> but pretty common in tech/upper middle class circles.

It's common in some tech and upper middle class bubbles, but outside of some startups and a few VHCOL cities most of the 40+ people in tech I encounter have families.

I think the mindset is most popular in internet bubbles like Reddit. Reddit went mainstream a decade ago and many people in their 30s and 40s grew up reading a lot of Reddit. Reddit cleaned up their popular subreddits list years ago, but for a while subreddits like r/childfree were constantly in everyone's default feeds. Redditors would talk about people who had kids as "breeders" as a derogatory term and treat them like they'd made terrible decisions with their lives.

I didn't realize how much this carried over into the real world until my friends and I started having kids. I knew a few people who treated our decisions like we were making terrible mistakes and throwing our lives away. I still encounter people from younger generations who are confused when I say that I like spending time with my kids. They can't imagine how that would be enjoyable in any way. When you grow up with your chosen social media telling you that the smart people are maximizing their bank accounts, minimizing their responsibilities, and doing as little as possible to get there, they can't fathom how someone could be happy with kids.

I am about to hit 40 soon and have an alternative take on all that. I agree reddit was and still is a very toxic echo chamber, but the rest of us who have avoided having kids shouldn't be lumped in with those people.

I came from a big family and grew up somewhat poor watching remorseful adults who didn't recognize the gravity of bringing a life into this world, let alone several, basically drink themselves to death to cope.

My social life is mostly offline and I enjoy helping people in any way I can, but I am fully aware of my own flaws. I find balance by being generous in what seems like a million other ways I might not have the energy or time for if I had a family. To each their own.

You seem to be polarising the choices. You do not have to have a big family or no kids at all. I have two kids.

For the vast majority people nothing else they can do with their lives will be anywhere near as fulfilling as having children. There are exceptions, of course, but it takes something like an unusual personality, or a great commitment to something else (e.g. celibacy in religious orders etc.), or something else really fulfilling.

I strongly suspect that someone who has the sense of responsibility that you have about children would make a great parent and not do what you grew up with.

Sorry, I'm not trying to be polarizing. I'm trying to emphasize what I've learned at the extremes. That can inform a choice much more clearly.

The outcomes of the children are directly correlated with the quality of the relationship the parents have. No relationship I've ever seen, then or now, seems to be stable enough to do much better.

In my case, they made up for it with love and attention that brought plenty of comfort but few answers. I know many people pine for that sort of thing, but it's very heavy for a child to go through. People often foolishly romanticize a life where anything seems possible as long as they feel supported. They think that support is the missing piece. What they don't think about is all the times that kid is going to walk directly into a wall and have to find the courage to not be mad at the wall or lose their shit and turn radical like those people on reddit. Love is not enough for hope, and hope is not a plan.

On the other end I had some friends whose parents brought plenty of answers without much love. Those people found some early success in life, but ended up restless and unsatisfied following someone else's path.

You can again say I'm being extreme, but my own experience with relationships is to bridge this gap is almost impossible. Trust is hard and must go both ways, and the current social climate makes it harder than ever. I am still young enough to give it time I guess. I'm not saying no to a family ever. I'm saying I don't know enough to be confident I can do better.

To be clear, I'm saying I've never met someone that has the curiosity and unyielding stubbornness to truly know something (in the Richard Feynman sense) while still being strong enough to be vulnerable and really love their family over all else. What few out there exist and meet that bar must then somehow find each other and commit. It's tough.

I do not think you are deliberately trying to be polarising and I can understand why you feel the way you do.

I think where we disagree is that I am more optimistic and I think you have higher expectations of what is needed to give children a life worth living. There is a lot of pressure on parents to be perfect.

For example, I agree about outcomes being correlated with the quality of relationships parents have, but its not the only factor. I brought up my kids for many years in a deteriorating marriage, and in the last few years by ex-wife became increasingly emotionally abusive towards me and the children in the last few years of our marriage. That was painful for them, but there were a lot of happy times in their childhood before that.

In terms of outcomes they are balanced, kind people with great relationships with everyone in their lives except their mother. They have done well academically and the older one has a job she loves.

From my own point of view, I regret marrying my ex, but I do not regret having children with her.

The fear of bringing up kids who become extremists or other bad outcomes is reasonable, but its always been a problem. I love what Kahil Gibran says about this: https://poets.org/poem/children-1 Its a small risk as very few people are like extremists on social media, and the rewards are enormous.

I do think there are social problems in both developing good relationships, and in lack of social and financial support for bringing up children. We make parenting far to difficult these days.

I said this in a different comment but the real key is just knowing what’s right for you. Knowing yourself is actually very hard though.

