Say, my kid needs an auntie-em type. How can I got on your list, and when can my angel come stay with you for a coupla weeks?
auntie em, we’d make a good team. I’m not particularly good with kids, but I’m a damn good mother.
MY reasons to have kids:
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I believe that reproduction is our purpose for living. What is the meaning of life? Nothing cosmic - just to continue the species. I’ve done my part.
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I’m not particularly religious, so I don’t believe in an afterlife. I sometimes toy with the idea of reincarnation, but for the most part belive that we live on by passing our genes to our children. See #1.
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I saw my grandmother die. In the hospital room were her three daughters, and me - the eldest grandchild. We sat in the room while she cracked us up with her jokes and impressions of Boomhauer from King of the Hill. I realized that when I am on my deathbed I want my children and grandchildren around.
auntie em, we’d make a good team. I’m not particularly good with kids, but I’m a damn good mother.
MY reasons to have kids:
-
I believe that reproduction is our purpose for living. What is the meaning of life? Nothing cosmic - just to continue the species. I’ve done my part.
-
I’m not particularly religious, so I don’t believe in an afterlife. I sometimes toy with the idea of reincarnation, but for the most part belive that we live on by passing our genes to our children. See #1.
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I saw my grandmother die. In the hospital room were her three daughters, and me - the eldest grandchild. We sat in the room while she cracked us up with her jokes and impressions of Boomhauer from King of the Hill. I realized that when I am on my deathbed I want my children and grandchildren around.
You don’t need to have kids to do that… I play with toys 5 days a week and no one finds that the least bit strange. Of course any passersby who looked in the windows after school today probably would have thought that one small boy and four grown women pretending to be “long necks, teradactls, and T-rexes” were insane, but screw 'em- he’s our problem child and he had a terrific day, so extra attention was well deserved. Teaching is perfect for me, I love kids and don’t mind borrowing them, but I get to send them home to their moms and dads at the end of the day.
I had a kid because I got pregnant at 17 and was talked into having the baby instead of terminating the pregnancy by a less-than-devoted boyfriend.
I have kept The Boy of Joy (formerly the Dumpling of Joy, but he’s outgrown that moniker) for these 8 1/2 years for vastly different reasons, though. Mainly because he makes me laugh, has an amazing laugh himself, gives the best hugs ever, and constantly astounds me with things he says, knows, and does. If having a second one would bring me half the happiness with twice the trouble, I’d still do it again.
Pregnancy, however, would get in the way of that. I have no desire to be pregnant again.
To begin with, I don’t think this is an unreasonable question to ask, nor was it framed in unreasonable terms. I was asking myself the same thing when I was younger. But then, I’ve never seen any posts by the OP before, so maybe they inform everyone else’s views.
For most couples I think that (as corny as it sounds), having a child is an expression of their love for each other. It’s a way of the two of them combining in a permanent and tangible way. Personally, however, I didn’t choose to have a child - I fell pregnant accidentally, and for reasons I don’t want to go into, knew that I wouldn’t survive (emotionally) an abortion.
Now I now find that my daughter gives meaning to my life like nothing else ever did before - study, work, other achievements all pale in comparison. She gives a centre to my life. Looking at the world through her eyes, as I still can at her young age, gives the world a both a solid reality and a beauteous wonder that I haven’t been able to see since I was a child myself. This makes having a child worthwhile - for me, although given a time machine with the capacity to freeze embryos, I’d have delayed her birth by fifteen years or so.
On the other hand, for most people I wouldn’t recommend parenthood. The weight of responsibilty drives you into the ground sometimes. Every single decision I make affects her entire life, every mistake I make can damage her, too, it is never, ever, just about me. This wouldn’t be so bad if she weren’t the most important person in my life and I really care about what happens to her. That’s about the biggest responsibilty anyone who’s not the leader of a country can have.
Why do I have kids?
Because I love my wife and I believe the world will be a better place if i can increase the number of people with her genes therein.
Because my wife and I have a rich cultural/spiritual/religious legacy that our parents and grandparents and ancestors have passed down to us, and we consider it worthy of lasting into the future as well.
Because despite all the headaches that children can cause, the joys compensate immensely. Watching our children at various stages in their growth go through the process of discovering the world around them is a wonder to behold, and opens our own eyes to the delight in things that, as adults, we have come to take for granted.
Because the greatest pleasures in life come not from what we take, use and consume, but from what we give and share. And no task in the world requires as much of that as raising one’s own children.
And I’m sure I can think of more reasons, if pressed.
Well, Dopers should have kids, so we can populate the rest of the planet with our superior intelligence genes.
A very legitimate question I think.
I had a great pregnancy. I was happy, my nails and hair grew, and I was healthy. Had a wee bit of a problem during delivery because someone decided he was quite comfy where he was and grew to almost 10 lbs before deciding to come out and join the world.
