10 ms·

Sorry, not worth it at all. Years 1-10 - you will loose all your time - cleaning diapers, making the child eat, making it study, teaching it values - waking up

Sorry, not worth it at all. Years 1-10 - you will loose all your time - cleaning diapers, making the child eat, making it study, teaching it values - waking up at night - and doing a lot of things for it. Yes you'll see it learn, smile, grow up and you're genetically conditioned to like it. But you will not be able to play your games, go to your parties - read book or contemplate on life, or code without expecting interruptions. Years 11-20 - manage the child's other needs - worry about getting into a good school/college, making sure there is no bad company, and making sure no bad mistakes are made which can be made very difficult due to teenage defiance to old values etc. Years 21+ - child will leave and stay separately - you should more or less start becoming free once again. That is if you do not have a second child!

celticninja 14y ago
Wow your kids must suck.
mgoulart 14y ago
Is that what your parents told you ? :)
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
mcmatterson 14y ago
Balls to this. As your sibling commenter says, you simply don't get to pass judgement on this if you haven't had a child of your own. Sure, we're programmed to behave with an otherwise inexcusable amount of irrationality with our kids, but that's not by accident. If anything, it demonstrates the level of evolutionary importance in keeping our offspring healthy and ensuring their success: it's such an important directive in fact, that evolution has deemed it more important than the needs of the parents to 'play [their] games, go to [their] parties -- read book[s]...or code'. I'm not going to tell you you're objectively wrong on this, but I will tell you that you have no idea what you're talking about. Life is a squishy, inconvenient, and occasionally beautiful endeavour. Realize that.
- paulhauggis 14y ago
  "As your sibling commenter says, you simply don't get to pass judgement on this if you haven't had a child of your own." You aren't gay, so you can't pass judgement on gay rights. You don't smoke weed, so you have no say in the laws The thing is. You can still have an opinion (and pass judgement)..even if you haven't experienced it yourself.
  - mcmatterson 14y ago
    You'll notice that later on my comment I said 'I'm not going to say you're objectively wrong on this'. I'm not begrudging the OP his/her opinion, I'm simply saying that without the mental reset that is parenthood, the OP simply does not have enough information to make any factual statement on the matter. I'm not saying that the OP is wrong or unentitled, I'm simply saying that they're exhibiting a potent mix of naivety and arrogance that they may want to be more aware of. Or, as my sibling poster said in a better way: "Don't presume in your arrogance that you know quite a bit about something you have zero experience with."
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
  - run4yourlives 14y ago
    We're not talking about laws here, we're describing experiences. Nobody is suggesting that all people should be parents. Your corrected analogies are as follows: You aren't gay, so you can't pass judgement on what it means to be gay. You don't smoke weed, so you have no idea what it's like to be high. Both of these statements are perfectly valid, and having a bunch of straight people talk about what it is like to be gay or a bunch of prudes talk about how out of sorts you are when you are high is pretty ridiculous.
- aidenn0 14y ago
  A non-parent could similarly argue that you don't get to pass judgement since you are under the influence of cognitive dissonance. Regardless, I have met parents who feel that way, and it can often turn out poorly for the child, though it really depends. One person I know who feels this way is a DBA who earns more than enough for his wife to raise the kids. She works part-time more to escape cabin-fever than to earn money and seems happy with the arrangement. His long work hours means he doesn't have to deal with the kids any more than he wants to.
maratd 14y ago