I don't really know myself either, just the flaws I have (right now). I found them by pushing outside my comfort zone.

Sometimes you just need to know when to stop pushing for a while and come back later. Later can be sooner than you think, or never. It's the whole point of living. I'd find it miserable to be over my skis the entire time, but I still take risks here and there. How else do you find out?

This is the way!

I don't understand why people, generally on both sides of the issue, just ignore the social effects of it and instead just focus on the personal. I suspect most don't intuit how rapidly fertility shifts population sizes, because it's an exponential. A fertility rate of 1 means each generation decreases by more than 50%, compounding. So after just 5 generations and your generational size is down 97% with your population doing the exact same, staggered out by a few decades.

And fertility determines not only the size of a population, but even the age ratios within that population. Low fertility means you end up with far more elderly than you do working age. Far from this vision of being a society with more for everybody, we'll be creating societies where labor is ever-more scarce, economies are primarily dedicated to helping sustain the elderly and simultaneously collapsing at the same time. It's not going to be pretty.

For these reasons, and many others, I think the social aspect is one of the most important. Self fulfillment and these other things are very important and good, but if we don't have children then we're going to be creating some pretty messed up societies for our descendants. We're likely going to get to see this play out in South Korea during our lifetimes. And I do wonder what their descendants will think of the South Koreans of today.

Western societies solve that problem by letting in immigrants. I'm not sure what SK or Japan are going to do though.

I don't really think immigration is a long-term solution, because of the scale issue - which most greatly underestimate. We're talking about needing a never-ending stream of hundreds of millions of people. And you'd ideally want people that speak the language, have at least some basic skills, and so on. It's not particularly realistic, even before getting into the social chaos that such would cause.

And it becomes even less realistic if you look outward to times when this becomes necessary. Japan is a good example of this issue. Migrating to Japan is not difficult. The only meaningful barrier is learning basic Japanese. Beyond that, after just 5 years of residency you can even apply for citizenship which has a very high acceptance rate. And there are a ton of 'Japanese enthusiasts', many of whom already speak basic Japanese.

And many of them have tried to migrate, but they don't last at all. They quickly realize that a Japan in decline is not the Japan in their minds. Getting paid $1500 a month to work a job with extremely high expectations and demands in a country with a median age of 50 (and increasing) isn't the Japan they thought they were moving to.

Yes, of course! No one expects a bunch of western weebs to save Japan's demographics. Obviously, Japan will have to change their insular culture and work ethics, if they attempt to deal with the problem by significantly increasing immigration.

Yet there are many western countries where the issue is how to prevent all the people attempting to get in from doing so.

The people America is trying to prevent from coming in are largely low skill, low education, generally do not speak the language, and so on. These people are no more a solution than our idealistic weebs. In most cases, they're rather worse off since weebs at least tend to have language and other skills, but are trying to move to a place that doesn't exist.

> The people America is trying to prevent from coming in are largely low skill, low education, generally do not speak the language, and so on.

US also put a lot of roadblocks in a way of highly skilled immigration. For example, check the waiting time of Indian engineers to obtain Green card.

> These people are no more a solution than our idealistic weebs.

Not sure I agree with this assessment. Unskilled immigrants tend to be over-represented on hard low-paying jobs, both in EU and US. Someone has to build, pave roads, cook, deliver, tend of elderly, etc.

You've gotta separate cause and effect, especially when these things will change in the future. For instance decades ago I had family that worked in construction. They were earning about $20/hour in a rural area back when that was quite a lot of money, even in an urban area.

It was enough that, even with the on-off nature of the work (you're not getting paid when nothing's getting built), they could easily raise a large family very comfortably. Now a day construction in the US pays awfully and a big factor is the large number of illegal migrants working in it for sub-market wages. So you're talking about the necessity of solving a problem by expanding the thing that caused it.

It's very difficult to predict what demographic collapse will look like in a place like the US, but one general trend that might inform us is that fertility within places like the US remains strongly inversely correlated with income. Those who are earning a lot aren't having children, those who aren't earning much - are. Pair that alongside fairly low upward mobility, and again I think it's unlikely that significant numbers of unskilled workers will have any real value in the future (or present).

That solves the problem by removing western society. Which can hardly be called a solution

I find the polarization of the child/no-child discussion revolting. One side poo-poo:ing on the other, have a child? Breeder! The other poo-poo:ing back... no child, you f*cking egoist, I'm happy your gene line dies out.

Personally I am of the opinion that everyone is entitled to their own life, and that the default assumption should be that they make conscious decisions in line with their own preferences.

