I think it's disingenuous to use this kind of counter-argument to justify some people's almost unnatural hatred of children and the people who have and want the

I think it's disingenuous to use this kind of counter-argument to justify some people's almost unnatural hatred of children and the people who have and want them. Backward rationalizations can be used to change your future ways of thinking. In other words, if you feel that the stress of having a child will be well worth it, then you'll tell yourself that over and over while you're stressed. It will become true to you and the perception and emotions of a stress event changes. This kind of reverse thinking is how we grow. Touch a hot stove, burn yourself, and cry about it. Next time you won't want to touch the hot stove because it hurt last time. If you did a study of people who touched hot stoves just after the fact, I'm sure you'd find that touching a hot stove reduces happiness and increases stress levels. However if you wait long enough, this lesson of stoves==hot results in decades of NOT touching hot stoves and NOT getting burned by them. A study of that should reveal that by touching a hot stove once, you've gained a lifetime absence (aside from accidents) of the stress and unhappiness associated with touching a hot stove. Suddenly the one time you burned yourself seems to have been worth the pain.