5 ms·

My partner and I have 5 kids under 7yrs old -- four of whom are adopted and two of whom are struggling with severe developmental delays (and likely autism, stil

My partner and I have 5 kids under 7yrs old -- four of whom are adopted and two of whom are struggling with severe developmental delays (and likely autism, still waiting on formal diagnosis). When kids get older, they get a lot more "fun" and a lot less immediate work. I can take my eldest two out pretty much anywhere without a ton of effort, they are fun to hang out with, they can be trusted to be kind and respectful in adult spaces, and they'll invite me into kids spaces, etc. But also, anything can happen. Anything can happen. Your kids could be born with lifelong conditions or issues. They could be healthy at young ages, but develop special conditions as they hit early childhood or late adolescence. They could struggle with lifestyle issues (violence, drugs, alcohol, crime, etc). You may just end up not liking them very much (you may end up wishing they were more like you, when they aren't), they may have hobbies that differ from you, they may choose careers you'd prefer not, they may choose religious views you disagree with, they may end up being LGBTQIA+ even if you aren't, and so on. We have one child who is at high risk of never developing cognitively enough to safely live on their own as an adult -- anything can happen. Having a child is a literal forever commitment -- even more so than any marriage is -- to love and care for a person that might not even exist yet, no matter who they end up being. Be absolutely ready to make a literal lifetime commitment to love and care for this child as a fellow human, before deciding to have one. There is absolutely nothing wrong with opting out of all of that, and spending your 20's, 30's or lifetime doing something else -- having a child is a huge responsibility, and not something anyone should ever get pressured into, or jump into capriciously.