Have a child? Great, but don't complain to me about early mornings and stress... you knew that before you had one. No child? Go for it! But don't complain to me about loneliness and lack of purpose.

I'm leaning towards the no child camp myself. I love my long morning, and complete lack of some little createurs (rightful) demand on my time. Yes, I won't have the pleasure of seeing that little creature grow up, and I might have a lonelier old age (but there's plenty of social settings I can inject myself into), but that's life. There's advantages and disadvantages to everything.

The trick is to find out which ones you like more.

It strikes me that both these views are selfish, in that they focus on direct impact on one's life. But what about the broad impact on society for the descendants? What if by abdicating procreation we create conditions where only communities that force childbearing survive? Ought we not figure out a system where we can have both freedom and equality, as well as a sustainable population?

> Ought we not figure out a system where we can have both freedom and equality, as well as a sustainable population?

That would be great, but I never heard any realistic proposals how to make educated women with good opportunities want to birth and rear 3+ children.

Make it so that they don’t birth and rear but instead birth and then rear with a partner who will contribute equally. Also financial subsidies so that a child becomes at least neutral in terms of cost. Social help to make raising a child less exhausting. Improve the climate to that we can be positive about the child’s future. All difficult but not impossible.

> Make it so that they don’t birth and rear but instead birth and then rear with a partner who will contribute equally. Also financial subsidies so that a child becomes at least neutral in terms of cost.

Countries like Sweden and Norway have equal non-transferable paternity leaves and "free" daycare/education/healthcare. They birth rates are still nowhere near replacement levels. The hard truth seems to be that majority of women with education and opportunities don't want to spend their best years on children and bear the cost to their health from multiple child births.

> Improve the climate to that we can be positive about the child’s future.

Please. Now is objectively the best, safest time to have children. When western societies had high birth rates the expectation was basically "it is a coin toss whether a child will survive until adulthood and then they will have to deal with wars, famines and epidemics".

Same. My wife and I very much enjoy being child-free in our late-30s, but we avoided joining child-free groups to avoid the "parents are breeders" crowd.

Agreed except people encounter loneliness and lack of purpose for reasons besides choosing not to have kids and doing so is absolutely not guaranteed to resolve those feelings - you can build community, engage in service, etc

Yeah, everyone I know who doesn’t have a child/not planning to have zero connection to Reddit or anything online. Tldr is, people find fulfillment without children easier nowadays. And as they watch other going child free or 1-2 children, they realize that life is possible nowadays.

"Tldr is, people find fulfillment without children easier nowadays"

Do they? Or have most just become too distorted to feel allright filling their emptiness with empty online debates and netflix?

I know people who are really happy without kids (and who will never have them), but the majority is rather miserably lonely when you look past the facade. And with many, there isn't even a facade.

The parents aren't lonely, but they're tired and mostly miserable.

I haven't asked "why should I even try" in ages. The question "how do I even manage this hell" has been on my mind more often.

Well, unfortunately I also have asked myself that question way too often, but I cannot agree on the "mostly miserable" part when comparing childless single persons and parents. Life can be hell, but with kids you don't ask the question so much why even get up - because the purpose is clear. There are people depending and counting on you.

This matches my experience but I'd add a layer = purpose from kids isn't automatic. For years I had kids and still felt hollow because I was showing up physically but not really present. Getting sober changed that. Suddenly the purpose that was always there actually landed.

Then I did something unexpected...I started building. Taught myself to code at 45 while being a stay-at-home dad. Now I have both: the deep purpose of raising kids and the creative purpose of making something from nothing every day.

The combination is what did it for me. Kids alone didn't fix the emptiness. Building alone wouldn't have either. But kids gave me the reason to get up and building gave me something to look forward to after bedtime (and not the leftover scotch glass on my nightstand).

> but with kids you don't ask the question so much why even get up - because the purpose is clear.

No question about that. My life has become simpler in many ways: the annoying big questions have gone away.

> but the majority is rather miserably lonely when you look past the facade

People make their own choices, and it’s not up to me, nor you, to make assumptions on their lives. If children give you fulfilment, god speed to you. If others can find happiness without children, god speed to them.

By the way, I’m speaking as a person who wants children. But I totally get my child-free friends. I know people in their 60s as well, who debated this question and found a life for themselves. There is always a “what if question” hanging around, but all in all, they’ve weighed their options and are generally happy.

I think a lot of people who ended up having children to find fulfilment did not find happiness in other means. So they can’t experience the “other side’s argument”. Same applies to child-free people, as they haven’t experienced the other side.

