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Comment by radioactive21 | Hacker News Reader

Interesting piece, but overall, I want to see hard data about family make up. Ideally you would have surveys and learn more about the couple's state of minds before, during (pregnancy stage) and after having a kid.

Just from my observation, I don't have facts, just opinion, but couples who wanted to have kids will be the first to tell you they love it. Couples that had kids by accident are either not happy, happy, or indifferent. The last category are couples where one of the two wanted kids and the other didn't so overall, there was dissatisfaction.

To me it seems to be all about expectation and reality.

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There's ownership bias at work, as well. Regardless of the value of something, if you feel that it's the result of your "work", you feel more positive about its value than if it's just "given" to you.

Buy something from Ikea and put it together, and you'll feel better about it than if you bought it already put together for the same price. It's totally irrational, but it's also true.

"It's totally irrational"

It is totally rational.

What a boring, pathetic, self indulgent existence to never participate in creating something of value. Even screwing some legs on to a table adds a tiny little bit of value to the world around you.

"What a boring, pathetic, self indulgent existence to never participate in creating something of value."

Please don't make broad value judgements about other people's existence and value systems, based on a single HN comment. Thanks.

It's only "rational" to place more value on the final result if it is objectively of higher quality than the alternative where someone else makes it. Hence my original comment. I made no comment about any side-effect benefits from doing it yourself.

> I want to see hard data about family make up

Not exactly what you wanted, but there was a research on relation between depression and parenthood:

- ASA press release: http://www.asanet.org/press/20051221.cfm

- Article: http://hsb.sagepub.com/content/46/4/341.short (PDF: http://www.sociology.fsu.edu/people/simon/simon_clarifying.p...)

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