (when?) things really fall off of the rails.

I am childfree by choice, so perhaps not entirely qualified to answer your question. But, as someone who has watched more than a few friends go from childfree by choice to pregnancies, I think the trick is that it is not a cognitive leap.

One of my best friends (who is actually pregnant with her second now) is an engineer, very smart, very well read, concerned about the future etc., etc. Even after she got married, she struggled with the exact same inquiry that you have: how can it possibly make sense to have kids, given [reasons]. She even went so far as to ask our co-workers who were parents why they did it, and I remember her telling me that they never had a satisfactory answer (part of it is that they were all a fair bit older, so of a generation where having kids was more universally expected).

And then over time, something switched for her (and her husband), and having children became something that was very important to them. And I know that she doesn't have a "logical" reason for it because when she ended up having infertility issues she confided in me that she wished that she could go back to the "not wanting kids" mindset. Part of me wished she could have too, because it hurt to see her in so much pain.

But, her kid is awesome, and I have high hopes for the next one. And as much as I cloak my own personal childfreedom in a wrapper of rationality (and selfishness -- I like money), I know that I can be rational about this because I've never "wanted" a child.
posted by sparklemotion at 11:47 AM on September 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

In the face of of the respondents saying, essentially, "pshaw, you catastrophist, the future's no more alarming than ever it's been!" I just want to say that I think you're reasonable to feel the way you do. There's plenty of evidence contradicting those dismissive voices.

It seems to me that the choice to have children is often justified by denial and cynical reason (in the sense that Žižek talks about it, as "the feeling that we know very well that our present situation is invidious, but all the same we act as though it isn't") rather than resolving that cognitive dissonance.

I know that I'm not alone in choosing not to have children for exactly the reasons you mention, and while it seems that you might be looking for help you justify a choice you want to make, from my perspective you can't bridge the cognitive gap--only whistle past it.
posted by Edna Million at 12:02 PM on September 30, 2016 [4 favorites]

When I read about the Integrated Assessment Models that the U.S. Government's interagency working group used to come up with its social cost of carbon, I see that even they predict that future generations will be better off than we are today, and I believe those models are using equilibrium climate sensitivity values that are consistent with the latest reports from the IPCC. Now, you can obviously criticize this work on various bases, including the idea that the SCC and the models used to develop it don't sufficiently account for the possibility of low probability-high damage outcomes, but I'm presenting it to show that at least some informed predictions don't match up with your sense of the future.

That said, I had kids because I had some basic desire to do so, and so did my wife. Honestly, I never considered not having kids. The urge to procreate isn't shared by everyone, obviously, but it is a common and basic human urge. I don't think it really makes sense to think of it in the way you do. Think about your history. People have had kids knowing that those kids would live in serfdom or slavery. They've had kids knowing their countries were on the brink of war. They had kids knowing that a nuclear war was a possibility.
posted by Alluring Mouthbreather at 12:17 PM on September 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

I discovered this poem a few months ago and have held on to it ever since. I'll put the whole thing behind a link because there's some disturbing imagery involving a child, but here's an excerpt:

Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children.

The world is so full of pain. Even without climate change, systemic inequality, gun violence, all the other known and unknown horrible threats on the horizon, there's so much potential for pain in life and so many ways it could potentially go wrong on every possible level, from the global to the personal. And the cruel twist is that, for me at least, being a parent has opened up all sorts of new ways to worry and fear and be sad. You can walk by the abyss and know to avoid it without ever looking directly in, but when you pull a kid away from the edge it's hard not to catch a glimpse of how terrifyingly deep it all goes.

I have a two-year-old and sometimes I think: He has not had his heart broken yet. Or I think: One of us will bury the other. He is healthy and well-fed and clothed and loved, and there are so many kids who aren't, and it hurts to think about. We could lose anything, anyone, at any time. Why would you choose to expose someone to all this?

I mean, I can't really think of a particularly strong rational argument in favor of having a kid. And it's not like the world needs any more people in it.