shanewwarren 4y ago
I've heard stories of how difficult the process of adopting kids can be. So, kudos to you, that sounds like a lot to manage. Regarding opting out, I get it, but I don't agree personally. Not having kids, can enable some pretty great lifestyles. But I do feel like you don't get a chance to understand what being a parent is all about. No amount of being a great aunt / uncle / whatever, gives you that feeling of needing to nurture or protect your child. It forces you to change, maintain a good relationship w/ your partner, be a good role model, etc. If I was do it again, I'd try to do it earlier.
- brokenbyclouds 4y ago
  It absolutely does not force you to change at all, nor does it force you to maintain a good relationship with your partner. Divorce rates are high, there are lots of bad parents. Having kids may have pushed you to be better, and that's great, but there are a lot of people out there for whom it makes no positive difference at all.
  - shanewwarren 4y ago
    I don't disagree with you. Divorce rates are high, and for many it doesn't make a positive difference. I imagine most folks on HN are pretty conscious about striving to be better, so for this small subset I think my opinion is reasonable. And I know plenty of people who if they had kids (but abstain) would absolutely rock at it, and it *could* be a positive forcing function, such that they get to experience different aspects to life.
    - lazyasciiart 4y ago
      People who are having kids because they "want to be better" can go ahead and just be better by helping take care of the kids already here who need it.
      - dragonwriter 4y ago
        In my experience, people who are having kids because they want to be better have something broken in their lives that they ought to to work on fixing before having kids, and the consequences if they don’t can be…quite bad. Get a therapist for therapy, not a child.
- volkl48 4y ago
  Life is a series of choices, and it's impossible to explore every path you could take. > But I do feel like you don't get a chance to understand what being a parent is all about. That's 100% accurate. There's a pretty much infinite number of possible life experiences I'm not going to get to experience personally and will not have the time/money/ability to fit into my lifespan. The wishlist of things I'd love to do or experience someday continually grows longer - no matter how much I try to fit more of them into my life. Taking on what amounts to a lifetime commitment and a massive investment of time and money for an experience that I have zero interest in and think I would actively dislike, seems like a terrible use of my finite resources. > It forces you to change, maintain a good relationship w/ your partner, be a good role model, etc. Perhaps it inspired you to do that. But the divorce rate and number of parents out there are terrible role models, suggest that it's not exactly the case for everyone. I'll also suggest that people who don't have much interest in becoming parents are probably a whole lot more likely to wind up on the negative side of those possibilities should they wind up having children anyway.
alpinemeadow 4y ago
I always say I only found unconditional love once I became a parent. (From me toward my child) As you say, the commitment is forever, whether we are present or not. For the movie Interstellar, one of the themes Nolan developed was that at some point we become our children’s memories. It probably happens around the 12 year old mark. For all parents out there, be present, however you can.
- chasil 4y ago
  This is not always so. For me, unconditional love was a youthful thing. My parents are much less admirable now, as I have grown older. My reasons are legion. I don't wish them harm, but they are nothing like me.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    From the comment you replied to: >(From me toward my child)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ChainOfFools 4y ago
> Be absolutely ready to make a literal lifetime commitment to love and care for this child as a fellow human, before deciding to have one. Unfortunately, if you decide after all of this reflection that you don't want to have kids there is no need to worry, at least, about perpetuating the human race... because for every couple who conscientiously decides not to have kids, there are a half dozen more who don't give any thought to any of this whatsoever and proceed to have (often multiple) kids anyway.
- ransom1538 4y ago
  "there are a half dozen more who don't give any thought to any of this whatsoever and proceed to have (often multiple) kids anyway." You might have to update this [1]. People do care. People have an iphone now. People can read. The "tons of kids poppin" arguments don't hold. We will see a global wide population decrease soon. https://econofact.org/the-mystery-of-the-declining-u-s-birth-rate https://econofact.org/the-mystery-of-the-declining-u-s-birth...
  - ChainOfFools 4y ago
    spend a couple months in and out of your local NICU, as I have, seeing firsthand the depressingly common spectacle of premature neonates being left alone for days, sometimes over a week, by parents (or parent) who can't make the time to visit their own clinging-to-life offspring. Because their lives are already overburdoned by the several other - somehow always toddler-age - children in tow with them. Lives frequently complicated by various degrees of substance abuse, leading to the NICU births. You would not be as comfortable googling some factoid response here. Whatever the macro trend may be in terms of total birthrate, its the constitution of those births, in terms of quality of life, my post was referring to.
    - nostrademons 4y ago
      Pretty heavy selection bias in that sample. All the people who chose not to have kids obviously are not going to be in the NICU. Among the people who do choose to have kids, those with good prenatal care and healthy habits are going to be very underrepresented in the NICU, particularly if you're in a community where you see a lot of substance abuse. So what's left is what you've observed.
collegeburner 4y ago
i'm too young to be having kids rn anyway but i thought about it a little and this is one of the big things that makes me hesitate. i don't think i could handle raising a kid who ended up special needs and required lifelong care. seems like having a kid who ended up an alcoholic/junkie/mentally retarded/deeply at odds with my values would really remove most of the positives, so it would be a serious gamble. of course, i also have it easier since men can just remarry at 50 and still have kids. i have time. but it really makes me wonder if i ever want children. my parents think it's a great thing and i shouldn't be quite so worried but they have quite the case of survivorship bias, all their kids turned out well and so it is easy from their perspective on the other side. the annoying part is all the girls i meet either know they want kids or know they don't. nobody my age should be quite that certain yet in either direction. makes dating a bitch beyond casual relationships ngl.
- frontman1988 4y ago
  Even I am young and lean childfree. My reasoning is that non-existence is better than existence. More and more I see the world, more and more I agree with Buddhism's first noble truth that there is suffering in life. There are some moments of joy, but is all of it worth it afterall? It's just a tough question. I don't want to bring any more suffering to this world. There is already so much suffering and I can't do anything about it. So many innocents throughout history have suffered so much. Millions of innocents died in holocaust or nuclear bombs or famines in the last 100 years ago alone. Recently teenagers are getting killed mercilessly in Iran. Life can be so unfair sometimes that it feels like a bad gamble to produce more of it. A child can give great joy to their parents for sure, but they can also cause great suffering. Like there is hardly anything more hurtful in life than the bereavement of your own child. People forget that something that can give you great joy can also give you great pain. And for me, it's not just about me and the happiness I derive from parenting my kid, but also the child who will one day grow into an adult and have to deal with this cruel world and the sheer pain of conscious existence itself. For these reasons I am leaning childfree for now.
- meheleventyone 4y ago
  The answer to all this is to stop considering it so abstractly and talk to some parents who have been in these situations and actually look at the incident rates. Anything could happen but not all outcomes are as likely. There’s loads of mundane activities we do that have serious life changing events that could happen. A kid is a commitment but also one that is profoundly human that people have been doing successfully for millennia.
scotty79 4y ago
> But also, anything can happen. Anything can happen. Your kids could be born with lifelong conditions or issues. They could be healthy at young ages, but develop special conditions as they hit early childhood or late adolescence. They could struggle with lifestyle issues (violence, drugs, alcohol, crime, etc). I could never understand how people are so easy to punish someone with life. Especially someone who they'll love unconditionally. I didn't like my life from the start despite it being fairly decent in objective terms.
nickd2001 4y ago
Much respect to you for adopting 4 kids, especially those with additional needs! :) To this "We have one child who is at high risk of never developing cognitively enough to safely live on their own as an adult.", I'd argue, society in general needs to look after people like this much better. Everyone, particularly the rich, should be paying their fare share of taxes to cover decent quality care for those unable to look after themselves due to disability. That includes respecting the people who work in that field properly as doing a vital job, and paying them well enough. When parents feel that this lifetime responsibility falls on them alone, I feel that something is severely broken. What about people with learning disability who do not have family to look out for them? They need a system to look after them. I think some of the comments on this discussion reflect that there's a lack of general support for families, especially in the USA with its insufficient social programmes.