You either don't have kids or you're a psychopath. I'm leaning toward the former. Don't presume in your arrogance that you know quite a bit about something you have zero experience with. All your accomplishments are pointless without your child next to you. > Yes you'll see it learn, smile, grow up It? Nice. > But you will not be able to play your games, go to your parties - read book or contemplate on life, or code without expecting interruptions. Sophistry. You don't even understand why you do all of those things. You simply enjoy them and that's an end in itself. No, you're not some amazing savant that has popped up out of the mass of mediocrity that is humanity. You enjoy all of those things to gain the capacity to enrich the life of your child. No child? All the stuff you enjoy loses its meaning.
- aphyr 14y ago
  All your accomplishments are pointless without your child next to you. You enjoy all of those things to gain the capacity to enrich the life of your child. I'm unconvinced. There are many worthy things in life; children among them. Doesn't mean your life is worthless if you don't have them.
  - jonmb 14y ago
    Agreed. Saying children are not worth it is an extreme position, but saying that life is pointless without children is perhaps even more extreme. It's like saying life is pointless without a wife, or without God.
    - maratd 14y ago
      The point of all life is to reproduce. It's one of the qualifications to be considered alive. So yeah, without children, life literally loses its meaning =)
      - slurgfest 14y ago
        Many people are sterile and cannot have kids. They are still alive by any definition. Many people decide not to have kids but are good Aunts or Uncles or adopted parents. Many decide not to have kids but take care of them, teach them, mentor them. There are even, god help us, productive people who don't have anything specific to do with children. That doesn't mean their existence is meaningless. On the other hand, a man who spreads his genes by rape may be having lots of kids, but he is not doing a good thing, and is probably not leading a deeply fulfilling life. The case of adoption and the case of rape say pretty clearly to me that love is more morally fundamental than differential fecundity. The moral purpose of your life is not given by population genetics in any case. It is an error to conflate purpose in the adaptationist sense with purpose in the sense of your life's fulfillment or your moral values. Different people are suited to different ways of living, and find different forms of fulfillment; it is part of what makes life varied and interesting.
alain94040 14y ago
Ha. Can't wait for your [future] kids to discover your post on HN, 15 years from now, and give you a hard time about it.
- tomjen3 14y ago
  Whow, are you arrogant. Can you even contemplate somebody who doesn't want to have children?
  - engtech 14y ago
    "Whow, are you arrogant. Can you even contemplate somebody who doesn't want to have children?" Can you contemplate that if you are having heterosexual/breeder sex, you may have children even if you never planned to?
    - cchurch 14y ago
      Breeder sex? Who talks like this?
      - lostlogin 14y ago
        A gay friend had a house warming party years ago and my wife and I turned up. We were the only straight people there out of probably 50 guests and I heard someone say "breeders" as we arrived. It took a second to get it and It didn't feel good. I felt more alien than the numerous times we have been overseas and not been able to speak the local language. And when I consider that the people there would all have had comments made against them at some point I had a slight inkling what life could have been like.
    - jrockway 14y ago
      Pretty sure that unplanned pregnancies need not result in a child being born.
  - run4yourlives 14y ago
    I think his (somewhat mangled) point is that pretty much everyone in their early 20's doesn't want to have kids, yet most people in their 30's are at least open to the idea. He's basically playing the odds, but like I said, mangled his comment.
aidenn0 14y ago
I posted a longer post as a sibling to this before I read your comment. In a lot of ways this is true, and I encourage anyone who agrees with you to not become a parent, rather than being a poor parent.
ceejayoz 14y ago
> Yes you'll see it learn, smile, grow up and you're genetically conditioned to like it. But you will not be able to play your games, go to your parties - read book or contemplate on life, or code without expecting interruptions. Enjoying parties, games, books, and coding has its roots in genetic conditioning, too.
jasonlotito 14y ago
And that's fine that you feel that way. It's good that you've thought this through. I'd much rather someone act this way than pretend like having children is what they want.
