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Comment by mindcrime | Hacker News Reader

This headline makes it sound like that ("not wanting children") should be considered surprising or something. WTH? Not sure why not wanting children should have anything in particular to do with being "happy" (whatever that means).

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I'd say it's definitely "conventional wisdom" that having children is a big part of overall life happiness.

Not saying whether that's good or bad or right or wrong, but it is definitely a common assumption. So that's the context in which this can be "considered surprising."

Interesting. I've always looked at it as, the "conventional wisdom" is that people are sort of expected to have children. But I never saw that as necessarily suggesting that people who have children are happier than people who choose not to do so. But now that you put it that way, I guess I can see how those two things get linked together.

Maybe it's not true of your upbringing or culture, but in most cultures, you are simply expected to have children, no ifs or buts. It's considered to be a prerequisite for you to be considered a proper adult. Anything less is 'selfish', while child-rearing is are spoken of as the 'greatest joy anyone can experience'. The propaganda begins almost at birth: making kids = joy.

I'm from, and live in, North Carolina, USA. There's no question that most people here do choose to have children, and that "having children" seems to be a sort of default expectation. But I've never found that "no wanting to have children" is particularly controversial. And more to the point, even if it is controversial, I see no reason that my decision to have children (or not) should have much connection to my own personal / subjective sense of happiness.

But, to be fair, I've always been something of an iconoclast / rebel / black sheep / S.M.F., and I really just don't give a shit about society and "default expectations." I march to the beat of my own drummer, keep my own counsel, and I'm quite happy with things that way. :-)

We have zero interest in children and this is the first time I"m seeing that I am expected to be unhappy.

Guess I'm screwed.

Not sure if this is sarcasm but there are plenty of organizations where you can volunteer and have a meaningful impact on a kids life.

Yes, it was sarcasm - sorry. I am perfectly happy and don't plan on ever having kids.

>there are plenty of organizations where you can volunteer and have a meaningful impact on a kids life.

Absolutely. I've been teaching for learn to skate programs at ice arenas in the area for years and it's been absolutely amazing.

I've found that a lot of people link not wanting to have kids with disliking children all-together and that couldn't be further from the truth with us.

This assumes that interacting with or impacting children is necessary for happiness; there's no need for that to be universally true.

Its tough. Parenthood also have a pretty varied time horizon for reward depending on what someone finds rewarding. imo, this whole study is kind of misframed and isnt much different than "25% of people find work to be bad."

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