shanewwarren 4y ago

I've heard stories of how difficult the process of adopting kids can be. So, kudos to you, that sounds like a lot to manage. Regarding opting out, I get it, but I don't agree personally. Not having kids, can enable some pretty great lifestyles. But I do feel like you don't get a chance to understand what being a parent is all about. No amount of being a great aunt / uncle / whatever, gives you that feeling of needing to nurture or protect your child. It forces you to change, maintain a good relationship w/ your partner, be a good role model, etc. If I was do it again, I'd try to do it earlier.

brokenbyclouds 4y ago
It absolutely does not force you to change at all, nor does it force you to maintain a good relationship with your partner. Divorce rates are high, there are lots of bad parents. Having kids may have pushed you to be better, and that's great, but there are a lot of people out there for whom it makes no positive difference at all.
- shanewwarren 4y ago
  I don't disagree with you. Divorce rates are high, and for many it doesn't make a positive difference. I imagine most folks on HN are pretty conscious about striving to be better, so for this small subset I think my opinion is reasonable. And I know plenty of people who if they had kids (but abstain) would absolutely rock at it, and it *could* be a positive forcing function, such that they get to experience different aspects to life.
  - lazyasciiart 4y ago
    People who are having kids because they "want to be better" can go ahead and just be better by helping take care of the kids already here who need it.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      In my experience, people who are having kids because they want to be better have something broken in their lives that they ought to to work on fixing before having kids, and the consequences if they don’t can be…quite bad. Get a therapist for therapy, not a child.
volkl48 4y ago
Life is a series of choices, and it's impossible to explore every path you could take. > But I do feel like you don't get a chance to understand what being a parent is all about. That's 100% accurate. There's a pretty much infinite number of possible life experiences I'm not going to get to experience personally and will not have the time/money/ability to fit into my lifespan. The wishlist of things I'd love to do or experience someday continually grows longer - no matter how much I try to fit more of them into my life. Taking on what amounts to a lifetime commitment and a massive investment of time and money for an experience that I have zero interest in and think I would actively dislike, seems like a terrible use of my finite resources. > It forces you to change, maintain a good relationship w/ your partner, be a good role model, etc. Perhaps it inspired you to do that. But the divorce rate and number of parents out there are terrible role models, suggest that it's not exactly the case for everyone. I'll also suggest that people who don't have much interest in becoming parents are probably a whole lot more likely to wind up on the negative side of those possibilities should they wind up having children anyway.

alpinemeadow 4y ago

I always say I only found unconditional love once I became a parent. (From me toward my child) As you say, the commitment is forever, whether we are present or not. For the movie Interstellar, one of the themes Nolan developed was that at some point we become our children’s memories. It probably happens around the 12 year old mark. For all parents out there, be present, however you can.

chasil 4y ago
This is not always so. For me, unconditional love was a youthful thing. My parents are much less admirable now, as I have grown older. My reasons are legion. I don't wish them harm, but they are nothing like me.
- mlyle 4y ago
  From the comment you replied to: >(From me toward my child)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ChainOfFools 4y ago

> Be absolutely ready to make a literal lifetime commitment to love and care for this child as a fellow human, before deciding to have one. Unfortunately, if you decide after all of this reflection that you don't want to have kids there is no need to worry, at least, about perpetuating the human race... because for every couple who conscientiously decides not to have kids, there are a half dozen more who don't give any thought to any of this whatsoever and proceed to have (often multiple) kids anyway.

