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Comment by flkiwi | Hacker News Reader

First, I respect anyone’s choice not to be a parent. It’s constant, demanding work, far more intense than any job I’ve ever had as a baseline.

Second, this is the third time in two days I’ve seen some variation on “I dreamed of doing something significant and never wanted kids.” That’s a wild construction. Having kids is incredibly significant, and more world-changing than most of us will ever do. Having kids didn’t give my life meaning, but I’m certainly able to pour life’s meaning into my kid and family more than into anything else before it.

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Life insurance companies and federal agencies estimate the value of the life of an average US citizen at around 10 million USD, last I checked. If you consider that anywhere close to accurate, it's hard to imagine anything you could do with a higher ROI than having a child, at least from a public goods perspective. You'll never see the 10 million but they're out there enjoying themselves because you helped bring them into being. And if you consider it a woeful underestimate, or that it's wrong to put a price on something priceless, that argument only gets stronger.

>Having kids is incredibly significant, and more world-changing than most of us will ever do

This is a strange thing to say. Where does the "world changing" part come from, is it just in the parent's head? Or are you expecting it to be in the actions of your children? Surely your parents would have also done something "world changing" by having you, which implies that your existence is already world changing.

Maybe this is just a saying and not to be taken literally. But I feel like people divorce the concept of "having children" from the reality of that child becoming an adult and having all the same worries and neuroses you do.

Creating a sentient person and equipping him or her to exist in and affect the world is by definition world changing, and to a far greater and more sustained degree than almost any entrepreneurial activity. The usual construct is “I thought I knew what was important until I had kids,” which I have historically actually been uncomfortable with (because imho being a good parent is as much about being fully you than putting on a parent uniform), but what’s notable about the meditations on the topic I’ve seen in the last couple of days is the persistence in bifurcating “something of significance” from “having children”, as if the writers never quite accept that having kids is significant. I fully accept that people have wildly different ideas about having kids, but it’s odd (to me) to not see parenthood as at least as significant as starting a business.

I guess sure, but if the main "world changing" thing you do is have children, then that would imply that the main "world changing" thing your children do, is again have children. So if your child turns out to be infertile or something, has your "world changing" effect suddenly vanished? If the only real value you have as a person is to create more people.

> “I thought I knew what was important until I had kids”

I wouldn't doubt this, obviously in the mind of the parent their children are going to be an almost spiritual experience. But it seems like the most important thing children -actually do- is make their parents happier.

People usually talk about children in terms of how it makes them feel I guess, "my children give me meaning" etc. With the children being more of an abstraction of "potential".

> “I dreamed of doing something significant and never wanted kids.” That’s a wild construction. Having kids is incredibly significant

Sure, but you have to remember that there is most likely a silent "and new" in there; most jobs in a competitive industry are significant, because otherwise they would be cut. Being a cleaner at a hospital you are doing significant work too, but at the same time it is probably not what was imagined by an author of the phrase "I dream of doing significant things".

> I dreamed of doing something significant and never wanted kids

This wasn’t a sentiment I took away from the post

No, but the conflict between significance and kids, a variant of the opportunity cost of being a parent, was clearly there.

>to pour life’s meaning into my kid and family

It's grammatically awkward but IMO this is the fundamental reason people have kids. We need a project and most of us don't have any better candidates.

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