britt

Fully agree. If you can have kids then you should do it.

+1 to the concept that this is a category problem. But also, childless people simply cannot really understand or anticipate the joy of parenthood until they experience it.

My take on this is definitely insensitive to those who cannot have kids, but that doesn’t make it any less true:

Having kids is the single most meaningful thing anyone can do with their life. Period.

The reason my husband and I seem depressed to our child-less friends is because we are so sad for them that they haven’t decided to level up their lives. We feel so awkward that we’re on a transformative journey, while they are still … doing the same things they’ve been doing for the past decade.

Pet owners think that owning a dog gives them an idea what being a parent is like. This is so naive. Kids are not pets. Kids grow and challenge us and move through the world of their own accord. Dogs and cats live exactly by the rules and options we set. They are not even the same category of experience.

Kids connect you to the future – and the past – in ways that a childless person cannot even imagine.

There is a whole entire life waiting for you, as a parent, such a human experience. To me, deciding to not have kids is like a 16 year old deciding (if they could) that they will never become an adult. That they will just enjoy being a teenager forever, living in their parents house and never growing up to be independent adults. To me, that’s how extreme the difference is between childless and parent life. You will be transformed and you will grow in ways you never imagined. You will be challenged (yes it is hard) and you will have to sacrifice some of your creature comforts and your sleep and your short term well being (for a little while). But to say that somehow having kids could be “not worth it” is absolutely laughable.

Of course not everyone can (or should) have kids. If you have severe health limitations, or infertility, or anything else keeping you from living a fulfilling life as a parent, that’s real. And that sucks. I’m just not going to pretend that going childless is “just a lifestyle choice” like getting a pet or going vegan. No way. Not the same at all.