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Comment by rocketpastsix | Hacker News Reader

This article sits weird with me. I am not having kids, nor is my partner. We are both medically unable to do so. I never really wanted to have kids, however this article is full of cons and almost zero pros to having a kid, something OP seems to have not even thought of.

Are kids a massive responsibility? Yes. Can they be a burden? Yes. Can they also bring parents an immense amount of joy, happiness, pride and adjacently a sense of accomplishment? Yes. One of my favorite memories as a kid was going to Disney World with my parents, and seeing them enjoy mine and my brothers reactions to something they both enjoyed. That gave them so much joy.

I won't judge people for choosing to have kids or not. But this whole childfree/look at me and all my money & less responsibility attitude is lame.

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It's the reason I quit hanging out with the "child-free" folk at a major software company (they even had an internal distribution list). For many it seemed, their whole identity seemed wrapped up in not having kids, and dinner conversations turned into "can you believe parents?" and conspicuous consumption because you're not spending it on kids.

I like kids well enough, and though they stress her after a while, so does my wife. We just don't feel the need of any of our own. And that's what it boils down to. You think you're going to talk your spouse down when they have Baby Fever because the economics don't work out? Because you value "your freedom"? Just get the divorce over with now, or get used to the idea of kids. You needed to start working on being less of a selfish prick anyway.

This. I am in a similar boat to you in regards to having kids (minus the medical aspect, as far as i am aware at the moment, at least), and I absolutely don’t get the whole ultra-childfree rhetoric on the internet that borderlines on hating children and, very often, crosses into it.

It feels like those people cannot justify their decision to not have children without either painting them as the devil or painting the people who choose to have children as some brainlets.

There is an additional security that kids can provide their parents even today. I have 3 kids that are all in various stages of finishing up school and starting their careers. We've stayed pretty close as a family and there is no doubt in my mind that my kids will always be there for my wife and I as well as each other, if we were to need it. As it stands right now, current events have forced all of my kids to come back home (which has actually been kind of awesome), but if something like this (pandemic/recession) happens in the future those roles could easily be reversed. It helps that my wife is Asian and has instilled a certain level of family obligation in our children. It's a heck of an investment, supporting another human being for 22 years or more, but no one will look out for you the way your own family will.

I don't think I've ever seen an article on life without children that deals with the fact that the friends you make growing up and into your twenties and thirties will have kids and you won't. And you will be aliens to each other.

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