Spent a large portion of my life devoted to making things, programming being a great career for anyone with that compulsion. But nothing was quite as astonishin

Spent a large portion of my life devoted to making things, programming being a great career for anyone with that compulsion. But nothing was quite as astonishing as the idea of making a person, and more than that, creating brand new _love_ out of nowhere, at a time in your life where it's possible to think the amount of love in your life has plateaued. There were other, worse reasons - at the time I felt like (vaguely) intelligent people had an Idiocracy-style responsibility to try and make more clever people, which isn't a point of view I like at all, looking back. However, I _do_ think the world needs more _compassionate_ people, which I think we've so far achieved. I also had a strong belief that I wanted to do a better job than _my_ father, which isn't a particularly good reason to have kids, but there you go. It's a funny, difficult decision really. It's a very big commitment for an introvert to make - I don't think there's a lot of advice out there for geeks looking to procreate, who value their 'me' time very highly. And more generally people don't talk about the negatives, which leads new parents to doubt themselves when they hit the many, many rocky bits. There's a balance of _wanting_ to have kids (perhaps for unfulfilled emotional needs), and thinking you _should_ have kids that I suspect is impossible to get right. Whether there's a good decision procedure to know if you'd be a good or happy parent, I have no idea. If you think about everything you've ever seen a person close to you do, good or bad, and imagine all those behaviours crammed down into a frenetic 12 hours, every day, for a very long time, does that seem fun to you?