Well, I do think I can make assumptions about other people's life, but yes it is their choice and life. (But I did experience the child free independent state for a long time, I wasn't unhappy, it was a different life, but I was always clear that I wanted to have children one day)

And I did not, nor would I ever say people need to have children to be fullfilled. Those who question whether having children is the right choice, I would never urge to do it. Rather the contrary as you cannot reverse this decision and if you find out after the act, no, children are too much for me - then it is too late.

Kids are a cheat code to finding fulfilment. Some rare people are able to make it themselves, but they are the exception. I think most people who post on social media about living their best DINK lives are either lying to us, themselves, or have never experienced fulfilment and confuse it with margaritas on the couch with Netflix.

A lot of is biological, all life is hardcoded to be rewarded by the success of their offspring. I’m a father of two teen boys, the ups and downs of parenthood has brought me more joy than I ever thought possible. Two of my best friends have no kids while one other has 4(!). They all seem to be doing fine and are happy healthy people. They key is just knowing what works best for you.

Edit: my friends without kids have more cash for toys (boats, trips, etc) but it doesn’t make me resentful or anything. Besides, they let me play with their toys whenever I want :)

No DINK I know posts anything about their lives ever. Probably the most "quietly enjoying their lives" people ever. Most people get jaded through social-media as it's just pure hate-rage baited content from all the sides. Most people are normal, they're just living. It's not up to you, or me to dictate what they're supposed to find fulfillment in.

This sounds to me like rationalizing the regret of losing independence due to having children, and realizing one can never go back.

That's a sweeping statement. I find fulfillment in learning things and focusing on issues I care about (environment, housing, politics).

I think this is an oversimplification of a much more general social phenomenon. In much of the world, the mainstream social message is still that kids are what you should get your life's purpose and fulfillment from. Maybe not so much for men, but very much so for women. There is a reaction to that social expectation, which is independent of Reddit (it's true even in China etc).

I'm myself very happy I don't have children. I'm gay and can't adopt in my country, so I'm also happy I don't have any desire to have children, because that would be a problem. However I do really like working with teens, and it's very important to me on a gut level.

People who want to be childless usually champion the importance of building strong community through friends and neighbors, just because they don’t want kids doesn’t mean they don’t want to contribute to others’ happiness lol. People wanting FIRE is a lot more to do with the current economy and wealth of useless or harmful jobs than kids

> People who want to be childless usually champion the importance of building strong community through friends and neighbors,

This describes all of the childless people age 50 and older than I know.

It does not describe the social media r/childfree mindset people I know at all. They have their bubble of friends they keep in touch with only when they feel like it but that's about it.

There's a big difference between childless and r/childfree style people, though.

> People wanting FIRE is a lot more to do with the current economy and wealth of useless or harmful jobs than kids

FIRE rose to popularity before this economy, though. It felt like peak FIRE was during ZIRP when it was easy to get a high paying tech job even if you barely had the skills for it. All the blogs and influencers made it sound so easy to just keep that going straight into early retirement as long as you continued living an austere lifestyle, which came with implied advice to avoid having kids.

I followed several of the FIRE blogs and forums in the early days but had to stop reading after they started filling up with people convinced they could retire at age 36 with $1.2 million in the bank because they they lived frugally last year and decided they could keep coasting that way for another 50 years without their lifestyle changing. I remember reading a few disaster stories from people who thought they were doing leanFIRE with their spouse until their spouse grew up and realized they actually wanted kids and to be married to someone who had a little more ambition in life. I know these stories aren't what FIRE is supposed to be about in the theoretical optimal sense, but there were so many stories like this that the forums just felt like a sad place to be.

>It does not describe the social media r/childfree mindset people I know at all. They have their bubble of friends they keep in touch with only when they feel like it but that's about it.

Do you actually know a lot of those people? I know a lot of people that don't have kids and they all are very normal, well adjusted people. None of them hate kids. Using the word "breeders" as derogatory is weird, bordering on mentally unwell behavior. I've never met anyone that doesn't have kids that's like that. Even for the few people I've met that don't particularly care for children, they just keep it to themselves.

Reddit I think is not representative of real life for the vast majority of people.

I've read and posted to r/childfree and similar subs in the past, but I quickly came to realize that the people there are not your typical child-free people.

They're mostly bitter anti-child people who rail against what they see as entitlements that parents get that non-parents don't. They derisively call parents petty and mean things like "breeders" and seem to be a very cynical bunch. I'm not saying their feelings are always ridiculous; certainly some of them have reasonable reasons for feeling the way they do. But they're a mostly-toxic, vocal minority.

It really annoys me when people assume all (or even a significant number) of childfree people are like those reddit folks (not accusing you of that, just saying in general.

