Comment by collegeburner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by collegeburner | Hacker News Reader

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i'm too young to be having kids rn anyway but i thought about it a little and this is one of the big things that makes me hesitate. i don't think i could handle raising a kid who ended up special needs and required lifelong care. seems like having a kid who ended up an alcoholic/junkie/mentally retarded/deeply at odds with my values would really remove most of the positives, so it would be a serious gamble.

of course, i also have it easier since men can just remarry at 50 and still have kids. i have time. but it really makes me wonder if i ever want children. my parents think it's a great thing and i shouldn't be quite so worried but they have quite the case of survivorship bias, all their kids turned out well and so it is easy from their perspective on the other side.

the annoying part is all the girls i meet either know they want kids or know they don't. nobody my age should be quite that certain yet in either direction. makes dating a bitch beyond casual relationships ngl.

The answer to all this is to stop considering it so abstractly and talk to some parents who have been in these situations and actually look at the incident rates. Anything could happen but not all outcomes are as likely. There’s loads of mundane activities we do that have serious life changing events that could happen. A kid is a commitment but also one that is profoundly human that people have been doing successfully for millennia.

Even I am young and lean childfree. My reasoning is that non-existence is better than existence. More and more I see the world, more and more I agree with Buddhism's first noble truth that there is suffering in life. There are some moments of joy, but is all of it worth it afterall? It's just a tough question. I don't want to bring any more suffering to this world. There is already so much suffering and I can't do anything about it. So many innocents throughout history have suffered so much. Millions of innocents died in holocaust or nuclear bombs or famines in the last 100 years ago alone. Recently teenagers are getting killed mercilessly in Iran. Life can be so unfair sometimes that it feels like a bad gamble to produce more of it. A child can give great joy to their parents for sure, but they can also cause great suffering. Like there is hardly anything more hurtful in life than the bereavement of your own child. People forget that something that can give you great joy can also give you great pain. And for me, it's not just about me and the happiness I derive from parenting my kid, but also the child who will one day grow into an adult and have to deal with this cruel world and the sheer pain of conscious existence itself. For these reasons I am leaning childfree for now.

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