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I've three kids. It's wonderful, it's exhausting, and it's often terrifying. Being a parent is a painful experience, but so is living life. Would my life be eas

I've three kids. It's wonderful, it's exhausting, and it's often terrifying. Being a parent is a painful experience, but so is living life. Would my life be easier and less painful without them? Yes. Would my life be better without them? No, just different. I respect antinatalists, but I chose differently. I chose to bring laughter and joy to this absurd, meaningless Universe we habit, even if for a brief lapse. Is it the right choice? Perhaps not. Is it a selfish choice? Yes. Why did I do it then? For the same reason I keep breathing. I don't know much more than that.

Affric 3y ago
Life is what any of us make it. The antinatalist position is fundamentally fatalistic. It’s a total negation of the one redeeming feature of the universe: anything could happen. I respect not having kids. The idea that you’re inherently better off not having kids is nonsense.
- menschmanfred 3y ago
  It's a selfish thing to do. Nonetheless nothing I condemn. At the end of the day it's harder not to have kids and stop this cycle than not, thanks to evolution.
  - anonymousDan 3y ago
    What nonsense. Having kids is not selfish.
    - bluescrn 3y ago
      What is the goal of humanity? To maximise quality of life, maximise duration of life, or maximise the numer of humans? At the moment, we seem to be aiming for 'maximum number of humans'. But in a world of climate crisis and depleted resources, that means ever-fewer freedoms, rapidly declining quality of life, and increasing levels of war/conflict.
    - menschmanfred 3y ago
      And have you ever spend time on thinking about your conclusion?
  - cpursley 3y ago
    Some of believe the cycle is pretty incredible, beautiful and net positive despite its flaws.
    - menschmanfred 3y ago
      Yes and I like the point in general. But we know in which world we bring humans in. Climate change, rassism, bulling etc.
  - neoberg 3y ago
    Not having kids is selfish. Most of the worlds social systems depend on new generations of workers. I'm not only talking about paying taxes and contributions etc. But if not enough people have kids, there won't be enough doctors, engineers or cleaners when the same people get older.
    - menschmanfred 3y ago
      That's not a good reason for the new human it's only a good and easy reason for the existing humans. To create their future workers/slaves.
  - psacawa 3y ago
    This is a remarkable inversion. The primary reason people forego children in the west is because it throws a wrench in their comfortable lifestyle. They prefer to live unto themselves, instead of unto children, i.e. selfishly. I believe the environmental/climactic concerns raised by antinatalists are just a feeble deflection. They are primarily interested in personal comfort.
    - bemusedthrow75 3y ago
      I don't really want to have kids. I am not an "antinatalist" because of this. It has nothing whatsoever to do with comfort (or the environment or climate). I note that the "unto" here is a very interesting word choice that hints at an underlying belief structure that drives your opinion.
    - menschmanfred 3y ago
      You could have asked my why I think it is selfish. I believe creating new life is playing 'god'. It's easier to never exist than life life. This has nothing to do what you thought
      - mcphage 3y ago
        > I believe creating new life is playing 'god'. That's an unusual definition of "playing god", since it includes something that pretty much every life form back to the earliest single-cellular bacteria does.
        menschmanfred 3y ago
        Those are not self aware and can't think about the implications
        mcphage 3y ago
        > Those are not self aware I'm not sure I do this most of the time. > can't think about the implications I definitely don't do this bit.
- XorNot 3y ago
  It's weird how a whole bunch of parents jump into threads like these to tell us all about how totally awesome having kids is. I love my son, but it's also easily one of the hardest things I've ever done and will continue to be so for the next 18+ years. I wouldn't recommend having children to anyone: it's a singularity, and there's also no undoing it. You need to be very sure it's what you want. It will be expensive, it will limit what you can do in all sorts of ways, because it is relentless in a way which exposure to it as an aunt or uncle or friend simply won't communicate adequately (heck: even parents with older children seem to rapidly forget what having younger children is actually like, as I've experienced).
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - jemmyw 3y ago
    It's a different experience for different people. Why wouldn't parent's comment if they enjoy having kids? It's no different than the people who jumped in to state the reasons why they wouldn't have kids, why do they do it? Why did you feel the need to put your comment in, maybe answer that too? I think it's weird how someone always jumps in to comment on how weird it is that some people jump in to comment. I've got 3 kids. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Or not recommend it. How the fuck should I know what you want to do or how it'll turn out? I'm glad I had mine and I'm glad we started at 25 instead of 35. Regrets? Some, but if you've none I may not believe you. You can regret things even if you also wouldn't want them to turn out differently.
    - XorNot 3y ago
      > I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Or not recommend it. That's the point: these aren't equal opposites. The answer to "should I have children?" is "you have to decide that for yourself but be aware of what it is you're deciding".