And I don't get the automatic association between FIRE and childfree that some people are making here. Sure, FIRE is easier if you don't have kids, but IME the two groups are only loosely connected, at most.

I'm in my mid-30s with a partner that also doesn't want kids, saved probably 80% of my takehome for 5-6 years, and leanfire is within reach so it's doable. I don't need much, my main interests are cooking, learning, biking, etc. It's been a godsend as I developed a mobility issue and have to take time off to heal. I'm naturally frugal but had I not been intentional about planning for my future I would be in a bind. YMMV.

I think more than FIRE people should just focus on FI. You still have to do something with your day after becoming financially independent and a job is still one of many good ways to contribute to the community even if you don't technically need one. So retiring is an option but not the only one.

On the other hand it remains quite confusing that after centuries of capital achieving vastly better results than labour people still keep going for labouring as their primary strategy. Building up a strong income-generating capital base is just common sense and it is an extremely good idea to have enough that you could technically avoid working if it made sense.

You don’t have to do something with your day. Most people will but you don’t have to.

> dont want to deal with kids

Someone has to bring up the next generation, the no kids crowd want all the luxury of having the next generation without putting in the effort or spending the money.

I suppose that people who actively do not want to have kids should not have kids. Their hypothetical kids won't be happy and well-developed, but instead always feel that they are an undesired burden.

Instead, people who like having kids should have more kids. This would proliferate a healthy culture that sees kids as a source of happiness, not a burden of misery taken out of necessity.

I am not convinced that is true. Once you actually have kids it changes your outlook too dramatically. Someone who does not want to have kids before they have a kid, will almost certainly love any kid they actually have.

Having a look at your state/country's foster care registry and the foster care industry as a whole might change your feelings on that.

I doubt there is a correlation between kids being wanted before birth and their likelihood of entering foster care. People who do not want kids do nkt have them.

> Instead, people who like having kids should have more kids.

To make this work you need some kind of cross-subsidy (e.g. large child tax credit), because having a larger number of kids requires the means as well as the will and the people willing to do it aren't all billionaires.

But then we do essentially the opposite and drive up housing prices when larger families need more house. Higher housing prices are essentially a transfer from young and future families to retirees.

> I suppose that people who actively do not want to have kids should not have kids.

I would describe myself as being the converse of that statement. I do not believe my desires should truly have much of a bearing on my situation.

There's an easy and natural way: don't use contraception. This is how it worked for millennia.

That's a very instrumental and de-humanizing way to look at humans. Only as enablers of further enablement. Know that there is no inherent reason at all why there should be a next generation, if we, collectively, do not want one. Some are interested in this, others not, and that's perfectly fine.

The assumption that humanity must, and shall, exist forever has no proof.

> Someone has to bring up the next generation, the no kids crowd want all the luxury of having the next generation without putting in the effort or spending the money.

Who do you think pays for schools-kindergartens for your kids while you getting tax credits for them and likely for your dependent wife who doesn't work while rearing them? And on top of that for your kid's healthcare in many European countries...

There are other ways to give to the next generation than having kids of your own. Kids love "fun" uncle/aunts too!

In my opinion, it's better to not have kids when you are not 100% LOCKED IN on wanting them instead of gambling and potentially being forced into a commitment you never wanted to make.

Nonsense, there are plenty of childless teachers, scientists, etc that devote themselves to helping humanity. If someone wants to become an expert in their field towards this end, how can they devote themselves while having kids? It would kneecap you.

Why would having kids kneecap you? Most people who are experts in their fields do have kids.

Almost all the teachers I know have kids. Most scientists do. Einstein had three kids, Dirac four, and Planck five. Marie and Pierre Curie managed two.

It is a massive financial strain and time sink. It's hard enough to make it as is. Tech in particular requires so much self study, especially in this market. Einstein, Dirac, Planck - they did minimal housework and led lives almost completely centered around their academic work. Curie seems to be an exception afaict.

They really don’t.

They just post about how important those things are online but not doing much about it.

> People wanting FIRE is a lot more to do with the current economy and wealth of useless or harmful jobs than kids

That is not restricted to the “current” economy. It has been that way throughout all of human history (and probably applies to other animals too).

Who wouldn’t want security of energy, food, shelter, healthcare, and education?

Everyone worries about what happens to their kids if they get injured, or even just lose their job. It’s only in the last few decades that a significant portion of people have access to more of that security (even though it’s only an increase of 1% to 10% of the US).

Now we have free brokerage accounts and low cost index funds so being financially independent has a catchy acronym.