Yet I chose to have one. I love him. I am immensely grateful for his existence. I am certain we made the right decision in having him. What tipped the scales for me is that, ultimately, I am happy to be alive. I love life enough, and I believe the world is good enough, that I wanted to share it with someone new. I show him friendly cats, passing airplanes, how maple seeds spin as they fall. There is enough to make his life good. And when it gets bad, I can teach him what I know about cushioning the blow, about fighting back. I can do my best to raise my son as a person who tips the balance ever so slightly into the good.

This is all super maudlin and depressing and I'm totally crying and I'm probably going to be embarrassed by it five minutes after I hit post. But, like, the world sucks. It's always sucked in some way, and it will never stop sucking. But it's also filled with joy and hope and potential.
posted by Metroid Baby at 12:26 PM on September 30, 2016 [41 favorites]

Whatever state the world may be in, it's not THAT dramatically different than it was a single generation ago. If it doesn't make sense to have kids now, then by the same token, it didn't make sense for your parents to have had you. Do you wish they hadn't? Or have you managed to extract some joy from the world in spite of it being a fucked-up mess in various ways?

Something horrible might happen to your children, if you have them. This has always been true.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 12:30 PM on September 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Whenever I think about having biological kids I head over to the VHEMT website. I found a lot of great answers to why people think having biological kids is something they want to pursue. If you really want to raise a person, consider adopting.
posted by homesickness at 12:36 PM on September 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm an educated (PhD scientist) and successful woman. I grew up in poverty, in an extended family where all the adults in the generation before me were single moms, abandoned by their husbands, doing their best collectively to raise a pack of kids on almost no money. It was the 80s--AIDS, nuclear threat, Greed is Good.

I had no desire to have kids of my own, or for that matter to marry. I was surprised to find that, when I did eventually marry, I loved and trusted my husband enough to take this, the most daring and irrevocable choice.

By far the biggest and most wonderful surprise of my life is how hands down awesome it is to be a mom, and how deep and enriching the love of and from my children is to my life. I am so, so glad to have these two wonderful people in my life, to bring them into the world, to see them grow and blossom. I love them so deeply that I can't even describe it, and even though I know my task is to put myself out of a job of raising them, I am so grateful to have been able to raise them, and am glad to know they'll be in my heart, and hopefully life, for the rest of my days.

Yes, there are shitty things in the world, and I can't protect my children from them (including the painful failure of the marriage). I have made peace with that. I lived through shitty things and survived. Humankind has lived through shitty things and survived. They will live through shitty thing and survive (my innate denial kicks in at any other possibility.)

All these words are still insufficient. Becoming a parent is an initiatory experience. It's worth it to walk through the fire.
posted by Sublimity at 12:40 PM on September 30, 2016 [12 favorites]

Response by poster: Hi everyone, I just want to say thanks for sharing some very personal stories with me (and the rest of AskMe). They've been truly inspiring to read and they've definitely helped shape my perspective. I really appreciate your thoughts and openness.
posted by Fister Roboto at 12:52 PM on September 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

My wife really wanted kids, I was sort of on the fence for the same reasons as you; I am not a particularly optimistic person. It only hit home how much I wanted to be a father, wanted our family to be bigger, when our first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. Maybe it's just the biological imperative or my ego fooling me into thinking it's something more noble, but our family feels more complete, more full of love, with our child now. I wouldn't judge anyone who opted not to or felt they were deprived, I can only say how it feels for us. We made a little human, and hopefully they grow up to be a good big human. She'll be the biggest contribution I ever make to society and the world, and the best, as long as I don't screw her up too bad. On a purely selfish level, she's neat to watch - there are new ways of looking at everything, perspectives I never considered. The experience is fascinating. We share, we learn. She said "Bowl" yesterday and I almost shit my pants. I have a new respect and affection for my parents, who had their kids when they were a decade and a half younger than I was when I had mine. My world is bigger, and my heart is bigger, because of her. Maybe that's a crap answer or selfish, I dunno.

