[toomuchtodo]

With all due respect, your disbelief of my position is a you problem. Parenting is just one of my many roles, it isn’t who I am. It is a temporary obligation as a guardian with some permanent long tail time commitment once they are adults. It was not a tremendous change for me, but likely because I have sufficient resources to make it so.

If all one can say about their life is they were a parent and had/raised kids, in a world with 8-10 billion people, that is nothing special in my opinion. Congrats on your checkbox achievement sort of thing.

TLDR Kids are optional, life can be meaningful without having them, and they are very expensive in most of the world. Happiness is reality minus expectations and no one is coming to save you, it’s just you. Don’t drag others down with advice from a place of emotion versus facts. Willful ignorance and arrogance deserves no sympathy.