Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
My children are grown. I have no regrets. I am proud of how they turned out. I do sometimes experience disappointment in them, too, but mostly in a self-recriminating way. "If I had only known then what I know now I could have been a better parent"--true, but I would not know what I know now if I had not been a clumsy parent then. I do not know where the quote comes from, but I find it to be accurate:
So I watched JD Vance's "cat ladies" tempest in a teapot with some amusement. It was not well put, but I think he was broadly correct. People who don't raise children never really become adults, in the sense of being robustly full members of a community that existed before them, and will persist when they are gone. They simply do not, and likely cannot, value the world in the same way. Now, probably some people who do raise children also never really become adults in this sense; there are no guarantees! But people who never raise children, whether by chance or by choice, are different from people who raise children. There is a shift in perspective that cannot be replicated through mere exposure to the relevant ideas. One must have the experience.
The difference is perhaps best captured in Bertrand Russell's "knowledge by description" and "knowledge by acquaintance." L.A. Paul explores this with specific reference to parenting in Transformative Experience. The book is not long but even so it is a bit padded. The basic thesis is this: you can't really know what it's like to be a parent, until you have kids. (Paul also uses the example of becoming a vampire!) Consequently, you can't decide to have kids based on what you think having kids would be like for the person who you currently are, because the experience will transform you into a different kind of person, and you can't know in advance whether having kids will be good for that person. Rather, you can only ask yourself whether you value the possibility of transformation.
I have seen such transformations play out in ways large and small. Parents of disabled children are routinely subjected to harrowing difficulties, and yet they are often some of the most humble, charitable, pro-social people you could ever wish to meet. It would be strange indeed if nature only gave disabilities to the children of people who were already amazingly virtuous! So I can only conclude that while these people would not have chosen to have a disabled child, it is nevertheless a worthwhile transformation to court.
More specifically, why do you lean toward "yes?" Why does your wife lean toward "no?" In most cultures, your wife will bear most of the opportunity costs, but it sounds from your post like her objection is really just "want a bigger house." How big? I don't mean this as a personal attack, but I would descriptively call that a "shallow" objection; it's a 100% solvable problem if you want it enough to prioritize it over other things. Plus, babies don't care how big your house is. This, basically.
All of your concerns meet similar responses. What if your kids are lazy? Well--what if they're not? What if your kids are crazy? Well--what if they're not? The risks of parenting are real, but so are the rewards. All you can do is decide whether you are ready and willing to undertake the transformation (with the additional caveat that the transformation will be different if you wait--the best time for a woman to have babies is in her 20s, maybe 30s, and hesitation will only increase the eventuality of the risks with which you are specifically concerned).
There are probably some specific situations in which people should choose to not raise children, but those people should also understand that there are some perspectives and emotions that this really will close off to them. This does not make the childless less human, but it does give them less exposure to the totality of the human experience. Some people who have children "fail" to grow in these ways, or through no fault of their own (or perhaps fault of their own!) produce regrettable offspring. There is no cosmic scale on which you can weigh your possible futures in advance! All you and your wife can decide is whether you collectively regard the project of raising children as intrinsically worthy, regardless of how it turns out. In my experience, it definitely is! But of course: your mileage may vary.
I don't think we should be assigned disabled children to improve our character. I think parents of disabled kids are probaly nice for the same reason fat people or disabled people often are. They have to be or no one will help them.
I'm pro kids, but not for improving your own character. I know plenty of selfish terrible parents. It doesn't see to cure any character defects that I've ever witnessed, I've certainly seen adding kids to the picture make it worse.
Nor do I, nor does anyone I know.
And while that is bad in various ways, it is possible to notice the tradeoffs, no?
You seem to have missed all the parts of my comment where I already accounted for that. It's true: having kids won't necessarily make you a better person! But having children, even healthy ones, has a way of confronting us with our own limitations, and expanding our circle of concern beyond our own immediate desires in a very non-hypothetical way. If you have never seen a selfish woman become "selfish" on behalf of her children instead, or a disinterested father become a doting father at the first sight of his child, then you simply can't have observed very many parents in your life. It's a cliche for a reason: having kids really can change you.
But as I said several times: it's not guaranteed, which is why the choice to become a parent has to be grounded in the possibility and pursuit of a worthwhile transformation, rather than in the certainty of any particular [whatever].
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