> There’s an entire generation of mostly childless adults who are shocked to find they enjoy contributing to others’ happiness.

This is very well put.

I think the culture today is what pushes us towards that: we have a very individualistic culture, which I think comes from the US. I'm from southern Europe, where family used to be very important, whereas now we've adopted a much more individual-centered view.

We have "freedom" as a value, but it's hard to tell what to do with it. You are privileged, therefore you can do whatever you want. But what is it that I want? What do I do with my freedom, privilege, options? We also need an objective, and "to be happy" is not a good objective, because we humans are very bad at predicting what will make us happy. Seeing stereotyped photos of happy people on tropical beaches on Instagram makes it even harder to remember what happiness is.

For happiness you need objectives, things you believe in, a sense of purpose.

> We have "freedom" as a value, but it's hard to tell what to do with it. You are privileged, therefore you can do whatever you want. But what is it that I want?

Well, that's the key question isn't it? What do we actually want?

In America it is dead simple. Having successfully cut all of our important social ties & creating all this existential anxiety via propaganda, "free enterprise" has swooped in promising to solve all our ills with the simple tap of a credit card.

Lonely? Here pay for a therapist. Need childcare? Get a nanny. Need exercise? Buy a gym membership. All in service to inflating the vanity metric that is the US GDP.

No one chooses to be born. Once they are, they may find that procreation is impossible for them or just not something they'll do well or even want. None of these is necessarily depressing.

We have no shortage of humans, so there's no need to try to shame the childless. Nor those who focus on themselves.

We are on course to have far more elderly people than young people.

A global retirement community without even any grandkids to visit them strikes me as a depressing dystopian future.

The question is what happens after they are gone?

I see less burden on earth's environment as a positive.

More likely it will be a larger burden on the environment. If there are no future generations to care about then why bother investing in a better future?

the earth regenerates itself, provided we stay out of the way. if anything there's more motivation to care when the degredation slows down and makes change feel tangible.

not necessarily connected to the number of people but the type - if they are all conservationists that would be a net positive, not counting OTT population numbers.

we're talking about aging in advanced economies - those are folks with heavy footprints. if the west could be content with africa's growth and allowing for more migration, this problem is licked.

Not to contradict your conclusion but many countries definitely have an extreme shortage of new humans

Lines on a map are just that. Globally we're doing fine. And anyway, constant growth can't continue forever, it's probably a good thing if we stabilize or even shrink a bit.

> Seems like a terribly depressing way to live

This sounds very judgmental. Don't assume there's a single way to live a happy life. People with kids aren't immune to depression or lack of purpose.

> People with kids aren't immune to depression or lack of purpose.

Especially when their kids turn into adults and don't need them anymore. Having "kids" doesn't last that long.

> Having "kids" doesn't last that long.

The day my oldest son (he’s 16) was born I was holding him and my mom said “enjoy every minute because you’ll blink and it will be over”. I got two years left and he’s off to college. Just two years, it feels like I’m getting fired. She was right, as mothers usually are.

Yeah, and I do get it to some extent. Everything about having a child seems burdensome and hard. Turns out it's doesn't feel anything like that and I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing. I wouldn't swap with another person on this planet.

> Everything about having a child seems burdensome and hard. Turns out it's doesn't feel anything like that and I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing.

You got lucky and had kid(s) that were not extremely difficult to raise. Not everybody gets that. Not all kids are alike. Some will make your life a living hell. It is a total crapshoot.

Also, not everybody enjoys parenting, even if they have easy kids. We are not all built the same.

I did get lucky and had relatively easy kids. I love them. But, I do not enjoy parenting.

100%. I never was excited about having a kid but it's totally amazing to be helping a little human that you love to figure out the world and grow into a good person.

People can obviously make the opposite choice, but I'd encourage anyone that's never been around good little kids as an adult, to find a way to be around them in a helpful or fun role for a while. Volunteer at a youth group, sports camp, coding class, whatever. Or just be an "uncle" to some of your friends' kids. My volunteering at a church youth group in my early 20's probably gave me the nudge I needed.

I coached a sports team for 6-10 year olds during the summers as a college student and agree that there are some incredible kids who are a joy to mentor and be around.

But probably my biggest concern with having kids of my own is that you can't really choose their personalities. Even the best parents can end up with kids who are frankly much less enjoyable to be around.

> Everything about having a child seems burdensome and hard.

I love my kids and they're pretty great (and seem easy by comparison to others), but it's definitely burdensome and hard.

Existence is suffering. But there are moments that make it worthwhile. When you have a kid, you not only get more of those moments, but you give those moments to people in the future.

