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Notes -
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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