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Comment by terrywilcox | Hacker News Reader

No sarcasm at all. Child abandonment is clearly bad for the child and can see the parent thrown in jail.

Adoption is the better choice for both parties.

I think you perhaps missed the broader point though.

If you're raising children as servants to take care of you when you're old, then yes, self-interest is a good reason to keep them around. They will also likely act in their own self-interest and ditch you.

Otherwise, raising a child requires a great deal of self-sacrifice with absolutely no guarantee that you'll even get the satisfaction of a job well done. It's a total crap shoot and even the emotional return on your investment is likely to be poor.

Acting only in your own self-interest is a good way to stay single and childless though. At least you'd have plenty of time to read Ayn Rand.

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You and I seem to be having a good conversation. Thank you for that.

I don't think raising my children to take care of me when I'm old (should be any day now) would be acting in my self-interest. In fact, I think it would be acting against my self-interest.

A better model, I think, is for me to do all that I can to be self-sufficient, and not predatory in nature, in terms of expecting other people to care for me.

As long as I can find pleasure in life and activities that interest me, like hacking in Lisp, or re-learning how to weld, or reading about philosophy, I'd like to go on living.

When there are no longer reasonable things for me to pursue, then it's time to go. I certainly don't expect my children to do anything more for me than they freely wish to do.

Children are not born to be servants to their parents, as you observe. That's why I think it's incumbent on parents to treat their children as best as they possibly can, since children come into a family without being able to consent, and since children are essentially powerless to leave a family that treats them poorly, until they reach some age where they can be self-sufficient.

With interest rates at 0.25% and the Fed talking about doubting whether they should go down or up, I hope you're not thinking that a pension fund will take care of you when you're old. That won't happen. With interest rates under inflation, you are in fact losing spending power (that is of course the point of the policy: incentivize people to spend now, not save to accelerate the economy). Pension funds are failing because of Fed policy [1], and the current elderly are plundering them dry for the same reason you defend children. They have a right to a pension [2]. Given that stocks have now also refused to go up further (since January SP500 has only gone down. Granted, they came back up to about 2100, but there is negative return so far for the year. How negative varies quite a bit from day to day, but may God help retirees if they drop from here and stay down).

The model where Children take care of elderly is coming back, unless the Fed and the ECB stop acting like we're in the midst of a deep recession.

> Children are not born to be servants to their parents, as you observe. That's why I think it's incumbent on parents to treat their children as best as they possibly can, since children come into a family without being able to consent,

And if the alternative is to starve to death a year or two after you no longer have the ability to work ? What if the alternative is merely to live in poverty when you stop working ? Do people have the right to not live in complete poverty ? I'd say yes. What if there is no choice but to "use" children to accomplish that, like we did for 90%+ of history ?

That second one seems to be happening to plenty of elderly today, and they had far, far better circumstances to avoid it than you or I do today.

I'm not even saying that this is moral, or that it is what you have to do. I'm saying it's what's going to happen if present circumstances remain.

[1] https://next.ft.com/content/c9966bea-fcd8-11e5-b5f5-070dca6d...

[2] http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/20/retirement/central-states-pe... http://www.pionline.com/article/20160502/PRINT/305029995/kro...

> Otherwise, raising a child requires a great deal of self-sacrifice with absolutely no guarantee that you'll even get the satisfaction of a job well done. It's a total crap shoot and even the emotional return on your investment is likely to be poor.

Interesting. Although there is self-sacrifice, for myself, I see it more as a privileged to bring up another human being. As much sacrifice as I've given, I've gotten back. Being a parent has made me really consider my own actions - do I act in accordance with my moral code? do I actually present the example I want to set or am I hypocritical? How can I create safe boundaries for the child so they can explore and become themselves? There are so many things being a parent can teach you. The questions that children come up with out of curiosity.....sometimes just floor me completely. Then there's the cuddles and hugs which just melt your heart :)

I don't know about self-interest - I think here it really is down to what you think self-interest is. Which I think starts to touch on what each person believes their life is for. Anyway, just some random thoughts.

> If you're raising children as servants to take care of you when you're old, then yes, self-interest is a good reason to keep them around.

I suggest you read GP a bit closer and/or work on when and how to apply your sarcasm :-)

For starters you conveniently leave out both religious as well as purely selfish evolutionary motives.

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