For an interesting perspective on the idea of having kids and the legacy we're leaving them, check out Mike Dawson's Rules For Dating My Daughter - a lot of the pieces are also on-line.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 1:05 PM on September 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't have children and have never really wanted them, so I'm in here just to let you know the results of my personal informal poll of people as to why they had children. The most frequent response is a puzzled, "but you have to!" even from very well educated people.

There are two responses that I've received that seemed like ones that would have satisfied me. The first, mostly tongue in cheek, was "For entertainment purposes." The real best was "Because there's too much love in our marriage to limit it to only two people."

My ex-husband wanted children in order to have someone to take care of him when he is old. I told him not only that I didn't want children but that, in addition, my view is that if you have that kind of reason for having children, your children will do whatever the opposite is.
posted by janey47 at 1:19 PM on September 30, 2016 [4 favorites]

Because we are all going to die. Anything to make our short breath of consiousness happier, with more depth and farther reaching impact is worthwhile. Having kids fits.

I don't have kids yet. But the attitude you describe is sooo opposite to my own opinion that I can't really grasp it. The world is awesome! There is ice cream, and my husband who would be such a great dad, and going ice fishing is fun, and dogs are cute, and my parents would be amazing grandparents. And I love to decorate my house! And Halloween costumes! How could I not bring a kid into my world? Yes there is trump and ISIS and someone tried to sink my husbands boat and my friends car got stolen but oof, the good stuff outweigh the bad by about 60 billion to one.
posted by pintapicasso at 1:49 PM on September 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

I have three kids but each was an unexpected conception, so I can't really say I planned to have kids, but I can say that however grim the world is, its overall grimness, for the most part, does not intrude on the love I express to my children or the love I receive from them in return. I am not saying that I care nothing of other people's problems. And I am not some 1 percenter whose wealth insulates him from unhappiness. But to be honest, my status as a well-educated American in the 21st century does keep out a lot of what makes you sorry about the state of the world. We don't suffer from war, or uncontrolled gun violence where we live. We are not poor. We find happiness from our children in daily moments of family togetherness, and other times we turn our attention to fixing the problems of the world or of the less fortunate. One doesn't preclude the other.
posted by hhc5 at 1:49 PM on September 30, 2016

I decided to have kids right after Obama was elected, in the glow of "all that hope-y change-y stuff".
posted by freezer cake at 2:00 PM on September 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

I agree with pintapicasso. If the world is a terrible place full of suffering and ultimately totally, completely 100% doomed... why NOT have kids?

I mean, it seems to me your logic is sort of contradictory. You're still hoping. You're still trying to avoid suffering and fix outcomes. Like: "I will fix this by not having kids. I will end this terribleness by being the end of the line of suffering. The world will be better once I don't have kids." There's a goal there.

That's fundamentally still a sort of optimistic thought, no? Stay with me here. Wouldn't a totally pessimistic screw-it-all thought be more like, "There is absolutely nothing anyone can do and having kids or not makes no difference, so why not?"
posted by stockpuppet at 2:15 PM on September 30, 2016

I agree with a lot of things above, but also wanted to add that for many people, identity isn't as individualized as modern culture sometimes make it out to be, but it also comes through community participation. The family unit, from my experience, is the strongest type of community bond that I can experience. It doesn't mean that there aren't bad families, or that people don't feel better on their own, but that good communities of reciprocal expressions of love are something that many people desire deep down in their bones: you can call it biology, or teleology, but it's undoubtedly a felt need for a lot of people, whether or not it gets realized as often as it should.

For me, then, I have a sense of identity that has been developed from my upbringing, where I feel deep bonds and grief over the death of those close to me that seem incomparable to other sorts of social relationships. As I have children, and I watch them grow, and new bonds are created, it deepens my sense of community and self. Not all would agree, but I've grown to believe that selves are most realized as we give to others in good ways that are reciprocated synergistically between those who are part of the same persistent, cooperative community. Having children, I think, can contribute to the greater good as they are raised with good values, but there is also the more immediate effect of simply being in and intentionally contributing to a smaller familial unit in which you create opportunities to exemplify good values and experience them, and they have a felt quality that is pretty significantly (and I think uniquely) formative. It's not always perfect, but you perhaps start to feel the ideal as your heart is pricked and shaped and molded through these relationships. New additions with uniquely precious personalities bring new opportunities and experiences.

