I'm 39 and have three kids aged 4, 2 and 1 month old. I've found Jeff Atwood's post on being a parent the single best blog length overview of the emotional pro

I'm 39 and have three kids aged 4, 2 and 1 month old. I've found Jeff Atwood's post on being a parent the single best blog length overview of the emotional pros and cons of having children: https://blog.codinghorror.com/on-parenthood/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/on-parenthood/ I like to think about it as kids are +1,000,000 points and -900,000 points at the same time. The average is probably a slight positive but the highs are extremely high and the lows are also pretty low. This TED talk goes into this in more detail and is also great about giving honest views of being a parent: https://www.ted.com/talks/rufus_griscom_alisa_volkman_let_s_talk_parenting_taboos https://www.ted.com/talks/rufus_griscom_alisa_volkman_let_s_... To make a development analogy: think of a time when you spent a huge effort trying to solve a bug in a code base you really care about. Finding that bug was incredibly frustrating and made you question why you even got into programming. Then, you find the answer and you watch your program work again and be better than it was before. This rollercoaster of emotions with a net positive outcome parallels very closely with having children.