5 ms·

As a single and childless person, I don't like the implication that those are marks of a less fulfilling life. I know some people married with kids who seem ver

As a single and childless person, I don't like the implication that those are marks of a less fulfilling life. I know some people married with kids who seem very happy and fulfilled, and some profoundly miserable and trapped. I may be missing out on some good things, but I'm also avoiding some extreme misery, and generally do feel content and fulfilled.

argee 2mo ago
Part of being smart is being able to diagnose certain ideas as dogmatic, which is far more than can be expected from most. "Most people would die sooner than think—in fact, they do so" — Bertrand Russell
xyzelement 2mo ago
Thanks for sharing that. Obviously respect your choices on the individual level. The contrast you provided between those who are happy with family and those two seem miserable is in line with what I am saying: it's both 'be smart about what you persue' and 'be smart about how you persue it.' So likely the first group was 'smarter' about who they chose as a spouse and how they set up the life with them than the second group. So maybe we can score the miserable group as a -1, the happy group as a +1 and your avoidance strategy as in-between: 0. So you can look at your strategy as good because it avoids the extreme misery but it also denies a shot at extreme happiness. And then if one were to go that potentially high risk/high reward path, their actual outcome (are they happy or miserable) is a function of how smartly they persue that endeavor.
- dns_snek 2mo ago
  Many people, including myself, just know that we don't want to have children. Our outcomes won't have the same distribution as those of people who always wanted to have children, no matter how "smart" we are about it. Another factor is that when you have children and regret it you can suffer a lot more than just "-1" of misery - I'd say the scale is more like -10 to +1 (centered around 0). Furthermore if you end up regretting it you will also inflict some part of that misery onto your children.
  - FeloniousHam 2mo ago
    I've never met anyone who was sorry they had children, but I've met a lot of people who missed the opportunity (to be fair, I've never met the parents of a violent criminal). Kids can be hard, especially if you're not a natural, and especially when they're young, but-- it's impossible to describe the fulsome love I have for my kids. I'm not a sentimental person, and probably wouldn't have had them without my wife (which is a funny thing to say). Even when they're a pain and a disappointment, even with the ever present guilt, my kids give me some baseline purpose for free. And the wins are great--"all joy and no fun" as I heard once. The conversations as they become real people. It's impossible to describe and totally worth it.
    - dns_snek 2mo ago
      I don't really expect anyone to casually admit that they regret having children to anyone but their closest confidants, perhaps not even themselves, the social stigma and shame would be unbearable. I don't know how much research there is on this but anecdotally there are many emotionally absent and neglectful parents out there. They might be able to cope with the way their life is but that doesn't mean that they're good parents (or that they wouldn't do things differently if they got to start over again). There's also a chance that your child is born with disabilities that demand intensive life-long support. I know that I couldn't cope with that, so even if my general outlook on having children changed some day I could never get past this, for my own good and out of responsibility for my hypothetical child.
      - FeloniousHam 2mo ago
        Of course there are bad parents. I'm unlikely to encounter them, and even if I did I would probably not associate with them. But I suspect that you and anyone else on this thread offering thoughtful responses, are not the kind of person who would fall into that category. I only offer my own experience, because I had the same fears as you. One datapoint, but parenting changed me in so many good ways, and the hardships fade from memory.
    - S_Bear 2mo ago
saghm 2mo ago
Strongly agreed, and it's also worth it for those who think too narrowly along those lines that those aren't even the same axis. I used to be single and childless, and my happiness fluctuated a lot, but now I'm married and much more consistently happier. Neither my wife or I want kids, so if we had them, suddenly we'd be back to being less happy again. There are also plenty of single parents, and I'm sure many of them are happy and fulfilled without needing a partner. Plus, kids who grow up with parents who are unhappy and would prefer to be childless are probably a lot more likely to grow up into unhappy adults.
- MajorTakeaway 2mo ago
  Important to define what is happy and what were problems to begin with. I'm 39, no kids, and my parents weren't happy with me, but were happy otherwise. How does this factor how I'm unhappy? Happiness should be the end goal. Contentment is part of it. Compromise. Quality over quantity and the quality doesn't have to always be great, just no regrets according to modern death bed speeches. Being happy can mean chasing one thing and not the other, which would lead to some unspoken regret, loud enough in our head.
  - saghm 2mo ago
    I said "more likely", not "guaranteed". I feel like the whole point I'm trying to make by building onto the parent comment is that there's not a one-size-fits-all template to being happy and fulfilled, and that not everyone will fit expected trends. At no point did I try to prescribe anything to someone as the way to avoid being unhappy, nor did I attempt to categorize the world into buckets of who would be happy or unhappy. That's literally the opposite of what I was trying to say, which is that trying to force expectations of what one person thinks would make someone happy onto someone else is not a good thing. Your second paragraph seems to be mostly quibbling of my use of the term that already was being used throughout this thread (and in the article itself). I don't understand why you chose my comment in particular to litigate the definition when it's not something I've introduced to the discussion.
whycombinetor 2mo ago
Username checks out.
GMoromisato 2mo ago
The thing about having children is that you absolutely cannot know what it's like until you actually have them. And then, of course, it's too late. I'm convinced that I would have been happy without children. I would have lived a wonderful life, maybe with a spouse, maybe alone, traveling the world, working on my interests, and generally doing whatever I wanted to do. You don't miss what you never had. But now that I have two kids, that life seems so hollow. Kids make you feel things that you've never felt before. It's like suddenly discovering a new rainbow of colors, or like listening to a piece of music that makes you simultaneously giddy with joy and wistfully sad and you can't explain why. You can't compare the joy of having kids with any other pleasure you've experienced. It's like trying to compare having sex with having a great meal. It's not even the same scale. Of course, everyone's different. Some people absolutely regret having kids (and that's sad for everyone). But if you have even a slight feeling like maybe you want to have kids, I would absolutely do it. My only regret is that I waited so long.
- sublinear 2mo ago
  > you absolutely cannot know what it's like until you actually have them While it's less common now, I don't think anyone who grew up in a bigger family under one roof could agree with that. Nothing divine is gatekeeping this experience. It's the socioeconomic climate we've created doing that. It makes perfect sense that you value your family so deeply, but you might want to reconsider where you anchor your pride. It's a lot of responsibility. Unexpected things can happen. I'm extremely grateful to have examined all stages of life on a daily basis before even going to college, but I think having kids is a heavy choice. It's perhaps the heaviest choice of all. Since there's no mystery in it for me, I'm still enjoying being unchained.
  - kleiba2 2mo ago
    > you absolutely cannot know what it's like until you actually have them
  - adwn 2mo ago
    > […] I don't think anyone who grew up in a bigger family under one roof could agree with that. I do. I grew up with 5 siblings, and having brothers and sisters is very, very different from having your own children. My relation with and my emotions towards my children is very different from my relation with and my emotions towards my siblings, both now and when I was still living with them in the same house.