Having kids, then, can be a big part about experiencing meaningful communities of mutual love and affection, and thus identity growth, that can be really hard or nearly impossible to find in other places (for many people). It can all go to hell, too, but when it's good, it's really good, and sometimes I get a sense that when I'm gone, some of the community identity that was created through my immediately family will live beyond me through persistent values over time and domino effects of love and caring well past my small investment on this mortal coil, if I do it right.
posted by SpacemanStix at 2:48 PM on September 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

Why do you drink when thirsty? Or eat when hungry? Or breathe?

My uterus and ovaries and pituitary gland wanted to make and grow a baby. I could make cognitive excuses about why it was okay to, but ultimately they would be lies, because at the time I just really wanted to have a baby, it was a deep primal urge and it was a delicious delight giving into it. I didn't think beyond naming the desperate urge. It is Being Alive in the most exhilarating and absolute way. I could have died having the youngest as I had had a homebirth but then haemorrhaged, that's some of the realist shit there is. I didn't enjoy all the moments at the time but I absolutely treasure the experience as one which tells me I have truly lived.

Two of my three have autism and it's hard work caring for them. But for that, I would have 5 more. I like it that much. There is nothing like it. It's an unending wonder watching them grow and showing them the world. Even my youngest, who is pretty disabled. In fact he might be the biggest joy. A flicker of eye contact from him is like finding flecks of gold in the mud. His little self, human but so different, is a constant source of amazement to me. I feel like I'm raising Spock, I feel honoured to have been entrusted with him. He is a marvel and a joy. He's sleeping beside me right now, with blonde curls of his too-long-because-NO-haircutting hair stuck to his dewy sweaty cheek, with a chubby hand which has tapped and slapped and twirled all day finally relaxed on his tummy, with his rosebud of a mouth pouting slightly at whatever he is dreaming. He is satisfying like a full belly after real hunger, or a draught of cold water on a hot day, or an orgasm. Only more and forever.

And it might all be Stockholm syndrome, but I just don't care. I'd have another tomorrow, honestly, I would.
posted by intergalacticvelvet at 3:05 PM on September 30, 2016 [4 favorites]

We couldn't intellectually make the leap (for many of the reasons you noted, plus a few extras) - so we adopted older children that had been in foster care for a bit. No, we're not passing on our genetics, but we are (to some extent) passing on our values and a bit of ourselves.

It turns out that, for us, that was all we wanted and it has fully satisfied any urges to create a family - there has never been a moment where either of us thought we should have procreated (instead or in addition). When I speak with people who have a very strong physical or emotional (or both) urge/desire to create a child through whatever/any means, it is completely foreign to me - - my genes, apparently, don't care about making their way into future generations.
posted by VioletU at 3:38 PM on September 30, 2016 [5 favorites]

I think a lot of it is hormones. And babies/toddlers are sooooo cute. And sex feels sooo good. So yeah, biology and the lizard brain, basically. I kind of wanted to have a kid, and then like, something else took over in my early 30's and I wanted to have sex all the time (and also felt increasingly baby crazy) as well, and then, well, here I am.

But, having kids and a family is incredibly rewarding. It's the ultimate human adventure/experience. It's the everything. Every single day is challenging, adventurous, joy filled, exhausting, maddening, revealing. It sucks a lot of times, it really does, but I've had jobs much worse with much less excitement, learning curve, and rewards. I have a 1 year old (I'm a woman), and while it really is pretty grueling, it's also, like the best ever. I'm growing. I'm growing a family. I'm growing as a person. It's grounding. I like meeting other moms/families with kids. I like how curious and wonder-filled my daughter is, and makes me be. I like watching her dad grow into a father, and my parents into grandparents, and myself into a mother (lots of conflicting feelings around all this, but it does feel like ... this deeper meaning of family and purpose.)