  - number6 3y ago
    Having kids is the hardest thing anyone can ever do — I am thinking of counterpoints while writing, but none comes to mind. However, I recommend having children. It is, contrary to some commenters, not a selfish thing to do, but a completely selfless act. You can see it for yourself when you watch the children around you: The pure joy of being alive! The full range of emotions! The good, the bad and the ugly… You could argue that the children are thrown into the world and are now stuck with it, and you rather would prefer nonexistence to existence. If you can answer the question, is life worth living, positively, then you can argue, that existence is better than nonexistence and consequently being thrown into this world is better than to pass on the experience. It would, however, be selfish to keep this experience all to yourself and not allow potential offsprings to take part in this experience. > You need to be very sure it's what you want. It will be expensive, it will limit what you can do in all sorts of ways, because it is relentless in a way which exposure to it as an aunt or uncle or friend simply won't communicate adequately This is right! Having kids is total; It will dominate your life. Every second of your day for at least 4 to 5 years. If you are not willing or able to endure, then you should not have kids. And again: You cannot fathom what it means to have someone who is so dependent on you and the life and future depends on you. No, not even the clingy partner you had. The hardship is soon forgotten — this is why the uncles and aunts and friends — don't communicate it adequately. These corny moments are real: Memories that will stick with you forever, even the bad parts, that somehow and with time get twisted into fond memories. (My son was crying every night for 8 months when he was falling asleep. I carried him on my arm until he was so exhausted that he slept. I sang songs for him for hours. Then he would sleep from 11 pm to 4 am. So at 4 I went to the living room with him, and we tried to catch some sleep on the couch. It got better after thees 8 months, but what a ride — now I like to think back and miss these nights when he slept in my arm). You might be in these first years, or I am having a short respite, but it gets easier after the first years. But you don't have kids for yourself, but for your kids.
- bluescrn 3y ago
  > The idea that you’re inherently better off not having kids is nonsense. We're in a world where we constantly told that we have to give up meat/dairy, powered transport, heating/cooling, and a whole lot more to avert climate catastrophe. I'm surprised there's so few mentions of the incredible destructiveness of having kids (e.g. vs. owning an ICE car or taking a few flights per year)
  - cassianoleal 3y ago
    What's the point of averting climate catastrophe? I thought it was to avoid human extinction. Having kids and no cars helps ensure the continuation of humanity. Turns out there's only one sure way to ensure human extinction, and it's for humans to stop reproducing.
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      Climate change won't cause human extinction. It will cause destruction of the environment, leading to it being able to support even less people than it does now. Because nature can't keep up with the speed we're changing it. But human extinction, no. Some areas will even become more habitable. And humans will only become extinct if everyone stops having kids which won't happen because some people like having them.
      - XorNot 3y ago
        The bottom-end of "human's as a species still exist" is not an existence you are familiar with or want, and is worse then what our hunter-gatherer forebears had to deal with. > Some areas will even become more habitable. Rather makes a lot of assumptions that the "no longer supportable" population will simply gracefully starve to death and leave the lucky ones be in the interim.
        wkat4242 3y ago
        > The bottom-end of "human's as a species still exist" is not an existence you are familiar with or want, and is worse then what our hunter-gatherer forebears had to deal with. No, but that's the case even now. The bottom end of humanity is having a horrible time. I'm sure people in North Korea or the war-torn countries in Africa won't be that much worse off than they are now. > Rather makes a lot of assumptions that the "no longer supportable" population will simply gracefully starve to death and leave the lucky ones be in the interim. I agree think it will lead to conflict over land, for sure. Siberia might even become a hospitable place :) Mass migrations will cause huge problems for sure and probably even some wars. But again, those things are something we have now too. But it's not an extinction event, especially not for us here in the west. We'll have to deal with a lot of inconveniences but we have the resources to mitigate them. It's not fair but really nothing in the world is fair now (and it seems to be getting even worse with pretty much all the world leaders being hardliners now)
- thefz 3y ago
  > The idea that you’re inherently better off not having kids is nonsense. The idea that you’re inherently better off having kids is nonsense as well.
lm28469 3y ago
I think you get it backward, lot of people would like to have kids, the problem isn't life with kids, it's life with modern jobs and everything that come with them
- remoquete 3y ago
  Life with kids has always been problematic.
  - lm28469 3y ago