Yeah kids are often more interesting and insightful and fun than adults. It’s wonderful to have their refreshing perspectives in your life.

This has clearly triggered a lot of people, with the full spectrum of arguments for and against having kids below. I'm bookmarking this as an example of driving engagement by taking a fairly benign topic ('helping others was rewarding!') with an extreme view on a topic that everyone has a stake in ('an entire generation lost the plot on life').

How amazing and ironic or a reminder it is that the comments below that seem the most reasonable and avoid generalizing an entire group of people or way of life are the ones that are the least likely to drive more comments because they are perfectly reasonable.

I agree with you but i'd add our cultures pushed these psychological profiles (not far from mine) into running for some kind of (supposed) early safety because entering adulthood felt too bland heavy and risky.

From the few ive read about previous decades, people joined adult life earlier, with easier and better integration around adults and cheaper housing or similar needs. This creates a different existential landscape imo

> Seems like a terribly depressing way to live but pretty common in tech/upper middle class circles.

For some it works for some it doesn’t. The hard problem is knowing yourself well enough to make the right choice. Personally, I’m in the “you get what you give” camp but I know not everyone is. Again, the key is knowing which camp you actually belong in. I want to add that “knowing yourself well enough” is no small task and can take a lifetime meanwhile you encounter the forks in the road of life almost daily so.. much easier typed than done.

/turning 50 in about 2 months so, while not that old enough to be considered wise, have been around the block once or twice

Yeah it’s kind of crazy. My opinion of course, but I think it’s a big part of growing up to realize that your life being “yours” only lasts about 20-25 years. You have your childhood, then your time as a young adult to have your fun and set yourself up/work towards your own life goals, find your place in the world.

Once that’s done there really isn’t a purpose in life other than to pass it along to someone else. Dare I say that’s your responsibility. What are you gonna do, buy another toy? Go to another bar?

Sure why not get trapped youself with responsibilities and work your life off making rich people even richer.

That's just childish. Eventually you'll have to learn responsibilities (towards other people) are a privilege and necessary for a full life. You'll just keep getting (more) bitter and lonely until you understand that.

I think what they mean is that "responsibility to society" has been co-opted by capitalists such that even our own children are a resource we're expected to raise to further contribute to endless growth and someone else's profit margins.

None of us are really contributing to each other when we work, or the commons, since that's all been purchased and is being rented back to us.

I want to do that some of the time, not all the time, that's the difference.

The problem though is that relationships with others are risky. When I look at my social circle about half of my friends express some kind of regret related to their marriages. Call me an entitled prick, but I honestly believe that 90% of people are liquid crap. I realized that in order to have a good social life I need to filter very hard who I hang out with. Even if I could reproduce by budding, this is not an environment I want my kids to grow up in. "Dad, why did you make me into a world full of normies?"

> When I look at my social circle about half of my friends express some kind of regret related to their marriages. Call me an entitled prick, but I honestly believe that 90% of people are liquid crap. I realized that in order to have a good social life I need to filter very hard who I hang out with.

Candidly, if half of your friends are in regretful marriages and 90% of the people you encounter are "crap" then I would be questioning your social filtering.

There’s an old saying regarding what you’re saying.

Higher social classes have always despised the lower ones. Imagine going to ancient Rome and saying that slaves should be given full citizenship and treated as equals.

"liquid crap" is obviously exageration but if you take a truly random slice of population 90% will be any combination of not interesting/not a nice person/hidden agenda or want to exploit you/have crazy views/...

many of them are higher class than me. in absolute numbers it's more lower class simply because there are fewer rich people than poor people but take 5 truly random people of either high or low, I think you would agree with me that only 1 at best you would want something to do with.

In low socio-economic communities shit behaviors are more tolerated.

Disagree. I think it's about the same

Did you just try to illustrate his point? Not emphasizing with someone’s difficulty and trying to turn his difficulty into a flaw of his character is a good example of how society is destructuring itself.

The world is always full of danger. This moment in time is exceptional only in the form of that danger, not in its substance.

When those of us with noble traits -- intelligence, empathy, morality and so on -- refuse to reproduce, we do so at the cost of allowing the OTHERS who lack those traits to make up a larger and larger percentage of the population. They WILL reproduce.

Food for thought.

Are we back to the beliefs into inherited nobility already?

This could also be read as a take on the nurture aspect of childrearing.

There are things that aren't true but the wider society must believe to be true in order to maintain social order. Think of religion for example. "We are all equal" is also one of those things.

It is literally just game theory. If you don't act, others still will. Multiply that times 8 billion and you have an evolutionary process that rewards the dumbest amongst us.