If you're a relationship oriented person, also, having kids is incredibly intimate and full of connection (at least right now, when I am still so close with her daily.) I think this would be the same if you adopted or fostered children, also. There's just nothing like it -- it's a pretty juicy relationship.

I honestly at the ripe old age of 34 have for the first time have thought, I really, really really want to stay alive for her as long as I can! I want to stay healthy, and 'young' and active so I can be there for her, and watch her grow into a child, and then a teenager, and then a woman. I want to be able to have a relationship with her when she's 25 and I'm 60. Which I never really ... thought about before. Like wanting to be alive for a purpose?

Don't get me wrong, I think I'm good with just one kid. It's really a very overwhelming task, and if it wasn't for the sex and the "babies are cute" part, it wouldn't have really happened. But, I can't imagine not living out this life stage, you know?
posted by Rocket26 at 3:51 PM on September 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

Pregnant with our first child, though when I was younger, I swore I would not have my own children. And I'm still not a big fan of babies.

Maybe I'm an optimist, but I think the world is doing pretty well right now, compared to the past. And that my husband (and our extended family) and I will be able to provide tools for our children to thrive in this world.

I don't think there's any point in time where life would be perfect, and that indeed, a challenge-free life would not be worth living. (Would a game that's too easy be fun to play?) In fact, despite some Bad Things (tm) that have happened in my life, I'm a pretty happy person.

I was recently reading some antinatalist's views, that any life that might suffer is not worth bringing into the world, and my husband and I talked about it. Our point of view is that there is plenty in life worth living for, even if sometimes, you would be unhappy. I mean, I voluntarily wait in line for a good restaurant, even if it means I have to "suffer" extra hunger. I voluntarily "suffer" through airplane seats and an uncomfortable bed when we travel so we can travel cheaply (and therefore more often). While some people might not think it's fair for me to make such a decision for another person (i.e., my child/ren) I think that ultimately, only a bitter cynic can honestly claim that human life is so filled with suffering that they are not worth living.

Ultimately, though, for us, having this child (and maybe future children) is a selfish decision. It is borne out of our own desire to fully experience the world. FWIW, we own property, have jobs, picked up hobbies, have friends, traveled, and have lived abroad. Yes, there are many, many, many things to experience, but being parents is one of the big ones for a lot of people. I mean, we have plenty to comfortable just the two of us, but it's... boring? Too easy? And it seems kind of pointless? With a child--and here I'm extrapolating since I haven't experienced it--you get so many new experiences and get to see the world through fresh eyes. And that's what we're hoping to have.

As for adoption vs conception, I'm not opposed to adoption. But it is an expensive, long, and onerous process. Whereas if you're lucky and don't suffer from infertility, conceiving your own is much easier. Another consideration for us is that we don't know how much of temperament is nature vs nurture, but there is a possibility that a child that is genetically similar to us would be more likely to have a temperament that matches well with at least one of us. (And if you adopt a trouble child, there would always be that nagging question of if it would have been easier if we hadn't adopted.) While we chose to have a child knowing that it would come with difficult times, I don't see any reason to not make it as enjoyable as possible for everyone involved.
posted by ethidda at 4:04 PM on September 30, 2016

I look around at my friends and acquaintances - and hands down the most miserable ones, destructive ones, cruel ones - are not that way because of some big external disaster though those have certainly befallen them. The ones who suffer and / or inflict suffering the most day in and day out all had really unhappy childhoods - with absent parents, dysfunctional parents, violent parents. To me it seems those sorrows are harder to bear and are the true burdens in life that we carry day to day. I knew that my husband and I would raise our children with so much love and ferocious intent to be present and kind and loving that if there was any one thing we could do that was good in the world it was to create and raise someone who knew completely and deeply that he / she was absolutely loved.
posted by sestaaak at 5:05 PM on September 30, 2016 [6 favorites]

The world is a terrible place if you think it's a terrible place.

The world is a beautiful place if you think it's a beautiful place.

It's a numbers game. If thoughtful intelligent kind people such as yourself don't have kids then the morons win.