ransom1538 4y ago
"there are a half dozen more who don't give any thought to any of this whatsoever and proceed to have (often multiple) kids anyway." You might have to update this [1]. People do care. People have an iphone now. People can read. The "tons of kids poppin" arguments don't hold. We will see a global wide population decrease soon. https://econofact.org/the-mystery-of-the-declining-u-s-birth-rate https://econofact.org/the-mystery-of-the-declining-u-s-birth...
- ChainOfFools 4y ago
  spend a couple months in and out of your local NICU, as I have, seeing firsthand the depressingly common spectacle of premature neonates being left alone for days, sometimes over a week, by parents (or parent) who can't make the time to visit their own clinging-to-life offspring. Because their lives are already overburdoned by the several other - somehow always toddler-age - children in tow with them. Lives frequently complicated by various degrees of substance abuse, leading to the NICU births. You would not be as comfortable googling some factoid response here. Whatever the macro trend may be in terms of total birthrate, its the constitution of those births, in terms of quality of life, my post was referring to.
  - nostrademons 4y ago
    Pretty heavy selection bias in that sample. All the people who chose not to have kids obviously are not going to be in the NICU. Among the people who do choose to have kids, those with good prenatal care and healthy habits are going to be very underrepresented in the NICU, particularly if you're in a community where you see a lot of substance abuse. So what's left is what you've observed.

collegeburner 4y ago

i'm too young to be having kids rn anyway but i thought about it a little and this is one of the big things that makes me hesitate. i don't think i could handle raising a kid who ended up special needs and required lifelong care. seems like having a kid who ended up an alcoholic/junkie/mentally retarded/deeply at odds with my values would really remove most of the positives, so it would be a serious gamble. of course, i also have it easier since men can just remarry at 50 and still have kids. i have time. but it really makes me wonder if i ever want children. my parents think it's a great thing and i shouldn't be quite so worried but they have quite the case of survivorship bias, all their kids turned out well and so it is easy from their perspective on the other side. the annoying part is all the girls i meet either know they want kids or know they don't. nobody my age should be quite that certain yet in either direction. makes dating a bitch beyond casual relationships ngl.

frontman1988 4y ago
Even I am young and lean childfree. My reasoning is that non-existence is better than existence. More and more I see the world, more and more I agree with Buddhism's first noble truth that there is suffering in life. There are some moments of joy, but is all of it worth it afterall? It's just a tough question. I don't want to bring any more suffering to this world. There is already so much suffering and I can't do anything about it. So many innocents throughout history have suffered so much. Millions of innocents died in holocaust or nuclear bombs or famines in the last 100 years ago alone. Recently teenagers are getting killed mercilessly in Iran. Life can be so unfair sometimes that it feels like a bad gamble to produce more of it. A child can give great joy to their parents for sure, but they can also cause great suffering. Like there is hardly anything more hurtful in life than the bereavement of your own child. People forget that something that can give you great joy can also give you great pain. And for me, it's not just about me and the happiness I derive from parenting my kid, but also the child who will one day grow into an adult and have to deal with this cruel world and the sheer pain of conscious existence itself. For these reasons I am leaning childfree for now.
meheleventyone 4y ago
The answer to all this is to stop considering it so abstractly and talk to some parents who have been in these situations and actually look at the incident rates. Anything could happen but not all outcomes are as likely. There’s loads of mundane activities we do that have serious life changing events that could happen. A kid is a commitment but also one that is profoundly human that people have been doing successfully for millennia.

scotty79 4y ago

> But also, anything can happen. Anything can happen. Your kids could be born with lifelong conditions or issues. They could be healthy at young ages, but develop special conditions as they hit early childhood or late adolescence. They could struggle with lifestyle issues (violence, drugs, alcohol, crime, etc). I could never understand how people are so easy to punish someone with life. Especially someone who they'll love unconditionally. I didn't like my life from the start despite it being fairly decent in objective terms.

nickd2001 4y ago

Much respect to you for adopting 4 kids, especially those with additional needs! :) To this "We have one child who is at high risk of never developing cognitively enough to safely live on their own as an adult.", I'd argue, society in general needs to look after people like this much better. Everyone, particularly the rich, should be paying their fare share of taxes to cover decent quality care for those unable to look after themselves due to disability. That includes respecting the people who work in that field properly as doing a vital job, and paying them well enough. When parents feel that this lifetime responsibility falls on them alone, I feel that something is severely broken. What about people with learning disability who do not have family to look out for them? They need a system to look after them. I think some of the comments on this discussion reflect that there's a lack of general support for families, especially in the USA with its insufficient social programmes.