> On the other hand, what kind of wimpy ambition do you have if it won't survive having kids? Do you have so little to spare? I don't know, it seems like paren

> On the other hand, what kind of wimpy ambition do you have if it won't survive having kids? Do you have so little to spare? I don't know, it seems like parenthood asks for a lot to be given up. Younger people like myself are already struggling to live on their own where I am. There's not a lot that can be spared by most of us. To me, having a child means heavily straining your financial safety - here, care for this other person that can't do anything and has some of the most expensive needs in society. Not only that, but you need to be sure that you can provide for the child for the next 5, 10, 15 years. Who has that sort of confidence? Then there's the part where all your free time is sacrificed to care for the child. The time burden decreases, but it's always a lot of time. And you always have to be extremely risk-averse - if you were just responsible for yourself before, now you have someone you need to take into account for every thing you do in life. Moves, job changes, major risks or investments, career changes, taking on additional responsibilities. All of these things probably become much less doable for parents. And this is a one-way road with no backing out, you commit to it and are stuck with that choice for several decades. By the time your child lives on their own, you've already spent a large portion of your adult life. And there's no guarantees that your child is someone you like, or that your parenthood isn't soured by something else. There's plenty of parents who are stuck in parenthood and hate it. The thought of having a child scares me. I'm happy that the author is content with how his life turned out, but I'm okay with just watching from the sidelines. Maybe the biological instinct (forced coping mechanism?) is so strong as to justify living through the horrors above in exchange for watching your kids play and participating in similar things. But I don't want to learn what that's like.