Right now kids are an abstract ideas for you but it's soooo different when they're here. My kid is a toddler and it's soooo sweet. He brings so much joy and love to those around him. Like Rocket 26 said above: if you believe that love is transformative and relationships are all we have in this crazy world then yes have kids! Think of the people you know who made a difference in your life. What if that person wasn't? We'd be that much the poorer.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 5:11 PM on September 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

I've got a PhD, I'm terrified of climate change and nuclear war, and I still had a kid.

I wanted the chance to demonstrate unconditional love. I wanted to be a mother who loves a child at his worst, who responds to his needs with deep tenderness, who treats him with unfailing respect. I want my child to soak up that love and respect and tender regard and then show it to the world. My husband and I had a lot of love and we wanted to share it, to create a loving family that could magnify and extend love into the world. I do think we've done that, so far. I'm not naive enough to think that having kids is a safe bet - they could suffer or they could make others suffer. But we wanted to give it a shot. I'm happy that my son gets the chance to be alive, to love his family, to be loved.

No question it's risky. We constantly make decisions - everything from where to live to financial plans to literal safety contingency plans - based on keeping our son safe.

Still worth it. And although I suspect it's mother's pride mixed with biological imperative, damn, I still think my son is good for the world. He's a beautiful soul.
posted by Cygnet at 5:13 PM on September 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

It turned out that my career, marriage, extended family, friends, and hobbies weren't quite satisfying enough and I still felt that I was missing out on something.
posted by vunder at 5:15 PM on September 30, 2016

What finally flipped the switch for me was that my middle school best friend posted a picture of her new baby and I was struck by an incredible feeling of jealousy and covetousness and realized, hey, maybe I really do want to be a parent.

It should have been obvious: I love children's culture and the artifacts of children's culture, I am deeply interested in human development, I enjoy living joyfully. And living joyfully has been my broad experience of parenthood. It is incredibly corny, but her presence at 2.75 makes my heart fucking sing like 80 times a day. I really feel like my life before her was incredibly drab and now I get to share it with this person who feels and experiences so deeply it makes my chest crackle and split into a thousand pieces to watch it. I don't think I would be able to get through this election without her, much less the future of the human race.

Maybe it's selfish, but children, hard work though they are, can bring about so much joy.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 5:55 PM on September 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

I think you're working from a bit of a flawed premise: it really is wild conjecture that the world will suddenly turn really awful in the future. Like, I get there are things that are objectively trending in a scary direction, but you can't just draw a line from here to awful.
posted by so fucking future at 6:14 PM on September 30, 2016

I think perspective is so important here, honestly. I have a great life and even so, I would choose to not be born if given the option. Even a good, privileged life, is subject to SO SO MUCH pain and heartbreak and anguish and I wouldn't wish it on anyone, especially not a tiny little innocent baby I made with my own body who never asked to come into this messed up place. Like yeah ice cream and dogs are some of my absolute favorite things but they absolutely do NOT make up for the death of every loved one, health problems, the bleakness of humanity, etc. Even the luckiest person alive has gone through trauma. It's just not worth it to put someone through that because I wanted someone to play with or whatever.
posted by masquesoporfavor at 7:11 PM on September 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

I think perspective is so important here, honestly. I have a great life and even so, I would choose to not be born if given the option.

Given that this question is about why people have children, I think it's safe to say that not everyone shares this perspective. I've faced plenty of struggle, personally (death of a parent as a child, poverty, death of several other loved ones) but I do not find my life to be one of abject suffering. The moments of joy I've experienced (and even some of bittersweetness, or pain) make me glad to be alive. Perhaps OP's friends feel the same way.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 7:29 PM on September 30, 2016

I think you can come up with a myriad of reasons not to have children. There is never truly a right time to have kids, or the perfect state of mind. There's always something, the metrics if you look, are completely against it on every level. I think a better way to approach it is to ask yourself if you want them at all.