run4yourlives 14y ago
This thing that can only cry learns to: talk, walk, read, express themselves, formulate opinions, ride a bike, conquer fears, grow etc. They do this all the while looking at you as a hero with nothing but complete and selfless love for you. All your minor faults are irrelevant to them. You are their everything. Yes, it's genetic conditioning, but I have been on this planet 37 years and have never experienced emotion on any scale anywhere approaching what fatherhood has given me. Here's another secret - it's completely different the second time around too! I'm struggling here to find an argument that would help illustrate this to a non-parent and I am failing. I'll leave it at this: I would give up everything I'll ever do from now until death - my entire existence - in exchange for my children's without more than a 30 second thought. That is what parenthood does to you. It's fucking great.
- callmevlad 14y ago
  As a father of two amazing girls, I feel exactly the same way. Granted I have less/no time to play video games and go to parties, but nothing has ever come even remotely close to motivating me to create things and become a better person than my children.
- gcheong 14y ago
  "That is what parenthood does to you." No, that is what parenthood has done to you. And I'm glad for you but you don't have to look far to find people for whom the effect was less than positive and if I relate more to those people than to you then I would do well to heed their warnings than your espousing of supposed absolute truth. Seriously why is it that parents want to convince others who don't buy into the whole pronatalist view so much that having kids is always, every time, and in every way, the most positive, ultimate experience any human can have?
  - mibbitier 14y ago
    Virgins probably also don't see what the big deal about having sex is. They've probably heard horror stories about it. Being a father/mother is simply the best thing you can do with your life (Unless you hate kids, or are too "grown up").
jakejake 14y ago
I think a lot of people start out this way including myself. As you hit your late 30's I think is when even some hard-core no-kids people start to re-evaluate their thinking. I still don't have kids but I'm not anti-kids anymore so if one day it happens I'll be ok with it. What changes is that you go around year after year and you start to see things become a bit repetitive. Holidays with the family, celebrations. Your family starts getting smaller. You start to see how much fresh new energy kids bring to life in general. You start to chill out about the crying and hassles that babies bring and not see them as so much of a burden. All of the things that you've done a million times are suddenly new and exciting because you have somebody to share them with and pass off all of your knowledge, show them all the tricks you've learned in life. I didn't really feel any of that until I had nieces, but I really love hanging around with them.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  In my 40s, and I'm just happy people have stopped questioning my no-child choices.
gyardley 14y ago
Kids are a lot of work, but you don't have to make it unnecessarily hard on yourself by raising them American-style. As long as your child is healthy, it's perfectly possible to wean them early, send them to child care, get them to sleep through the night by not rushing to their side every three seconds, train them to play quietly by themselves, teach them not interrupt their parents when they're busy, get babysitters whenever you have a social occasion, and put your relationship with your spouse first and foremost. Your kids will be just fine.
- gte910h 14y ago
  Thank you for this. Hoverparenting is not the only way to parent.
acuozzo 14y ago
> Sorry, not worth it at all. Does your comment assume that the hypothetical subject (i.e., ``you'') has a stay-at-home spouse?
goggles99 14y ago
"Sorry, not worth it at all." Beware - selfishness feels great but is short lived. Traveling, working, partying, loafing around in your free time. These things get old and eventually you feel empty and Unfulfilled... How can you predict what brings fulfillment to others anyway? Others may say to you that you will likely spend your latter years and die a miserable lonely recluse in a filthy nursing home. While they are cared for and having a happy existence with their children and grandchildren.

