Love | Have children
How to think about a life-changing event
When I was just out of high school, I couldn’t understand why anybody would want to have children. There was so much to do in the world, and children just seemed like something that would drag you down, hold you back, put a stop to all your aspirations.
About 15 years later, my thinking on this has completely changed. Maybe it’s my biology, maybe I got tired of living that exciting life, maybe it’s because I’ve been living with a child for the last year, or maybe it’s a result of the voices I heard on the topic over the years. I summarised them below, I hope they are helpful.
As with all decisions, it’s good to remind ourselves that there isn’t a right or wrong here. There are many great lifes to live - some with and and some without children.
While this article is my own perspective, I am super happy I got to talk with Julia Wise about the topic of children and parenting. She has her own substack where she writes about parenting, leads community health at the Center for Effective Altruism, and is portraied in the book Strangers Drowning - one of the best pieces of writing on the question how far we should go when focusing our lives on a greater good.
How to think about a life-changing event
Your own perspective
Would you want a child, from a purely selfish perspective? If you feel a clear no to that question then you probably don’t need to keep reading, but in my experience most of us like the idea but are worried about the impact it will have. Some thoughts on this:
No happiness, but meaning: The research on this seems to be pretty clear: Children are on average neutral for wellbeing, but they will add meaning. You can get meaning through other ways, but children seem to hit differently.
What will you say no to?: Economist Bryan Caplan argues in his book “Seflish Reasons to Have More Kids” that you can invest less time than the average, a lot is influenced by genes anyway. While this might be partly true, your time has to come from somewhere. What would you say no to? Try to map out days.
What support you can count on: While your wellbeing won’t change on average, your support network is the strongest predictor of changes. Think partner, parents, policies. Your overall health and money going in. Is it worth waiting for?
The world’s perspective
Let’s start with the obvious point: We are below replacement rates. This leads to collapse of safety nets, the economy, research, progress. If you are reading this, your kids have a good chance having a positive effect on socity. We’d love to have them.
Highly impactful people had children: If you are doing impactful work and are worried children will eat away from your time, here is a fun fact: Nine of the 10 most impactful people them had children. You can’t be 24/7 productive anyway.
Role modelling: A movement that would celebrates self-sacrifice to not have children to e.g., use their members saved time to save “more lives” asks too much of it’s members, thereby won’t grow, thereby will limit it’s potential impact.
Biodiversity and resources: You can take two perspectives here: a) more humans = more destruction or b) more humans = more invention and solutions. If you are worried about this, you and your children are exactly the people needed in b)
Your child’s perspective
Not sure about you, but I’m pretty grateful for my parents for having made the decision to gift me this life.
It’s a gift: It’s hard to compare not being alive to being alive, it’s philosophically murky territory. And yet. Giving the gift of life is the biggest gift you can give. Can you get it cheaper by donating malaria nets somewhere? Probably.
What world it will grow up in: We live in a highly unpredictable world. AI, climate change, risks everywhere. But even in some of the less good scenarios, I personally would prefer to be alive, to live through it. Would you?
You don’t have to be perfect: I sometimes hear people say they don’t want to pass on their genes to avoid the pain they suffered. This of course is a highly personal decision. But we all have faults, and maybe you, having gone through this, are especially well placed to help your child growing up.
Start with one thing
What points evoke the strongest emotions for you? Talk about it with a friend.
Are you a parent? We’d love to hear your story in the comments!
Missing something? Add a comment and we’ll add it to next year’s version
Thanks for writing this, so far have been enjoying the posts greatly! I spent a long time working through this decision myself, and I think Julia's account is helpful and honest. For those who are considering this change themselves, leaving a few notes!
1. "nine of the 10 most impactful people had children" point caught my eye, and I'm not sure it's accurate for the point that this article is trying to make. Almost all people on the list are men, in eras when wives did the pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding and nearly all the childrearing. The accurate version of the fact is that impactful men had children whose costs someone else absorbed.
The same pattern shows up today. I recently watched Ali Abdaal's video about becoming a dad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLdtdiJu7DE and for a man with his resources, hired help included, having a child seems to barely dent his output (he did openly acknowledge his privilege in the video). But if you look at his wife Izzy's account of the same period, it's obvious that pregnancy and birth greatly affected her productivity and she had a hard time accepting it. My best friend recently had a baby and told me the same thing: pregnancy alone significantly reduced her ability to work, well before the baby arrived. If you read the comments on Ali's video you will see that people with fewer resources than Ali have had a much harder time looking after young children.
To be clear, if having children is something you want, that's a completely legitimate choice, for women too, even if it means having less impact (likely temporarily). But posts like this should be honest about who bears the cost. "Your wellbeing won't change on average" hides a large difference in whose wellbeing changes, and that price falls mostly on the person carrying the child and is the primary carer for them.
2. I think Julia's point about having children not being the right choice for some people and your point about some people regretting their children is worth looking into. When I looked it up, research showed that there are some top reasons people regret it (e.g. lack of paid/community help, mental health support, financial constraints, etc), and I found it very insightful to make my own decision whether to have kids or not. I think that if you really want to have children, it's helpful to think about whether you have the kind of set-up that would make the negatives less intense and allow you to enjoy the experience more.
One last thing I'd say is after researching this topic for a while, it seems like the experience of having children is very varied across different people, so my conclusion is that it depends so greatly on how you and your partner are and what kind of child you will end up getting, that as you said in the video, it's hard for anyone else to know in advance what your life would be like. But you and your partner can make some predictions based on your circumstances and research to help you decide.