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I would tend to think that, for people truly on the fence, it is much better to not have kids and later regret it, than to have kids and regret that. At least with the former, you can still have an otherwise full life, and you're the only one who bears the brunt of your regret.

If you have kids and regret them, the kids are going to suffer for it, even if you do everything you can to hide that regret from them.

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You can always adopt or foster children if you really regret it later. There are plenty of children that exist that need good homes without having to create more.

As someone who knows several people who wanted to adopt - it's not as easy as you might think (at least unless you are able to spend a lot of money adopting children from abroad).

Adopting older kids who come from problematic backgrounds has a significant probability of them having experienced some sort of trauma before they got to you. It's absolutely a great thing to do to take care of these kids but potentially very difficult as well.

This is why it's very difficult to get to adopt babies - they are the ones that everyone wants. Not saying this should make anyone not adopt just that it's not as easy as you seem to think - western countries actually don't have that many orphans & a lot of people who want to adopt them (which is of course a good thing!).

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