celticninja 14y ago

Wow your kids must suck.

mgoulart 14y ago

Is that what your parents told you ? :)

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

mcmatterson 14y ago

Balls to this. As your sibling commenter says, you simply don't get to pass judgement on this if you haven't had a child of your own. Sure, we're programmed to behave with an otherwise inexcusable amount of irrationality with our kids, but that's not by accident. If anything, it demonstrates the level of evolutionary importance in keeping our offspring healthy and ensuring their success: it's such an important directive in fact, that evolution has deemed it more important than the needs of the parents to 'play [their] games, go to [their] parties -- read book[s]...or code'. I'm not going to tell you you're objectively wrong on this, but I will tell you that you have no idea what you're talking about. Life is a squishy, inconvenient, and occasionally beautiful endeavour. Realize that.

paulhauggis 14y ago
"As your sibling commenter says, you simply don't get to pass judgement on this if you haven't had a child of your own." You aren't gay, so you can't pass judgement on gay rights. You don't smoke weed, so you have no say in the laws The thing is. You can still have an opinion (and pass judgement)..even if you haven't experienced it yourself.
- mcmatterson 14y ago
  You'll notice that later on my comment I said 'I'm not going to say you're objectively wrong on this'. I'm not begrudging the OP his/her opinion, I'm simply saying that without the mental reset that is parenthood, the OP simply does not have enough information to make any factual statement on the matter. I'm not saying that the OP is wrong or unentitled, I'm simply saying that they're exhibiting a potent mix of naivety and arrogance that they may want to be more aware of. Or, as my sibling poster said in a better way: "Don't presume in your arrogance that you know quite a bit about something you have zero experience with."
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- run4yourlives 14y ago
  We're not talking about laws here, we're describing experiences. Nobody is suggesting that all people should be parents. Your corrected analogies are as follows: You aren't gay, so you can't pass judgement on what it means to be gay. You don't smoke weed, so you have no idea what it's like to be high. Both of these statements are perfectly valid, and having a bunch of straight people talk about what it is like to be gay or a bunch of prudes talk about how out of sorts you are when you are high is pretty ridiculous.
aidenn0 14y ago
A non-parent could similarly argue that you don't get to pass judgement since you are under the influence of cognitive dissonance. Regardless, I have met parents who feel that way, and it can often turn out poorly for the child, though it really depends. One person I know who feels this way is a DBA who earns more than enough for his wife to raise the kids. She works part-time more to escape cabin-fever than to earn money and seems happy with the arrangement. His long work hours means he doesn't have to deal with the kids any more than he wants to.

maratd 14y ago

You either don't have kids or you're a psychopath. I'm leaning toward the former. Don't presume in your arrogance that you know quite a bit about something you have zero experience with. All your accomplishments are pointless without your child next to you. > Yes you'll see it learn, smile, grow up It? Nice. > But you will not be able to play your games, go to your parties - read book or contemplate on life, or code without expecting interruptions. Sophistry. You don't even understand why you do all of those things. You simply enjoy them and that's an end in itself. No, you're not some amazing savant that has popped up out of the mass of mediocrity that is humanity. You enjoy all of those things to gain the capacity to enrich the life of your child. No child? All the stuff you enjoy loses its meaning.

aphyr 14y ago
All your accomplishments are pointless without your child next to you. You enjoy all of those things to gain the capacity to enrich the life of your child. I'm unconvinced. There are many worthy things in life; children among them. Doesn't mean your life is worthless if you don't have them.
- jonmb 14y ago
  Agreed. Saying children are not worth it is an extreme position, but saying that life is pointless without children is perhaps even more extreme. It's like saying life is pointless without a wife, or without God.
  - maratd 14y ago
    The point of all life is to reproduce. It's one of the qualifications to be considered alive. So yeah, without children, life literally loses its meaning =)
    - slurgfest 14y ago
      Many people are sterile and cannot have kids. They are still alive by any definition. Many people decide not to have kids but are good Aunts or Uncles or adopted parents. Many decide not to have kids but take care of them, teach them, mentor them. There are even, god help us, productive people who don't have anything specific to do with children. That doesn't mean their existence is meaningless. On the other hand, a man who spreads his genes by rape may be having lots of kids, but he is not doing a good thing, and is probably not leading a deeply fulfilling life. The case of adoption and the case of rape say pretty clearly to me that love is more morally fundamental than differential fecundity. The moral purpose of your life is not given by population genetics in any case. It is an error to conflate purpose in the adaptationist sense with purpose in the sense of your life's fulfillment or your moral values. Different people are suited to different ways of living, and find different forms of fulfillment; it is part of what makes life varied and interesting.

alain94040 14y ago

Ha. Can't wait for your [future] kids to discover your post on HN, 15 years from now, and give you a hard time about it.

tomjen3 14y ago
Whow, are you arrogant. Can you even contemplate somebody who doesn't want to have children?
- engtech 14y ago
  "Whow, are you arrogant. Can you even contemplate somebody who doesn't want to have children?" Can you contemplate that if you are having heterosexual/breeder sex, you may have children even if you never planned to?
  - cchurch 14y ago
    Breeder sex? Who talks like this?
    - lostlogin 14y ago
      A gay friend had a house warming party years ago and my wife and I turned up. We were the only straight people there out of probably 50 guests and I heard someone say "breeders" as we arrived. It took a second to get it and It didn't feel good. I felt more alien than the numerous times we have been overseas and not been able to speak the local language. And when I consider that the people there would all have had comments made against them at some point I had a slight inkling what life could have been like.
  - jrockway 14y ago
    Pretty sure that unplanned pregnancies need not result in a child being born.
- run4yourlives 14y ago
  I think his (somewhat mangled) point is that pretty much everyone in their early 20's doesn't want to have kids, yet most people in their 30's are at least open to the idea. He's basically playing the odds, but like I said, mangled his comment.