He was a great babe who started sleeping through the night at 4 weeks.
I honestly wouldn’t pass up a second of the good or bad. I have a wonderful 11 year old who brings great joy to my life along with unconditional love.
On the other hand…
I have respect for people who make the decision not to become parents. Some people think its selfish, I don’t. I have friends who decided that they just didn’t have the time or patience to have kids. I admire that they made the decision they did, rather than be neglectful parents. God knows there are way too many of those around.
Sue’s 2 cents
Personally I don’t REALLY know. I don’t have kids myself, but I think it’s mainly selfish reasons. Er, not selfish in a bad way, but I don’t think anyone says, “Wow, let’s populate the species” or “Could I HAVE cooller genes?” because well…that’s just silly. I think mostly people have kids for themselves, and even though it’s something we’re supposed to, it’s probably a personal reason. Of course, society does put pressure on people to procreate, but it’s probably for the same reason people do everything- because they want to.
Drool. I collect drool. Want to buy a bucket or two off me?
Nobody should be pressured into having kids if they aren’t 100% certain that they want them and, more importantly, can take care of them properly. There’s no shortage of people on Earth right now, and if a person chooses not to reproduce, he or she certainly isn’t doing the human race any disservice.
organisms are gene vectors. as much as culture may be the dominant human adaptation, it doesn’t free humans from biology. the only way that your genes can mosey their way into the next generation is through reproduction. direct reproduction (having kids yourself) is generally the most efficient way of accomplishing this. indirect reproduction (increasing the reproductive success of your genetic relatives) also plays a factor, but then you start having to juggle hamiltonian degrees-of-relatedness and it all gets messy.
your genes code for a number of traits and behaviours to enhance the changes of your successful reproduction because they don’t exactly care whether you survive…they only care that you survive long enough to reproduce.
the reproductive drive is very powerful and often very subtle. of course, not all humans (or all organisms) reproduce…but a hefty number manage to send along a recombined gene-packet into the next generation, which is all that really interests selective forces.
beyond the biological imperative argument…many people find spending time with children enjoyable and will just describe themselves as “liking children” (you can find biological bases for this…oxytocin and bonding, for example). in non-western societies, children are often a central feature of the economy (assist in the home, work in the fields, collect berries, et cetera). and american culture has a dominant ideology that presumes that parenthood is the norm and that reaffirms the worthiness of being a parent.
or maybe we all just secretly like spit-up. 
I just wanted to have sex, it was my wife’s idea to have kids. But it evens out in the end, see we both have kids now and neither one of us has sex. That’s fair, I guess, sort of. But if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing, except for the sex part of course, there’d be more of that.
Well, I had two kids, mainly because I wanted to play God and see what the magic-DNA-fairy would turn out.
And I love to threaten the older one with ‘Hah! See if I care, I can always make another one of you’.
I think it’s cool that you can make people.
The fact that my cats may live as long as 10 years scares the living shit out of me. That means I will be responsible for another being’s life for maybe as long as 10 (or even 15) years.
I have decided that when I’m no longer terrified of a long term committment to a cat, I will have children. If that day never comes, than no children.
I echo the sentiments of amazement over parents who do a good job (or even a half-way decent job) of raising fairly normal, productive children. I think I’m far too selfish, self-centered, flighty, and irresponsible to ever have children, honestly.
Cranky, as soon as he’s outta those diapers, you can send him my way! (This is pretty much the criterion for my sister’s kids as well, as I am horrible at changing diapers; the last time I tried, my niece reached down and gleefully grabbed a handful of her own poo before I could whisk the old diaper away, and before I knew it, it was smeared all over the room, including a little dollop on my earlobe. My sister walked in and was shocked–to this day she swears I did it on purpose so that I’d never be asked to change another diaper.)
And Morgainelf, you sound like a great mama! Your kid(s) can come to Camp Auntie Em, too. Be sure and send plenty of PJs with them, as we’ll be wearing them to the movies and such.
Since I average about 30 posts a YEAR, my responses aren’t colored by knowing anything about the OP. It’s a fair question, certainly on the SDMB anyway.
In marriage #1, we were both quite young and very against having kids. In retrospect, we were both pretty immature as well. I married again at age 36 and was a first-time dad at 38. I was a second-and-last-time dad at 43. My son was born three days before 9/11, but I don’t regret bringing him into this world: given humankind’s history of misery and suffering, if our forebears had believed that (and either didn’t fuck or had some means of birth control) none of us would be here today. When people tell you that there’s nothing like kids, that it’s hard to describe until/unless you do it, and that your entire life will change, they’re right. I wouldn’t trade my kids for anything in the world.
Moral of the story: in many (but not all) people, something seems to “kick in” when a child is born. How can you tell if you would be one of those people whose maternal/paternal instinct won’t kick in? Beats the shit out of me (unless you’re obviously a sociopath or something…).