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Personally I love being a dad. It gave me meaning way beyond anything I’d experienced so far in life. I still love to work. I still love to see friends. But bei

Personally I love being a dad. It gave me meaning way beyond anything I’d experienced so far in life. I still love to work. I still love to see friends. But being a parent is like nothing else. I read a blog a while ago that sums this up so well (sorry I can’t find it so I will paraphrase)… What you think parenting is and what it’s actually are not the same at all. There’s this whole extra level that you only get when someone relies on you totally and when you have to do all the inbetween bits. I personally love it. But even saying that I totally believe that you can have an excellent life without kids. Just the sleep alone! And modern life is really set up to fuck with parents.

sho_hn 3y ago
I want to second everything you said, but also go on to qualify that I think having children can absolutely be a particularly excellent experience for people who would visit HN. If you're the nerdy-intellectual type, if you love to learn things, if you love to do projects, raising children offers so many rewards. It's fascinating to watch them grow and achieve things, it gives you first-hand knowledge of the human condition you will surely appreciate, and you are absolutely involved every step of the way. It'll make you research many things, it will make you pick up lots of new skills. It will motivate you to be healthier and have better planning and time management chops. It'll give you an experience that is uniquely and individually yours, akin to posessing a secret knowledge. Do you love that feeling of being productive and time well-spent, when you don't second-guess whether you made your hours count? The obvious purposefulness of every hour with your children will give you that feeling every time, even (and especially) during the hard bits. Lots of things conceive of having children as some form of sacrifice, but there's so much to gain.

sho_hn 3y ago

I want to second everything you said, but also go on to qualify that I think having children can absolutely be a particularly excellent experience for people who would visit HN. If you're the nerdy-intellectual type, if you love to learn things, if you love to do projects, raising children offers so many rewards. It's fascinating to watch them grow and achieve things, it gives you first-hand knowledge of the human condition you will surely appreciate, and you are absolutely involved every step of the way. It'll make you research many things, it will make you pick up lots of new skills. It will motivate you to be healthier and have better planning and time management chops. It'll give you an experience that is uniquely and individually yours, akin to posessing a secret knowledge. Do you love that feeling of being productive and time well-spent, when you don't second-guess whether you made your hours count? The obvious purposefulness of every hour with your children will give you that feeling every time, even (and especially) during the hard bits. Lots of things conceive of having children as some form of sacrifice, but there's so much to gain.