[superk]

I'm 35, been together with my wife for about 8 years and we're finally expecting our first kid in about 1 month. We were both always firmly in the "no kids" camp, the cost/benefit ratio just never seemed to add up. So what changed our minds? Partly it was peer pressure: everyone I know by this time has had kids, people who I respect, smarter people than myself. But mostly it was two slow realizations I've had:

1. It is part of the lifecycle, it is part of being an adult. The link at the top is mislabeled, you can't be an "adult" and not have kids. Yes it's grueling and miserable, but discomfort grounds you and gives you perspective. People that never leave their comfort zone never grow... they don't "grow up".

2. I personally believe it is the key to immortality. I'm not talking reincarnation or ancestor worship. Just a mental image I have every being that lived and died since the beginning of time to create me (or you), like threads in a fabric, and then you don't procreate and it's like "snip" and that thread ends.

[xsmasher]

> The link at the top is mislabeled, you can't be an "adult" and not have kids.

I don't know what drive you to that conclusion, or what makes you equate not having children with never leaving your comfort zone.

I know parents who are not "adults" in the grounded/perspective sense, and childless couples with more perspective than I can conceive.

[superk]

I agree with you - absolutely. The potential for growth and perspective as a human being is innate - some people have more of it than others. Though those people with greater potential - an awareness that our experiences can change us - are exactly the kind of people who leave their comfort zone more - versus the author of the linked story who writes: "But when I thought about what it took to get there, the diapers, the soccer games, the braces, the tantrums, the whole enchilada, I knew that it wasn't for me." That was the kind of person I had in mind.

[blazingfrog2]

I couldn't agree more.

That's pretty much my stock answer when, after complaining about how much my kids eat out of me, I get the "you-chose-to-have-them" look. Having kids forces you out of you comfort zone, forces you to constantly adapt, evolve, go with the flow of life. As painful as it may seem sometimes, I believe it's all worth it.

You also hit the nail on the head with your second point. Without going to the extreme of living vicariously through another being which can never be healthy for either party, looking at your child grow up and go through the fascinating steps of learning life (steps I've long forgotten), I can't help but feel a little bit of myself feel that amazement myself.

[pekk]

When you have a kid, that kid isn't you. At all. So the kid is not your immortality. The kid is their own individual. It isn't fair to make your kid into an extension of yourself.

[superk]

Sigh. That wasn't at all what I was trying to say. I'm not my father either... but a piece of his generic code is in me. He was the final link of a countless chain of beings, and I am a continuation of that chain, and my daughter will be too. I hope that makes it clearer... unfortunately I'm not enough of a poet to express this sentiment any better.

[aklemm]

Good answer. Adding to your #1, having kids matures the parent in ways a non-parent probably never get to experience (patience, working with extreme distractions, keeping one's eye on the big picture, long-term thinking, etc.)