    Less so when you could afford a house, a car, 2 kids and a stay at home wife on a single salary. It was also much easier when people didn't move to foreign countries and/or far away cities for their jobs, losing their family network &c. I'm in my mid 20s, in tech and couldn't afford that at all, I could barely afford my gf being unemployed. I don't have a car and live in a small flat. If I can barely afford a comfortable but frugal lifestyle while being paid more than 60% of my peers I'm not too surprised most people literally can't afford kids
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      The irony is that when you can afford kids in your mid to late 30s, it becomes much harder medically to have them (assuming your partner is similar in age). Lots of people just wait until they are ready, and then find out the window has passed, it’s really frightening.
    - seec 3y ago
      Yeah, I don't get how they don't see that but to be honest boomer culture is insanely omnipresent and they had it so good they must be thinking that it cannot be that bad. The reality is that if you are a couple both working an average job you won't have a whole lot of extra time depending on living situation (commute and access to transport) but on top of that you have very little extra cash that could be helpful to solve logistical pains kids make. All the people of my age that had kids now have unenviable lifestyles, it feels like they can have what the poor boomers had and not much more and nowadays the expectation is that it will last up to a quarter century because of how much we came to overvalue diplomas (even though they do not sort the good from the bad, at all...). Because of the insanely collectivist system around the world, it makes no difference to have kids or not for the end of your life, so it becomes more of a decision of accepting to be poorer for the privilège of reproduction. This pretty stupid all things considered, it seems like a feature to have parents dependent on their kids for the end of their life, this way they would have a lot more motivation to do the job right and those who would do a bad job would have it coming... In the end, collectivism has a way to always destroy the foundation it relies on, which is hilarious. We just are in the destructive phase, what will come out after is bound to be better I think (hard to do worse).
_hzw 3y ago
It's interesting to note that you consider having children a selfish choice, because in some cultures, not having children is considered selfish.
- remoquete 3y ago
  Cultural anthropology might have an answer there. I guess that some cultures and traditions view not having kids as selfish because there's a cultural push for preserving society (kids will become workers, help parents, pay taxes, fight in the army, and so on). I consider myself selfish because I've done it to fill my life with something I felt was lacking. I've no rational excuse.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  I think both options are selfish. You don't do it or not do it for humanity, society or whatever random shit you make up.
  - _hzw 3y ago
    If both are selfish, then neither is selfish. You conveniently deconstructed the concept of selfishness and I like it a lot.
quietbritishjim 3y ago
I agree with what you're saying, but it doesn't seem to have much to do with the article. It doesn't suggest that people are having fewer children because they are "antinatalists" or consider having children a "selfish choice". It's right there in the title: they think they just don't have time due to their work/life balance. As I said in another comment, that's more likely to be an economic problem (specifically, housing) rather than a philosophical change as you seem to be saying.
- remoquete 3y ago
  > it doesn't seem to have much to do with the article I guess most commenters jumped to their own reasons. In that sense, I think it's a natural reaction to the topic.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  It really isn’t that different. You have to make different work life balance choices when you have kids, increasingly very hard decisions given rising costs (housing, childcare, food, activities, etc…). You also can’t really relax on long weekends anymore unless you are content with large amounts of screen time, it’s not like yesterday when my boomer parents just threw me out of the house and told me to come back around lunch/dinner. The article is locked down, so I have no idea what it says after the second paragraph. I can imagine though.
  - quietbritishjim 3y ago
    What isn't really that different from what? The comment I was replying to said that people aren't having kids because they are morally against the concept of (anyone) having kids. The article is about people who perhaps want to have kids but their job pays too little and takes up too much time. Those are about as different as reasons can be. Another top-level comment included a link that lets you read the whole article (though there's not much substance to it, and the distinction was already clear about by the end of the first paragraph). There isn't much discussion about it because that's discouraged on Hacker News. From the FAQ, under "Are paywalls ok?": > In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.
thefz 3y ago
> I respect antinatalists, but I chose differently. I chose to bring laughter and joy to this absurd, meaningless Universe we habit, even if for a brief lapse. That's a false dichotomy, people without kids can bring joy and laughter to "this absurd, meaningless Universe we habit". You don't have to justify yourself for what you have chosen.
- remoquete 3y ago
  I agree with you, but, to be honest, I'm not too worried about logical phallacies in my post because I'm not trying to convince anyone, nor trying to justify myself. Mine was but a metonymy: by having kids, I'm bringing new smiles to the universe. Existing smiles are totally fine, too!

