Having kids is:

• a claim that your net effect on the world is positive (so theirs probably will be too)
• a claim that, regardless of your effect on the world, you are worthy to be here (so they will be too)
• a prediction that the world won’t end in the next ~100 years, or at least not badly
• an all-in bet on your marriage/partnership
• weirder than any drugs, I bet
• a statement that the human species is good and worth preserving
• a statement about … something something population ethics - like, it’s better to have 7,000,000,001 happy-ish people than 7,000,000,000 happy-ish people
• good for a man’s career! sigh
• a trade-off of potentiality for meaning
• a trade-off of adult interests for the chance to reëxperience kid interests
• a ticket out of one community and a ticket into another
• a turn of the rudder towards “excruciatingly meaningful” scylla
• hard to actually do! with lots of very real trauma possibilities along the way! you’ve gotta practice only worrying about things that actually come at you, not all potential threats
• an experience with the highest proportion of people saying “it’s worth it” in addition to “it’s so difficult”, rivaling perhaps only marriage
• probably the hardest thing I’ll ever do
• the kind of “cold pool” I’m ready to jump into