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Ask HN: What are the benefits to having children nowadays?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the benefits to having children nowadays?

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%.

100%. It's totally deterministic. You just have to put in the time (1-2 years) to learn how the algorithms work, monetization, etc.

I'm not really interested in getting into an argument about whether or not it's possible, since I don't think I'll change your mind and I don't think you'll change mind.

Re: Ask HN: What are the benefits to having children nowadays?

#52
To even ask the question is to misunderstand what drives most people to have kids. The reason they do it is the same reason they do anything: because they feel the need to. I won't have kids because I look at the pros and cons and the idea simply doesn't outweigh the cons. Some people are attached to things like the idea of passing on their genes, having someone to care for, having someone to care for them in their old age, not being lonely, giving their life purpose. If you don't care about those things then having children loses a lot of value.

Unfortunately you're seeing in this thread a reflection of how the world reacts to people who don't want kids. People are incredibly shameless about how intolerant they are towards the idea and shameless in how they stigmatize not having kids: for example saying "you're not ready to be a parent", assuming that being a parent is something that should even be done in the first place, rather than sincerely discussing whether or not being a parent is best for a particular person

Re: Ask HN: What are the benefits to having children nowadays?

#53
> I'm looking for new perspectives on why one should choose to procreate nowadays.

When I look at it clinically, whether or not to have children feels pretty much like a selfish decision these days; everything is about the parent's fullfilment/needs, not the childs. Perhaps it always has been: free labor for the farm/factory/shop, carrying on the family name and/or genetic legacy, and free care in your dotage.

Since none of these applied to me or my wife, and I know I wouldn't have been a good parent (something indirectly validated by helping to raise nieces and nephews), we're not parents. No regrets so far.

Re: Ask HN: What are the benefits to having children nowadays?

#54
You are a result of countless generations of people, each one took their time to procreate, and this is how you ended up with your life. That's the gift you got for free to use and enjoy, and arguably to procreate is the only thing those generations are asking of you. You think you got it bad now? People were raising children without access to most basic necessities. You got it all these days, and looking for an excuse to not have to continue the lineage is pathetic

Re: Ask HN: What are the benefits to having children nowadays?

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This comment is incredibly utopian lol. I wonder where you're coming from to think these claims are reasonable. The kids who make it big with startups or some really smart people who can get a job at faang in less than half a year are a tiny fraction of the population

I run an email newsletter with 30k+ readers and currently do 6 figures annually in revenue with a very predictable path to 7 figures in revenue (just reinvest all the revenue into ads lol). I've seen firsthand what it takes to grow an audience having done so myself (first 25k subs were all organic).

I'm also really really dumb. It's honestly just write a lot of content, make each post 1% better than the last one, and figure out a solid distribution channel.

I've also watched a lot of content on how to grow on other social platforms. Colin and Samir's podcast is amazing for YouTube.

Everyone says the same thing lol. Building an audience online is far more deterministic than people think.

> really smart people who can get a job at faang in less than half a year

Yeah, I didn't mean go from 0 coding knowledge -> Facebook. I meant you're working as a software engineer at a smaller company and want to get a job at FB.

Re: Ask HN: What are the benefits to having children nowadays?

#56
I'd suggest reading The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis for a short but succinct alternative viewpoint. It's not specifically about whether or not to have children, but it talks about what connects the visceral aspect of man with the rational aspect, which is something you seem to be having difficulty reconciling.

But, let's set that aside for a moment. Assuming you believe in evolution and natural selection, you know that every environment has stressors and great filters. With life existing on Earth for 4.5 billion years, do you really want to be the evolutionary dead end of all the ancestors who came before you? In the great dance of life, are you the dodo bird?

Re: Ask HN: What are the benefits to having children nowadays?

#57
Honestly, the biggest thing as far as I'm concerned is basic categorical imperative/collective action stuff. Unless you think expediting human extinction is a good thing, someone has to have children. Not doing it isn't a universalizable behavior. It doesn't mean every single adult in existence has to procreate, but the baseline expectation if we want humanity to survive is that most do. Thinking of it in terms of personal benefit is the wrong way to look at it.

For what it's worth, I'm in my 40s and don't have children and likely never will, though I do hope to adopt. In my case, I'm a man, can't have children because of that, and my wife didn't want to for various reasons. It's ultimately up to her, and I'd rather adopt than divorce her. Is that a good enough reason? I don't know. But I don't personally see anything about the world and it's future making it bad enough that future human existence isn't worth it. I plan to continue existing as long as I can, and if I could exist long into the future, I would. If it's good enough for me, it's good enough for new humans, too.

Also, my wife has ADHD, and as far as I can tell, her existence is still worthwhile. Not bringing people into the world because you fear they'll develop ADHD doesn't seem like a good enough reason to me. If you expect to pass on some congenital condition likely to result in a short life of nonstop suffering, sure, forego that. But I don't feel like the common diseases of affluence, i.e. anxiety, attention span disorders, obesity, make life not worth living. Humanity has some work to do in order to figure out how to reconcile our evolutionary history and learned behaviors and mental proclivities with a dramatically changed modern world, but we should actually do that work, not give up and end the human experiment.

Re: Ask HN: What are the benefits to having children nowadays?

#59

This 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 c…

This sounds like a response from someone who takes for granted that kids are good. The OP just asked what the benefits are to having kids, with some reasons given for why he doesn't see the idea as positive. If you think this post is biased you should try going through life as someone who doesn't want kids, people really take it personally when you say you're not interested in the idea

I dont known about the poster, but me personally I do remember having been a kid, meaning someone made a different calculation. Past performance is no indication of future returns I guess...

Re: Ask HN: What are the benefits to having children nowadays?

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? I expect those are only the top x%.

100%. It's totally deterministic. You just have to put in the time (1-2 years) to learn how the algorithms work, monetization, etc. I'm not really interested in getting into an argument about whether or not it's possible, since I don't think I'll change your mind and I don't think you'll change mind.

It's worth remembering that only about 5% of the population† can even complete a task - like looking for a job - wholly online. It's not a skillset the general population has. And you need that skillset before you can even think about programming languages, mathematics, algorithms, etc.

https://goingdigital.oecd.org/indicator/24

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