argee 2mo ago

Part of being smart is being able to diagnose certain ideas as dogmatic, which is far more than can be expected from most. "Most people would die sooner than think—in fact, they do so" — Bertrand Russell

xyzelement 2mo ago

Thanks for sharing that. Obviously respect your choices on the individual level. The contrast you provided between those who are happy with family and those two seem miserable is in line with what I am saying: it's both 'be smart about what you persue' and 'be smart about how you persue it.' So likely the first group was 'smarter' about who they chose as a spouse and how they set up the life with them than the second group. So maybe we can score the miserable group as a -1, the happy group as a +1 and your avoidance strategy as in-between: 0. So you can look at your strategy as good because it avoids the extreme misery but it also denies a shot at extreme happiness. And then if one were to go that potentially high risk/high reward path, their actual outcome (are they happy or miserable) is a function of how smartly they persue that endeavor.

dns_snek 2mo ago
Many people, including myself, just know that we don't want to have children. Our outcomes won't have the same distribution as those of people who always wanted to have children, no matter how "smart" we are about it. Another factor is that when you have children and regret it you can suffer a lot more than just "-1" of misery - I'd say the scale is more like -10 to +1 (centered around 0). Furthermore if you end up regretting it you will also inflict some part of that misery onto your children.
- FeloniousHam 2mo ago
  I've never met anyone who was sorry they had children, but I've met a lot of people who missed the opportunity (to be fair, I've never met the parents of a violent criminal). Kids can be hard, especially if you're not a natural, and especially when they're young, but-- it's impossible to describe the fulsome love I have for my kids. I'm not a sentimental person, and probably wouldn't have had them without my wife (which is a funny thing to say). Even when they're a pain and a disappointment, even with the ever present guilt, my kids give me some baseline purpose for free. And the wins are great--"all joy and no fun" as I heard once. The conversations as they become real people. It's impossible to describe and totally worth it.
  - dns_snek 2mo ago
    I don't really expect anyone to casually admit that they regret having children to anyone but their closest confidants, perhaps not even themselves, the social stigma and shame would be unbearable. I don't know how much research there is on this but anecdotally there are many emotionally absent and neglectful parents out there. They might be able to cope with the way their life is but that doesn't mean that they're good parents (or that they wouldn't do things differently if they got to start over again). There's also a chance that your child is born with disabilities that demand intensive life-long support. I know that I couldn't cope with that, so even if my general outlook on having children changed some day I could never get past this, for my own good and out of responsibility for my hypothetical child.
    - FeloniousHam 2mo ago
      Of course there are bad parents. I'm unlikely to encounter them, and even if I did I would probably not associate with them. But I suspect that you and anyone else on this thread offering thoughtful responses, are not the kind of person who would fall into that category. I only offer my own experience, because I had the same fears as you. One datapoint, but parenting changed me in so many good ways, and the hardships fade from memory.
  - S_Bear 2mo ago