aidenn0 14y ago

I posted a longer post as a sibling to this before I read your comment. In a lot of ways this is true, and I encourage anyone who agrees with you to not become a parent, rather than being a poor parent.

ceejayoz 14y ago

> Yes you'll see it learn, smile, grow up and you're genetically conditioned to like it. But you will not be able to play your games, go to your parties - read book or contemplate on life, or code without expecting interruptions. Enjoying parties, games, books, and coding has its roots in genetic conditioning, too.

jasonlotito 14y ago

And that's fine that you feel that way. It's good that you've thought this through. I'd much rather someone act this way than pretend like having children is what they want.

run4yourlives 14y ago

This thing that can only cry learns to: talk, walk, read, express themselves, formulate opinions, ride a bike, conquer fears, grow etc. They do this all the while looking at you as a hero with nothing but complete and selfless love for you. All your minor faults are irrelevant to them. You are their everything. Yes, it's genetic conditioning, but I have been on this planet 37 years and have never experienced emotion on any scale anywhere approaching what fatherhood has given me. Here's another secret - it's completely different the second time around too! I'm struggling here to find an argument that would help illustrate this to a non-parent and I am failing. I'll leave it at this: I would give up everything I'll ever do from now until death - my entire existence - in exchange for my children's without more than a 30 second thought. That is what parenthood does to you. It's fucking great.

callmevlad 14y ago
As a father of two amazing girls, I feel exactly the same way. Granted I have less/no time to play video games and go to parties, but nothing has ever come even remotely close to motivating me to create things and become a better person than my children.
gcheong 14y ago
"That is what parenthood does to you." No, that is what parenthood has done to you. And I'm glad for you but you don't have to look far to find people for whom the effect was less than positive and if I relate more to those people than to you then I would do well to heed their warnings than your espousing of supposed absolute truth. Seriously why is it that parents want to convince others who don't buy into the whole pronatalist view so much that having kids is always, every time, and in every way, the most positive, ultimate experience any human can have?
- mibbitier 14y ago
  Virgins probably also don't see what the big deal about having sex is. They've probably heard horror stories about it. Being a father/mother is simply the best thing you can do with your life (Unless you hate kids, or are too "grown up").

jakejake 14y ago

I think a lot of people start out this way including myself. As you hit your late 30's I think is when even some hard-core no-kids people start to re-evaluate their thinking. I still don't have kids but I'm not anti-kids anymore so if one day it happens I'll be ok with it. What changes is that you go around year after year and you start to see things become a bit repetitive. Holidays with the family, celebrations. Your family starts getting smaller. You start to see how much fresh new energy kids bring to life in general. You start to chill out about the crying and hassles that babies bring and not see them as so much of a burden. All of the things that you've done a million times are suddenly new and exciting because you have somebody to share them with and pass off all of your knowledge, show them all the tricks you've learned in life. I didn't really feel any of that until I had nieces, but I really love hanging around with them.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
In my 40s, and I'm just happy people have stopped questioning my no-child choices.

gyardley 14y ago

Kids are a lot of work, but you don't have to make it unnecessarily hard on yourself by raising them American-style. As long as your child is healthy, it's perfectly possible to wean them early, send them to child care, get them to sleep through the night by not rushing to their side every three seconds, train them to play quietly by themselves, teach them not interrupt their parents when they're busy, get babysitters whenever you have a social occasion, and put your relationship with your spouse first and foremost. Your kids will be just fine.

gte910h 14y ago
Thank you for this. Hoverparenting is not the only way to parent.

acuozzo 14y ago

> Sorry, not worth it at all. Does your comment assume that the hypothetical subject (i.e., ``you'') has a stay-at-home spouse?

goggles99 14y ago

"Sorry, not worth it at all." Beware - selfishness feels great but is short lived. Traveling, working, partying, loafing around in your free time. These things get old and eventually you feel empty and Unfulfilled... How can you predict what brings fulfillment to others anyway? Others may say to you that you will likely spend your latter years and die a miserable lonely recluse in a filthy nursing home. While they are cared for and having a happy existence with their children and grandchildren.