Affric 3y ago

Life is what any of us make it. The antinatalist position is fundamentally fatalistic. It’s a total negation of the one redeeming feature of the universe: anything could happen. I respect not having kids. The idea that you’re inherently better off not having kids is nonsense.

menschmanfred 3y ago
It's a selfish thing to do. Nonetheless nothing I condemn. At the end of the day it's harder not to have kids and stop this cycle than not, thanks to evolution.
- anonymousDan 3y ago
  What nonsense. Having kids is not selfish.
  - bluescrn 3y ago
    What is the goal of humanity? To maximise quality of life, maximise duration of life, or maximise the numer of humans? At the moment, we seem to be aiming for 'maximum number of humans'. But in a world of climate crisis and depleted resources, that means ever-fewer freedoms, rapidly declining quality of life, and increasing levels of war/conflict.
  - menschmanfred 3y ago
    And have you ever spend time on thinking about your conclusion?
- cpursley 3y ago
  Some of believe the cycle is pretty incredible, beautiful and net positive despite its flaws.
  - menschmanfred 3y ago
    Yes and I like the point in general. But we know in which world we bring humans in. Climate change, rassism, bulling etc.
- neoberg 3y ago
  Not having kids is selfish. Most of the worlds social systems depend on new generations of workers. I'm not only talking about paying taxes and contributions etc. But if not enough people have kids, there won't be enough doctors, engineers or cleaners when the same people get older.
  - menschmanfred 3y ago
    That's not a good reason for the new human it's only a good and easy reason for the existing humans. To create their future workers/slaves.
- psacawa 3y ago
  This is a remarkable inversion. The primary reason people forego children in the west is because it throws a wrench in their comfortable lifestyle. They prefer to live unto themselves, instead of unto children, i.e. selfishly. I believe the environmental/climactic concerns raised by antinatalists are just a feeble deflection. They are primarily interested in personal comfort.
  - bemusedthrow75 3y ago
    I don't really want to have kids. I am not an "antinatalist" because of this. It has nothing whatsoever to do with comfort (or the environment or climate). I note that the "unto" here is a very interesting word choice that hints at an underlying belief structure that drives your opinion.
  - menschmanfred 3y ago
    You could have asked my why I think it is selfish. I believe creating new life is playing 'god'. It's easier to never exist than life life. This has nothing to do what you thought
    - mcphage 3y ago
      > I believe creating new life is playing 'god'. That's an unusual definition of "playing god", since it includes something that pretty much every life form back to the earliest single-cellular bacteria does.
      - menschmanfred 3y ago
        Those are not self aware and can't think about the implications
        mcphage 3y ago
        > Those are not self aware I'm not sure I do this most of the time. > can't think about the implications I definitely don't do this bit.
XorNot 3y ago
It's weird how a whole bunch of parents jump into threads like these to tell us all about how totally awesome having kids is. I love my son, but it's also easily one of the hardest things I've ever done and will continue to be so for the next 18+ years. I wouldn't recommend having children to anyone: it's a singularity, and there's also no undoing it. You need to be very sure it's what you want. It will be expensive, it will limit what you can do in all sorts of ways, because it is relentless in a way which exposure to it as an aunt or uncle or friend simply won't communicate adequately (heck: even parents with older children seem to rapidly forget what having younger children is actually like, as I've experienced).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jemmyw 3y ago
  It's a different experience for different people. Why wouldn't parent's comment if they enjoy having kids? It's no different than the people who jumped in to state the reasons why they wouldn't have kids, why do they do it? Why did you feel the need to put your comment in, maybe answer that too? I think it's weird how someone always jumps in to comment on how weird it is that some people jump in to comment. I've got 3 kids. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Or not recommend it. How the fuck should I know what you want to do or how it'll turn out? I'm glad I had mine and I'm glad we started at 25 instead of 35. Regrets? Some, but if you've none I may not believe you. You can regret things even if you also wouldn't want them to turn out differently.
  - XorNot 3y ago
    > I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Or not recommend it. That's the point: these aren't equal opposites. The answer to "should I have children?" is "you have to decide that for yourself but be aware of what it is you're deciding".
- number6 3y ago
