re: addressing some of your assumptions/claims
Sabine Hossenfelder: Is Elon Musk right in saying that we are too few people? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI1AaZ9OkH8
Ask HN: What are the benefits to having children nowadays?
21–30 of 139 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are the benefits to having children nowadays?
#22This isn't a good faith question. You start with a bunch of unsupportable supposition and then ask us to defend it. If the assumptions this question are based on aren't accurate, then all you're really doing here is throwing stuff at the wall and asking other people to unstick it.
So that's my "answer": You created a baseless hypothetical. The hypothetical itself is the problem here, not the concept of kids. Nobody can name benefits that outweigh the "costs" here because the costs are complete fiction and designed to be insurmountable.
Re: Ask HN: What are the benefits to having children nowadays?
#23> both parents will need to work to fund raising a child, so the mother necessarily has to do 1.5 or 2 full-time jobs
Doesn't need to be true. A woman can take a year off or so to breastfeed and recover from the birth, at that point you can send the kid to daycare and split the child care duties. In my house my wife prefers the child care stuff so I pitch in by doing most of the other household chores, but since my daughter was 1 I've changed as many diapers as she has. Really she doesn't have to work, but she didn't like staying home with the kid and the household budget we would have to meet for that to work out.
> grandparents most likely don't live in the same city so you're reliant on strangers to raise your children
This part sucks, I agree.
> increased risk of autism / ADD / lack of focus because of the internet
You choose what your children get to do in their free time. It's really easy to sit them down with a tablet and walk away, but nobody is forcing you to do it. There is an old saying, "You can be friends with your children when they are 14 or when they are 40, not both."
> the world is already over-populated, and however hard it is for you to compete with your peers, it'll be even harder for your children
It isn't overpopulated with people like your children will grow up to be. Children in the west benefit from public health measures and educational opportunities that will potentially enable them to be net contributors to solutions for overpopulation. The world can't be overpopulated with geniuses, with enough of them we can make new worlds.
Re: Ask HN: What are the benefits to having children nowadays?
#24Well, because having a child, a descendant is so much more than “procreating”. And, apart from that, your “ I'm less interested in parents trying to rationalize what deep down they know was a bad decision, the perpetual "oh but I'd do it all over again" thing when clearly their life is a lot of worse and they're full of regret.” is very judgmental. One can be happy in the midst of hardship, difficulty and pain. One d…
But you're not answering the question. How does "one can be happy in the midst of hardship, difficulty and pain" encourage one to have children? One can also be happy when there is no hardship, difficulty and pain...
I get the sense that you have ingested a lot of information that reinforces your world view of upcoming doom and negativity. The internet is good for that!
What books, ideas, authors and thinkers would you tune into to challenge that? For example, would you even consider Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now to challenge some of those premises?
Re: Ask HN: What are the benefits to having children nowadays?
#25It gives a meaning to your life, if work or saving the world is not doing it.
So then you choose to procreate to create meaning, and your child grows up, finds meaning lacking, and therefore chooses to procreate...
You're mocking everybody who has responded in good faith to your question here. If this behavior is at all typical for you, don't have kids. Leave that to people who are gentle, selfless and kind.
Re: Ask HN: What are the benefits to having children nowadays?
#26It's not supposed to benefit you - it's supposed to benefit them.
Re: Ask HN: What are the benefits to having children nowadays?
#27OP asked for the benefits, no cost-benefit analysis. So here are a few items:
- Family time is enjoyable, certainly helps cut down social media addiction and replace it with something meaningful (unless your perspective is that you'll die anyway so nothign is meaningful, but then you have other issues).
- Having kids forces me to push myself to be better, control my emotions, be a role model that inspires my kids. Without kids, I would find it harder to have such a clear drive to consistently be the best of myself every day.
- Kids are not independent. A priority that tops everything else shifts your perspective from you being at the center of your world to something else. That something else is fragile, needs care. That helps bring focus, consistency and growth to everyday life.
- Helping someone discover new things brings me joy. I can do that almost every week with my kids and I love it.
Does that make it a good choice in terms of cost/benefits? Depends who you are and how you see your life I guess?
Edit: reading another comment - the list about is indeed a descriptions of the symptoms of what it takes to bring joy and happiness to a new counsciousness in this world. I like the perspective of that other comment and wanted to highlight it too.
Re: Ask HN: What are the benefits to having children nowadays?
#28Because the people who don't consider the long term ramifications of having children are still breeding, so the trajectory of humanity (compounded even more by social safety nets) is now toward R style reproduction (aka "spray and pray"). So if you are concerned about the future of humanity, having at least one child that you raise well (assuming you have no genetic diseases) is a large portion of your contribution to it.
Re: Ask HN: What are the benefits to having children nowadays?
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, if you want the kind of job that can afford the house with the white picket fence and 2.5 children (and not putting yourself into dangerous levels of debt), the level of competition for such a job is fierce.
That's not true in the slightest. In fact, it's far, far easier to make money now with the internet. You can build a tool and have millions of people use it instantly and there are far more ways to make $ than ever (creator economy). Just look on twitter and you'll find loads of 20 year olds making 6 figures out of their college dorms with different kinds of internet products. I saw a thread yesterday from some 19 ye…
Is it? I expect those are only the top x%.
Re: Ask HN: What are the benefits to having children nowadays?
#30Because the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, and no-one else is going to look after you when you get old? (i.e., the original reason for having kids). It it worth noting, I don't have kids (don't like them, they have no conversation)
I would like to point out that you absolutely can have conversations with your children.