I once asked my father why he had children, and he said, "Having a kid is like getting a dog. You can do whatever you want to it."
My gf has been nagging me about wanting children. She will say things like I have 3 university degrees, an IQ well over 140, and am physically "athletic;" therefore I should pass on my genes. That and both of us are educated and could possibly raise children right if we put the work into it. But I'll leave her if she pushes it.
Children are great but not for me either. I don't know if that's because my childhood was a living hell, and I don't want to even subconsciously perpetrate on any child anything remotely resembling waht my parents did to me. Maybe I'm just immune to Baby Fever. Also I have a genetic condition that I'm not willing to risk inflicting on a child.
Sometimes I try to look at having children from the perspective of a newborn baby who has complete self-awareness and is in full knowledge of the current events and world history. In addition to the risk of being born into a bad family or screwed up by the hateful, stupid, impulsive, and destructive disposition of humanity in general, I think that being born in the current decades are too difficult to "make it" and live a happy, fulfilled, prosperous, self-actualized life. Just look at the unemployment rate for recent college grads, in all fields, including "STEM," thanks to the flood of H1Bs, outsourcing, off-shoring, mass layoffs, "inversion", etc. If I had a choice of being born now, I wouldn't want to. The post world war II economic boom is long gone, socio-economic inequity grows, and upward mobility is becoming increasingly difficult. The USA is in bad shape, and the economy hasn't undergone a "real" recovery and shows no signs of improving. Europe is in bad shape as well. South America, China, Russia aren't Lands of Opportunity either. Too many people, through no fault of their own, just aren't able to achieve prosperity nowadays. Unless you win the lottery of birth into the 1%, it's not worth it.
Yeah, but what kind of future can you offer them? Unless you are rich enough to give them a level playing field, you can't guarantee (or even offer reasonable assurance that they will be rewarded with a good job if they study in school or work hard in the current era) anything unless you let them live at home all their lives and leave them a huge inheritance. Even if you're a fantastic parent and pay for their schooling, the odds of rising to middle class or remaining there are more difficult now. Poverty and suffering will become the rule rather than the exception even in developed countries. Quality of life is rapidly deteriorating. The economy is ruined, the income gap grows, the middle class shrinks. Unemployment for recent college graduates is more than 20% across the developed world, and taking into account "under employment," it's even worse. People with college degrees bag my groceries. PhDs are on food stamps. Retiring Baby Boomers drain an increasingly large share of the GDP as they collect an ever bigger share of entitlements: social security, retirement benefits, pensions that the rest of us working stiffs pay for through our taxes. They drive up medicare and medicaid costs. Commonly during a single hospital visit, they ring up $10,000 + in medical bills for frivolous and unneeded procedures (with the collusion of corrupt physicians) by getting an MRI every time they stub their big toe. For the rest of us, it's cheaper to let nature take its course and even die rather than pay for medical care. Race riots, oil wars, the spread of religious fundamentalism, the destruction of entire cultures and their history are all happening RIGHT NOW. The environment continues to be degraded, poisoned with toxic waste, depleted by mass extinction. Dwindling natural resources, including potable water grow scarce.
In the long run, if you're a good parent and teach them empathy and provide them a good education and god forbid, give them a philosophical outlook, all you end up doing is make them painfully aware yet powerless to do anything to change the fact that this planet has become a toilet bowel.
Serious question I have been contemplating recently. I understand there once existed an era in [Western] civilization where more kids = more bodies = more helping hands to tend the farm, fetch water, etc. I used to silently scorn people who expressed their disinterest or disagreement with having kids, presumptuously believing them to be somewhat heartless or selfish. Now, I'm realizing that children are an unnecessary responsibility and there is certainly no obligation to have any. With over 7 billion people, I think the human species is adequately populated in terms of species continuity. In my opinion, this world is a terrible place to live; nature is indiscriminate in regards to survivability, having the child susceptible to succumbing to nature's wrath. In addition, the deceptive, vehement, destructive disposition of mankind can ruin your child in a plethora of ways. The psychological toll that these possibilities (or realities) can have on a parent are true because of the primordial emotional investment one places in their child. Is this emotional investment worth it? ... Worth what exactly? Preserving a finite being with your genetics to hopefully outlive you? Since we are all mortal why is this important?