Neither my partner nor I were pressured to have kids. We never felt it was our duty to have kids nor do we know anybody who really felt that way. We both came from families with issues that... frankly weren't encouraging parental examples. We both struggled through plenty of pain. Truckloads of pain. But we liked children and we had enjoyed watching our friend's kids, nieces, nephews and cousins grow up and liked their company at every age. It took us a long time to get there but our pregnancy and the birth of our child are moments of the purest joy in my life. My partner nearly didn't make it due to some unforeseen complications but still we never regretted the decision. I never thought I could love someone as deeply and completely as I do my child. I never thought I could get to a place where I felt as selfless as I do with him. Watching him comprehend and get his head around the world is an incredible teaching experience often calling into question how I relate to the world (check this short video and look how the dad is looking at his daughter and listen to how she figures things out - beautiful).

My advice is to spend some time around kids, talk to your partner deeply about being a parent and what that would look like. You don't have to be your parents or friends or whatever idea of imperfection/perfection you might have. It is one of the most challenging things I have ever done and also one of the most rewarding. YMMV but for me I know I made the right choice; apocalypse be damned.

In short, life is suffering and we're always gonna end up dead but a baby's smile is always gonna be awesome.
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:45 PM on September 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm not a parent, so I can't answer this question directly, but since you mentioned global warming, you might want to check out Conceivable Future. It's a reproductive and climate justice group that hosts a lot of conversations on this very topic - including many perspectives from people who have decided to have children, and have taken an activist stance towards climate change precisely because they are so worried for the future and their children's experience of the world.
posted by mostly vowels at 8:37 PM on September 30, 2016

The entire children issue is so completely clouded by biological drives as to render reason almost completely moot. It's all about the post facto rationalisations. Let me offer some of mine.

I chose to prevent my own reproduction via vasectomy when the world had five and a half billion people in it compared to the three billion it had when I was born. I was noticing the effects of increased crowding even over my own relatively short life in my own sparsely populated country. As one of the apparent minority with an intuitive grasp on the nature of exponential functions, I saw and still see humanity at large as ecologically akin to a runaway global mouse plague or algal bloom, and I could not in all conscience allow myself to contribute to the destructive effects of that any more than required by the bare fact of my own existence.

Biology and culture won't be denied, so I suffered horrible emotional pain for some while after acting on that choice. I still firmly believe it was the right thing for me to have done.

we adopted ... we're not passing on our genetics, but we are (to some extent) passing on our values and a bit of ourselves

For me, foster parenting is not so much about passing on values as about passing on at least some of the incredible luck I personally had in the parental lottery. The more people I meet, the rarer my own flat-out wonderful parents look to me. There are so many children growing up in circumstances that only the sickest of sadists would wish on them. I can't help more than a handful of them, but to that handful I can offer the love and respect and cherishing and stability that my own parents offered me, and that has to be enough.

my genes, apparently, don't care about making their way into future generations

Mine apparently do, or they wouldn't have given me such an awful kicking after I frustrated their ambitions. However, they do seem to be satisfied with an occasional reminder that all of them are well represented enough across a human population of seven and a half billion that none of them need be concerned for its own success or that of its chromosomal buddies.

That said: as a non-procreative parent, I can assure you that every account I've heard from parents blindsided by the strength of the love and awe they feel for their kids has been a good fit for my own experience. There is simply no adequate way to express how personally rewarding the raising of children can be.
posted by flabdablet at 9:18 PM on September 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

We not only didn't plan to have children, my husband was five days away from his scheduled vasectomy when I learned I was eight months pregnant. We had never, ever, ever wanted children. And our daughter is the best, best, best thing ever. And she gives me hope, and I cherish her, and my life is complete in ways that I gasp thinking about. I didn't really know love, or patience, or stamina, or generosity, until I had this child. I didn't know who I was or what the hell I was doing here until I had this child. My life has meaning, joy, love, hope and delight beyond measure because of this child. I can't say this will happen to everyone, and maybe for me it was so profound in part because I expected parenting to be so dreadful. But hallelujah I love being a mother.

And as guilty as I feel about bringing another person into this overpopulated world, and as guilty as I feel about foisting a highly questionable future on this child that I love, I also realize that (rationalize that?) during the stone age it looked worse. In the Middle Ages it looked worse. During WWII it looked worse. Who knows what glories our future holds?

