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Ask HN: How to deal with regret of not having kids

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Re: Ask HN: How to deal with regret of not having kids

#321

Post by freedom2099 »

thefz wrote: post #238
jlizzle30 wrote: post #206

New(ish) parent here. Two things: First, the bad news: lots of comments saying stuff like "Don't have kids to fill a perceived hole in your life". In general, the advice "Don't do ____ to fill a hole in your life" is good for frivolous things, but I don't think this applies to being a parent. Parenting is a biological and psychological life milestone. To me it's felt more like leveling up my maturity than buying or a…

> Parenting is a biological and psychological life milestone Allow me to disagree. First: there's no evidence of any change in your body, as a male, after becoming a father. Second: supposing such a "wireless" change would happen, getting someone pregnant and immediately disappearing from their life would yield a perceptible change even with distance and no involvement with the life of the child. Third: I personally…

My mother claims that the day my son was born I became a completely different person!

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with regret of not having kids

#322

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

freedom2099 wrote: post #318
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> maybe it's a mid-life crisis where we worry about our legacy It makes me laugh when people talk about having a "legacy" 99.999% of people are unremarkable. There are currently just over 1M Wikipedia articles about living people. Meanwhile, there are 7.7B people on the planet. Even if you made the incorrect assumption that all 1M were about living Americans, with the US population being nearly 330M, that means you'd…

Even CEOs and most head of state will be forgotten in a couple of generations unless they do something really bad or really good. And most don’t!

They might at least end up with a Wikipedia article that doesn't immediately get deleted for not being notable.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with regret of not having kids

#323

Post by nashashmi »

theGnuMe wrote: post #315
nashashmi wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marriage is a contract upon which every other mutual decision in life is made upon. You need to have a better reason than changing decisions to divorce or annul a marriage. She made that decision too after all and it was made together for each other. You remain faithful to the contract, or you are violating the contract in bad faith.

Here in the USA we have no fault divorces. There’s no requirement to give a reason or even have a reason to end a marriage.

Interesting.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with regret of not having kids

#324

Post by seltzered_ »

throwaway4aday wrote: post #289
seltzered_ wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im trying to point out a broader predicament and thinking of the systemic tradeoffs between human impact (in terms of population size but more importantly population pressure), planetary boundaries, and changes in resource availability. Start with reading 'a good life within planetary boundaries': https://goodlife.leeds.ac.uk/

I'm trying to point out an equally impactful predicament, civilizations don't generally survive sustained population collapses. I don't think that averting a theoretical disaster caused by resource exhaustion is worth creating an almost guaranteed disaster due to forcibly reducing population levels (and it is force whether done through law, propaganda or inequitable incentives). If "planetary boundaries" are a proble…

Hmm, you're arguing to attempt to get to a 'stage two civilization' per the kardashev scale, and while I agree there's all sorts of issues with attempting policy-level change I keep seeing a lot of energy/material/ecological blindness with such arguments to go beyond boundaries.

Feel like our conversation might go along the lines of this conversation between Nate Hagens and Sebastian Heitmann: https://youtu.be/9Y6BvCVKC_E?t=2665

"since technology can make more use out of less material and energy by increasing efficiency or creating alternate methods of accomplishing the same tasks" - I keep thinking we're falling into the 'jevon's paradox' here without sufficient systemic accounting or feedbacks.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with regret of not having kids

#325

Post by Chyzwar »

We took family from Ukraine for 2.5 months, mother and 5 years old daughter. We already have a 5-year-old son. Furthermore, we got really attached to that little girl. Afterwards, we started an adoption course. In my opinion, you still have a chance for biological children or adoption, It is just matter of putting some effort.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with regret of not having kids

#326

Post by freedom2099 »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #322
freedom2099 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even CEOs and most head of state will be forgotten in a couple of generations unless they do something really bad or really good. And most don’t!

They might at least end up with a Wikipedia article that doesn't immediately get deleted for not being notable.

Such a worthy goal!

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with regret of not having kids

#327

Post by ALittleLight »

dmos62 wrote: post #54

Sounds like you're projecting something on not being a parent. Try the "what for" game. What do I want kids for? To extend my legacy. What do I want to extend my legacy for? To feel connected to the world. What do I want to feel connected to the world for? Just keep going recursively until you deconstruct it to a point where you see that it's not as bad as all that. I don't know why, but your story made me think of v…

I'm assuming that people have a biological imperative to reproduce. That matches what I know about biology and evolution and it explains why people so frequently have kids despite kids being, on paper, a rather poor deal. The "what for" is just "This is my fundamental nature."

I think that you can't really examine your out of a fundamental drive. You can't scratch the itch by asking "what for" any more than you could convince yourself that the fire wasn't burning you by contemplating why your hand hurt when you put it in the fire. Most people just want to reproduce as an end goal to itself.

All this said - I tend to think OP's problem is more psychological / depression as others have commented. If it were truly a strong desire to have children than OP would have simply figured out a way (adoption, in vitro, getting with another woman, surrogate, etc). Instead, it might just be a manifestation of depression - which is why OP just suffers from the desire rather than attempting to fulfill it.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with regret of not having kids

#328

Post by tsol »

nashashmi wrote: post #120
davidguetta wrote: post #8

You can 100% have kids. Not only biologically but also There are thousands of younger 30ish women who'd see 0 problem have a kid with a mature 40 y.o. (rather than a 30 y.o. whos head is not there yet) Of course you probably wont have the same relationship with your wife but thats your life, not hers. And if you wake up with panic attacks over kids you HAVE to do it or youll never forgive yourself in 10 / 20 years. A…

This is the worst advice to give. He chose not to have with the one he is married to. And you are saying to turn his back on that same person. And have it with someone else!

Is it really better for him to stay with her, when it makes him unhappy? At least this way she can find someone who actually wants to be childless with her, instead of risking resentment
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