  Having kids is the hardest thing anyone can ever do — I am thinking of counterpoints while writing, but none comes to mind. However, I recommend having children. It is, contrary to some commenters, not a selfish thing to do, but a completely selfless act. You can see it for yourself when you watch the children around you: The pure joy of being alive! The full range of emotions! The good, the bad and the ugly… You could argue that the children are thrown into the world and are now stuck with it, and you rather would prefer nonexistence to existence. If you can answer the question, is life worth living, positively, then you can argue, that existence is better than nonexistence and consequently being thrown into this world is better than to pass on the experience. It would, however, be selfish to keep this experience all to yourself and not allow potential offsprings to take part in this experience. > You need to be very sure it's what you want. It will be expensive, it will limit what you can do in all sorts of ways, because it is relentless in a way which exposure to it as an aunt or uncle or friend simply won't communicate adequately This is right! Having kids is total; It will dominate your life. Every second of your day for at least 4 to 5 years. If you are not willing or able to endure, then you should not have kids. And again: You cannot fathom what it means to have someone who is so dependent on you and the life and future depends on you. No, not even the clingy partner you had. The hardship is soon forgotten — this is why the uncles and aunts and friends — don't communicate it adequately. These corny moments are real: Memories that will stick with you forever, even the bad parts, that somehow and with time get twisted into fond memories. (My son was crying every night for 8 months when he was falling asleep. I carried him on my arm until he was so exhausted that he slept. I sang songs for him for hours. Then he would sleep from 11 pm to 4 am. So at 4 I went to the living room with him, and we tried to catch some sleep on the couch. It got better after thees 8 months, but what a ride — now I like to think back and miss these nights when he slept in my arm). You might be in these first years, or I am having a short respite, but it gets easier after the first years. But you don't have kids for yourself, but for your kids.
bluescrn 3y ago
> The idea that you’re inherently better off not having kids is nonsense. We're in a world where we constantly told that we have to give up meat/dairy, powered transport, heating/cooling, and a whole lot more to avert climate catastrophe. I'm surprised there's so few mentions of the incredible destructiveness of having kids (e.g. vs. owning an ICE car or taking a few flights per year)
- cassianoleal 3y ago
  What's the point of averting climate catastrophe? I thought it was to avoid human extinction. Having kids and no cars helps ensure the continuation of humanity. Turns out there's only one sure way to ensure human extinction, and it's for humans to stop reproducing.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Climate change won't cause human extinction. It will cause destruction of the environment, leading to it being able to support even less people than it does now. Because nature can't keep up with the speed we're changing it. But human extinction, no. Some areas will even become more habitable. And humans will only become extinct if everyone stops having kids which won't happen because some people like having them.
    - XorNot 3y ago
      The bottom-end of "human's as a species still exist" is not an existence you are familiar with or want, and is worse then what our hunter-gatherer forebears had to deal with. > Some areas will even become more habitable. Rather makes a lot of assumptions that the "no longer supportable" population will simply gracefully starve to death and leave the lucky ones be in the interim.
      - wkat4242 3y ago
        > The bottom-end of "human's as a species still exist" is not an existence you are familiar with or want, and is worse then what our hunter-gatherer forebears had to deal with. No, but that's the case even now. The bottom end of humanity is having a horrible time. I'm sure people in North Korea or the war-torn countries in Africa won't be that much worse off than they are now. > Rather makes a lot of assumptions that the "no longer supportable" population will simply gracefully starve to death and leave the lucky ones be in the interim. I agree think it will lead to conflict over land, for sure. Siberia might even become a hospitable place :) Mass migrations will cause huge problems for sure and probably even some wars. But again, those things are something we have now too. But it's not an extinction event, especially not for us here in the west. We'll have to deal with a lot of inconveniences but we have the resources to mitigate them. It's not fair but really nothing in the world is fair now (and it seems to be getting even worse with pretty much all the world leaders being hardliners now)
thefz 3y ago
> The idea that you’re inherently better off not having kids is nonsense. The idea that you’re inherently better off having kids is nonsense as well.