And yes, it could be utter crap, complete and utter and meaningless and awful crap. And that's scary as hell. I try not to think about it except to motivate myself to do better, teach her better, inspire others to be better. Given that this child was handed to me through the failure of a pharmaceutical, I do my very, very best, and hope that I am worthy of this awesome and delightful responsibility.
posted by Capri at 9:23 PM on September 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

You bring a baby into the world because you're an optimist, and you think you can make the world a better place for your baby to grow up in, or your baby will grow into someone who can make the world a better place, etc.

You're an optimist because you see the beauty in the world rather than its ugliness, and you believe the world is a great place to be in and don't believe it's in a dire state.

It's nothing to do with being smart or having a PhD
posted by Kwadeng at 10:31 PM on September 30, 2016

I live in a small town with an old town cemetery at the end of my block. There's a lot of dire stuff -- the most awful to look at, as a parent, are the family tombstones where two or three kids died in quick succession one winter. And young men who died in the wars. Nowadays you need to do something stupid to end up there as a young person -- the only contemporary early deaths are drunk driving (snowmobiling, etc) accidents.

So not only were children fragile things that could easily succumb to disease and death not all that long ago -- it also would have been very different living in this isolated town back then. A trip to the market to hawk your wares would've been a long and not very pleasant journey -- I can go downtown in a luxury car in forty-five minutes. Laundry would have been an ordeal (my house still has a cistern in the basement to remind me of this. My kid started her life on the third floor, with hot running water; in the early days of this house, it had a first-floor pump to get cold water that far up from the cistern and that was it). Meals would have been miserably repetitive for much of the year -- lots of rutabagas, beans, salty meat, home-baked goods in the winter, I'd guess -- the basement also has a cold storage room for cellaring apples in barrels of sawdust or whatever. The cistern and storage cellar look like odd dungeons now. We have multiple freezers and eat whatever we damn please in January.

And this is in the new world! The cemetery and local old family names are primarily Scots. Occasionally a little bit of dialect or accent still comes into the general store off the farm. These families who lived what seem miserable lives to me had undertaken a long dangerous trip to come here and stake their claim in rural Canada. It's mind-boggling. This rough existence in Canada looked good enough to Scots of yesteryear to pack up and leave it all behind.

Visiting the massive estates that are the prosperous, long-settled family farms here now makes it apparent why it seemed worthwhile, though. These families are millionaires with beautiful home and massive acreage just because great-great-great-grandpa/ma took a look at all the hardships and said 'Let's do it anyway,' and had extra kids to better the odds there...

My childhood had a very realistic terror of nuclear war, AIDS getting a name at around the same time I was starting to think "Hey, when I'm a bit older, sounds like sex is pretty cool," a few vaccines missing from the ones my daughter gets, we had yet to find out what salsa and hummus were, etc. TVs got very few channels and if you missed your program, too bad -- the tale of "TV Guide" was particularly astonishing and I'm not sure it was as well understood as other "Back when..." sagas. TV you can't pause, never mind not have on demand at all times, is bizarre and not "TV" as she knows it.

Whenever I read/hear this sort of Henny Penny view of the present I have to quash an urge to start recommending good overviews of world history -- things have always been partially awful, and we have always kept on and improved things. I'm thrilled to bring a kid into the present day -- here is your comfortable modern life; here is your mother who will sink all her eggs into your basket because the odds of your dying in childhood are very low; here is your house with central heating, modern plumbing, and fresh fruits in winter; here is your ability to vote and go to university and get a credit card and not have issues with those things because of your gender, etc. I expect most things will continue to get better and better for her. In spite of the omnipresent threat of the bomb and so on, I grew up convinced I had been born at the best possible time, in the best possible place -- cars! TV! doctors! the start of home computing! Trudeaumania! -- and, honestly, it didn't really occur to me that my kid might feel differently. (So far so good on that front.)
posted by kmennie at 11:54 PM on September 30, 2016 [2 favorites]