So just teach those traits to other people? You don't need to have kids to help.

Yes, that is possible, and I didn't claim that having kids is the only way to influence humanity... obviously.

Let me guess: you are somehow NOT part of the “liquid crap” category?

It's always funny how many people think that the only font of altruism is taking care of children who have your DNA, like that's some kind of selfless act. It is, in fact, the ultimate vanity of which humans are capable. Raising little variations of yourself might make you feel good, but if you think it's a unique path to a fulfilling life I suggest you are the one in the little bubble.

I think what usually gets mixed up is how the responsibility works, and biological children sit at the overlap.

The thing I most crucially remember about my son being born is that it felt downright easy to simply dive into all the things I would now be doing: because there was no one else. I either got it done or it didn't get done.

Someone else's kids on the other hand there is a choice: their parents.

It's not absolute IMO but you also see it echoed by working too: when it's your job, it's a lot easier to simply go "right I need to handle this" then when it's not.

I think this mindset might be unique to western "atomic families." I have friends that would talk similarly about this kind of responsibility to cousins or non "genetically related" people in their village.

> It's always funny how many people think that the only font of altruism is taking care of children who have your DNA, like that's some kind of selfless act

This is a strawman position in my opinion. I don't think there's that many people who think they're carrying out some selfless act by having children. It's simply biologically true that the children you'll probably have the easiest time raising are your own and, assuming we want to continue as a species, we do need people to have children. It's fine to have them, fine to not, neither side has some moral high ground.

Whether it is vanity or not is not determined by what you are doing, but why you are doing it. The vanity is not intrinsic.

It’s uh, historically proven, so to say.

We are having fewer children and also seeing huge increases in loneliness and mental health problems.

Even despite the mitigating effect of having fewer children, we are seeing huge increases in loneliness and mental health problems.

Fortunately I have this magic tiger rock that keeps tigers away, I think it works for those things too.

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.

Rabindranath Tagore

Something about FIRE makes people have a visceral reaction. How DARE people not work like the rest of us. I get the purpose part if they were like teachers or doctors or something. Nope. SWE at Meta.

A lot of people can't comprehend trying to restrain their consumption either, they try to poke holes in your plans to assuage themselves that their lifeplan is the right one.

> I have friends like this, their only purpose in life is to have no responsibilities, FIRE, and never give to anyone but themselves. Seems like a terribly depressing way to live

Does it?? That sounds like the perfect life for me - I don’t need to contribute to others to make myself happy, I’m already happy on my own.

To me, this sounds like there’s something wrong with you - your capacity to just be happy by yourself is broken, you need the happiness of others to validate your life, and that’s a terrible way to live, always desperate to get what you need from others.

what does “FIRE” mean in this context? I can’t figure it out

Financial Independence, Retire Early

Childlessness seems to be an increasingly compassionate choice. Degrowth by force.

Quick reminder than you can have (gradual) degrowth with every couple having 2 children.

The extreme mode of 50% of child-bearing age adults going 0 kids is not necessary and will probably end up being disastrous.

Childlessness is a beautifully self-removing trait.

Ideas aren't genetic.

It doesn't have to be genetic to be 'self-removing'.

What happened to the Shakers?

OK, religious ideas are kind of genetic via indoctrination. (Epigenetic? Heh.)

Meanwhile ideas can be "self-removing" due to being bad, but then you'd just say "that's a bad idea" not "that's self-removing", so genetic descent was implied.

I didn't say the Shakers had a bad idea, it just was an idea that led to them removing themselves from further existence that was not genetic. Whether that was a good or bad decision is an entirely separate judgement call.

No choice is more selfish and misanthropic.

"Degrowth" is misanthropic, I guess, unless you think the world is overpopulated structurally somehow, as in you'd like more humans but only in due course and under more favorable (global?) circumstances.

But I think looking at this in global terms is wrong-headed anyway, whether you're for or against. The question is whether a specific person should be a parent here and now in specific personal circumstances. So of course it tends to be selfish. It's not entirely selfish since others are involved locally, including the future child. But "the world needs more children" or "the world needs fewer children" is barely relevant at all.

I did not want to come across as misanthropic. I like humanity for the overwhelming part, if not for its unfortunate tendency to go apeshit from time to time or to ruthlessly exploit the most beautiful and conplex machine in this part of the universe. I also don't mean to say it is necessarily desirable for societies to age this fast.

It's a choice I made for myself, that I am ready to bear the consequences of, say paying a greater share for other's childcare/making society more family-friendly/later retirement. I just would not want to add another ~copy of my soul to this pile. Yet I respect those who do.