lm28469 3y ago

I think you get it backward, lot of people would like to have kids, the problem isn't life with kids, it's life with modern jobs and everything that come with them

remoquete 3y ago
Life with kids has always been problematic.
- lm28469 3y ago
  Less so when you could afford a house, a car, 2 kids and a stay at home wife on a single salary. It was also much easier when people didn't move to foreign countries and/or far away cities for their jobs, losing their family network &c. I'm in my mid 20s, in tech and couldn't afford that at all, I could barely afford my gf being unemployed. I don't have a car and live in a small flat. If I can barely afford a comfortable but frugal lifestyle while being paid more than 60% of my peers I'm not too surprised most people literally can't afford kids
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    The irony is that when you can afford kids in your mid to late 30s, it becomes much harder medically to have them (assuming your partner is similar in age). Lots of people just wait until they are ready, and then find out the window has passed, it’s really frightening.
  - seec 3y ago
    Yeah, I don't get how they don't see that but to be honest boomer culture is insanely omnipresent and they had it so good they must be thinking that it cannot be that bad. The reality is that if you are a couple both working an average job you won't have a whole lot of extra time depending on living situation (commute and access to transport) but on top of that you have very little extra cash that could be helpful to solve logistical pains kids make. All the people of my age that had kids now have unenviable lifestyles, it feels like they can have what the poor boomers had and not much more and nowadays the expectation is that it will last up to a quarter century because of how much we came to overvalue diplomas (even though they do not sort the good from the bad, at all...). Because of the insanely collectivist system around the world, it makes no difference to have kids or not for the end of your life, so it becomes more of a decision of accepting to be poorer for the privilège of reproduction. This pretty stupid all things considered, it seems like a feature to have parents dependent on their kids for the end of their life, this way they would have a lot more motivation to do the job right and those who would do a bad job would have it coming... In the end, collectivism has a way to always destroy the foundation it relies on, which is hilarious. We just are in the destructive phase, what will come out after is bound to be better I think (hard to do worse).

_hzw 3y ago

It's interesting to note that you consider having children a selfish choice, because in some cultures, not having children is considered selfish.

remoquete 3y ago
Cultural anthropology might have an answer there. I guess that some cultures and traditions view not having kids as selfish because there's a cultural push for preserving society (kids will become workers, help parents, pay taxes, fight in the army, and so on). I consider myself selfish because I've done it to fill my life with something I felt was lacking. I've no rational excuse.
prmoustache 3y ago
I think both options are selfish. You don't do it or not do it for humanity, society or whatever random shit you make up.
- _hzw 3y ago
  If both are selfish, then neither is selfish. You conveniently deconstructed the concept of selfishness and I like it a lot.

quietbritishjim 3y ago

I agree with what you're saying, but it doesn't seem to have much to do with the article. It doesn't suggest that people are having fewer children because they are "antinatalists" or consider having children a "selfish choice". It's right there in the title: they think they just don't have time due to their work/life balance. As I said in another comment, that's more likely to be an economic problem (specifically, housing) rather than a philosophical change as you seem to be saying.

remoquete 3y ago
> it doesn't seem to have much to do with the article I guess most commenters jumped to their own reasons. In that sense, I think it's a natural reaction to the topic.
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
It really isn’t that different. You have to make different work life balance choices when you have kids, increasingly very hard decisions given rising costs (housing, childcare, food, activities, etc…). You also can’t really relax on long weekends anymore unless you are content with large amounts of screen time, it’s not like yesterday when my boomer parents just threw me out of the house and told me to come back around lunch/dinner. The article is locked down, so I have no idea what it says after the second paragraph. I can imagine though.
- quietbritishjim 3y ago
  What isn't really that different from what? The comment I was replying to said that people aren't having kids because they are morally against the concept of (anyone) having kids. The article is about people who perhaps want to have kids but their job pays too little and takes up too much time. Those are about as different as reasons can be. Another top-level comment included a link that lets you read the whole article (though there's not much substance to it, and the distinction was already clear about by the end of the first paragraph). There isn't much discussion about it because that's discouraged on Hacker News. From the FAQ, under "Are paywalls ok?": > In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.

thefz 3y ago

> I respect antinatalists, but I chose differently. I chose to bring laughter and joy to this absurd, meaningless Universe we habit, even if for a brief lapse. That's a false dichotomy, people without kids can bring joy and laughter to "this absurd, meaningless Universe we habit". You don't have to justify yourself for what you have chosen.

remoquete 3y ago
I agree with you, but, to be honest, I'm not too worried about logical phallacies in my post because I'm not trying to convince anyone, nor trying to justify myself. Mine was but a metonymy: by having kids, I'm bringing new smiles to the universe. Existing smiles are totally fine, too!