saghm 2mo ago

Strongly agreed, and it's also worth it for those who think too narrowly along those lines that those aren't even the same axis. I used to be single and childless, and my happiness fluctuated a lot, but now I'm married and much more consistently happier. Neither my wife or I want kids, so if we had them, suddenly we'd be back to being less happy again. There are also plenty of single parents, and I'm sure many of them are happy and fulfilled without needing a partner. Plus, kids who grow up with parents who are unhappy and would prefer to be childless are probably a lot more likely to grow up into unhappy adults.

MajorTakeaway 2mo ago
Important to define what is happy and what were problems to begin with. I'm 39, no kids, and my parents weren't happy with me, but were happy otherwise. How does this factor how I'm unhappy? Happiness should be the end goal. Contentment is part of it. Compromise. Quality over quantity and the quality doesn't have to always be great, just no regrets according to modern death bed speeches. Being happy can mean chasing one thing and not the other, which would lead to some unspoken regret, loud enough in our head.
- saghm 2mo ago
  I said "more likely", not "guaranteed". I feel like the whole point I'm trying to make by building onto the parent comment is that there's not a one-size-fits-all template to being happy and fulfilled, and that not everyone will fit expected trends. At no point did I try to prescribe anything to someone as the way to avoid being unhappy, nor did I attempt to categorize the world into buckets of who would be happy or unhappy. That's literally the opposite of what I was trying to say, which is that trying to force expectations of what one person thinks would make someone happy onto someone else is not a good thing. Your second paragraph seems to be mostly quibbling of my use of the term that already was being used throughout this thread (and in the article itself). I don't understand why you chose my comment in particular to litigate the definition when it's not something I've introduced to the discussion.

whycombinetor 2mo ago

Username checks out.

GMoromisato 2mo ago

The thing about having children is that you absolutely cannot know what it's like until you actually have them. And then, of course, it's too late. I'm convinced that I would have been happy without children. I would have lived a wonderful life, maybe with a spouse, maybe alone, traveling the world, working on my interests, and generally doing whatever I wanted to do. You don't miss what you never had. But now that I have two kids, that life seems so hollow. Kids make you feel things that you've never felt before. It's like suddenly discovering a new rainbow of colors, or like listening to a piece of music that makes you simultaneously giddy with joy and wistfully sad and you can't explain why. You can't compare the joy of having kids with any other pleasure you've experienced. It's like trying to compare having sex with having a great meal. It's not even the same scale. Of course, everyone's different. Some people absolutely regret having kids (and that's sad for everyone). But if you have even a slight feeling like maybe you want to have kids, I would absolutely do it. My only regret is that I waited so long.

sublinear 2mo ago
> you absolutely cannot know what it's like until you actually have them While it's less common now, I don't think anyone who grew up in a bigger family under one roof could agree with that. Nothing divine is gatekeeping this experience. It's the socioeconomic climate we've created doing that. It makes perfect sense that you value your family so deeply, but you might want to reconsider where you anchor your pride. It's a lot of responsibility. Unexpected things can happen. I'm extremely grateful to have examined all stages of life on a daily basis before even going to college, but I think having kids is a heavy choice. It's perhaps the heaviest choice of all. Since there's no mystery in it for me, I'm still enjoying being unchained.
- kleiba2 2mo ago
  > you absolutely cannot know what it's like until you actually have them
- adwn 2mo ago
  > […] I don't think anyone who grew up in a bigger family under one roof could agree with that. I do. I grew up with 5 siblings, and having brothers and sisters is very, very different from having your own children. My relation with and my emotions towards my children is very different from my relation with and my emotions towards my siblings, both now and when I was still living with them in the same house.