JW

Maybe this is trite, but have children if you want to take on the work of having children. It’s not a magic recipe for life fulfillment — it’s a massive 24/7 second job with the potential of being tremendously fulfilling, but only if it’s work you want to do for the next 20 years. Do you enjoy mentoring clueless younger people? EXTREMELY clueless younger people? Younger people who are so clueless they’ve forgotten to check if they have bodily needs? Younger people who think they know everything but actually they want to run into traffic and they know nothing but you can’t tell them that or they’ll collapse and you’ll have to carry them? You mentor them and they learn and it’s incredible, but it’s a lot of work.

Parenting is bound to bring up old memories. How do you feel about your childhood? Will recalling it be positive? Will it make you want to improve on it? Will it be traumatic and get in your way? It’s bound to bring up your feelings about yourself and your partner. When they do something that’s weirdly and startlingly like you, will it be charming? Flattering? Delightful? Embarrassing? Something you feel you have to apologize for your kid for? Something you have to get them to suppress? Have kids if you like yourself enough to enjoy seeing your traits modified and remixed into a cute incompetent new person who you want to support.

In short, don’t have kids because of what they can do for you. Have kids because of what you want to do for them, and how much you will enjoy that. (Or don’t have kids because you think you won’t.) They will stubbornly turn out to be their own people, so you can’t count on them to provide any particular thing for them. But if you will enjoy the work, and it is work, it’s very worthwhile.

Speaking as someone who loves mentoring kids and would have burned down my life to have them, but I’m in the process of splitting up with someone who won’t visit his absolutely incredible daughter. Please don’t do it if you don’t want to do the thing that it is.