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Comment by BowBun | Hacker News Reader

These aren't massive communities, these big modders often know each other and work together.

I'd say it depends on your background and availability. Most people in any of these intense tech scenes are a combination of a)young/low-commitments - in school, summer, no kids, etc. so they have the time and energy to dedicate b) grew up in these scenes so that the barrier to entry to start creating is much lower than someone like you or me trying to figure out how to mod a game for the first time and c) members of a strong community. I used to be in the fansub scene and there's something about being celebrated by your peers for achieving something that only they recognize. Same with the crack scene. I'm sure modders in these communities feel the same way when they can release something and receive so much positive feedback. It's great!

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Which just shows -- having kids leads to a massive productivity drop / personal advancement opportunity failure.

Consider wisely...

Alternatively, I think if you just compared accomplishments of population with families vs without you would not be impressed.

Its a tiny population that would turn less responsibility into more productive output.

(I for one would probably not consider making fallout mods a great tradeoff, and that's probably better use of time than most)

Some people have kids

Some people don’t

Some people get into art

Some people get into monster trucks

And because everyone is doing their own thing without worrying about conforming to one pattern, you literally get a billion slices of life to choose from.

One big difference is that if you decide that art isn't your thing, you can move on and try something else.

But Children are a big commitment. For many people it's well worth it, for others maybe not. And that's fine - so long as it is considered.

Not for any weird anti-child reason, just that it's something that probably should be thought through and considered more than trying out a hobby.

> Not for any weird anti-child reason, just that it's something that probably should be thought through and considered more than trying out a hobby.

I'm not sure there is any basis to this statement. It seems prudent but otherwise unfounded.

Only a relative minority of parents report regret at having had kids (<10%)[0]. Of those 10% many probably did consider it extensively, and even if they regret it it does not mean there was any likelihood they wouldn't have kids anyways. Put another way, regret does not mean they were not desperate to have kids before they realised they would regret it.

It's incredibly complex gaining insight about these kind of major life altering decisions.. especially because it's clear people change once they have kids.

I see no reason to think about having children more deeply than just deciding you will try. Getting pregnant unexpectedly is it's only can of worms especially as access to abortion is at the whims of government. Not to mention pregnancy and labour suck.

[0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/head-games/201909/wh...

I think the underlying question is to see if regret (or other difficulties like financial hardship or things that require a state actor to intervene) are correlated with planning and consideration. Measuring that is the difficulty.

And as that article state - that "less than 10%" number is coming from a population where it is taboo to admit to regret. People have been shown to be economical with the truth on otherwise anonymous surveys - [0] is a humorous example, so how much that may skew the results would likely need to be looked in to. And that's just the responders who know they're replying inaccurately - with such cultural pressure, they may not admit to themselves - there's lots of examples where people deceive themselves about how they feel about things that may go against society's grain at their time. Introspection is really hard.

So I'd see that number as a lower bound, not necessarily accurate.

EDIT:

Additionally the cost - 7% of artists not reaching their ambitions is sad, but 7% of children being unloved and resented is a tragedy.

[0] https://www.iflscience.com/men-cant-be-trusted-to-measure-th...

Great link and mostly agree.

I do question if we can assume any correlation between "regret" and being unloved. Again it would be highly taboo to state you don't love your child.

But I suspect regret does not lead to open resentment or a child feeling unloved.

There are plenty enough cases of parents/step-parents going so far as to kill a child through regret. I suspect many do "love" the child ironically. Because it's a personal subjective experience, at least you can get a tape measure out for a wiener.

I suppose I regret much of my life and current career trajectory but somehow I wouldn't change it for the world because I love so much about it!

> 7% of artists not reaching their ambitions is sad

I know it's irrelevant to your point but I'm sure 99.999% of artists do not even come close to their ambitions. I don't find it sad at all. It's like being sad you don't win the lottery.

A month or two ago, I stumbled onto the RegretfulParents subreddit [1] thanks to an HN comment. After reading all those horror stories... yeah, consider wisely.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/regretfulparents/

Some of those stories are tragic, but they are a tiny fraction of the number of people who would literally given up anything they own (including their own life) for their kids.

The vast majority of people on that subreddit would too. They don't regret their kids, they regret the life of parenting that they got into, often without knowing that they were really in for or even worse, as part of an manipulate/abusive relationship or because of societal pressure.

Having kids is way more rewarding than working on any software project. You'll enjoy raising the kids unless you have some kind of personality disorder.

Also, I have a newborn and I work in my projects just fine. [0] Manage your time :)

I would also say that a lot of the time you see that drop-off because having kids is more rewarding than the project, not really because they don't have any time for it.

[0] https://github.com/netpanzer/netpanzer/pull/4

Rudeness aside, if you only have a newborn you may find yourself eating these words in the near, and medium term future.

OMG. Newborn is the easy part. Especially if you’re the bloke.

Breastfeeding is indeed a lot of work. To try to be even, I do everything else. I wish I could do more, she certainly deserves it. We joked I could get hormones...

Just you wait until they're teenagers.

How could teenagers possibly take all your time? Surely they should be socializing?

Like I was mowing lawns by myself unsupervised at 10, what are people doing with their kids all day? :D you have to cook food and provide structure, but...

Oh you mean how tough teenage years are. No sense worring about that.

I am actually excited for the teenager years. I can teach them how to properly drive and slide around a car :)

"You'll enjoy raising the kids unless you have some kind of personality disorder" is one of the most unpleasant, exclusionary and normative things I've read in a long time.

You are talking about 20% of the population. More than any other minority group in America. [0] That is large enough to be a perfectly ordinary slice of human variety. Even if you object to that study's methods it is a huge chunk of the populace.

The portion of the population that doesn't want to and will not enjoy raising children is also a group of people who should not be parents, obviously.

Describing them as having a "personality disorder" achieves what? At best, it pressures probable bad parents into reproducing.... or is that at worst?

Being aware that one won't find raising children rewarding and responding appropriately is highly moral. It isn't a mental illness.

And this nasty, toxic approach to 1/5th of your fellow humans is just something you toss off dismissively in a thread about video game modding? This is the behavior of a person who ostensibly does not have a personality disorder?

[0] https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2023/childfree-study-confirmed...

If you dig, most people you consider successful probably have kids, you just don’t hear about it.

It seems to me like a gauntlet that can provide drive and focus that can potentially outweigh the ability to dabble or move at the drop of a hat.

I'm super glad I had kids.

> Consider wisely...

You could, for example, also consider being a good parent a productive thing, and a personal advancement opportunity :-)

The whole me vs. the kids thing is a false dichotomy. If it's something you want in your life, it is you.

Consider productivity over time, having a kid or three is a force multiplier.

You have but one lifetime. Over the combined lifetimes of your progeny, your productivity is potentially exponential.

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