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I don’t want to have a children because I myself am a manchild, and having a child would likely make both me and the child miserable (also my wife doesn't want children and it would probably make her miserable).
I get very excited about new things. I like new games, new stories, new ideas I have for a story I want to write or my own game I want to make. If it's long enough rarely follow through. If I don't have some sort of external thing forcing me to do a thing I don't want to do, like a teacher or a boss with expectations, then I won't. And even if I do I will get bored and slog through. My best writing I have ever done are a series of short stories where I sat down, I wrote it out in like 3 hours, and then finished it and walked away. Because I did it while it was new and fresh and exciting and then it was complete before the novelty had a chance to wear off.
I spend an ungodly amount of time in front of my computer playing games or browsing the internet. It's actually hurting my career and I am working on getting over that so I can man up and be a responsible adult. My entire life, my two dreams were to never grow up, and to fall in love and get married. I assumed that maybe someday I might want kids, but not any time soon.
I never grew up. I am happy playing my games and hanging out with my wife. I am mildly resentful of reality for requiring me to do real adult things instead of just getting everything for free, but understand on an intellectual and economic level that I have to do that, so I'll suck it up and be as much of an adult as reality forces upon me.
But I'm not going to voluntarily be more of an adult than I am forced to. Theoretically, I understand that having children is good and necessary for the propagation of the human race. I respect and admire people who do it well. I am pronatalist in theory, and I think that intelligent and kind people similar to me ought to have more kids in particular in order to spread our genes and culture. However, I don't think I have it in me. I suspect that if I had kids it would inspire me to work harder and do more to care for them. But I suspect that I would get bored and tired and resentful. I imagine a future me coming home from work and doing a bunch of chores and then wanting to play video games with my remaining free time and oh hey the kid is bothering me about something stupid and I'm just tired and bored and dismiss them. I imagine a kid who's really into sports or hiking or something that I actively dislike and take a bunch of time. I imagine a better version of me who sucks it up and pretends to care about their hobbies but I don't actually and they can tell because I'm not good at pretending.
The more tired and bored I am the meaner I get. I'm normally chill and pleasant or goofy and silly, but if things start to annoy me or I get bored I kind of shut down and gradually become more and more selfish until I can escape and get back to my safe space at home. My wife's siblings are all starting to have kids, and I hope to be a fun and exciting Uncle who can do stuff and play games with them for a few hours and then go home and unwind and recharge my introvert energy. There's orders of magnitude of difference between being around kids several times a month and being around them hours every day. There is a nonzero probability that I would manage and my whole world would change the way it supposedly does and I would be a good parent. But I think there's a >50% chance that I would not. I don't think I'm ready for it, and I don't feel any more ready than I did 10 years ago. Maybe I'll change my mind in another 10-20 years, but unless AI manages to solve aging then it'll be too late by then.
I think the world we live in is fantastic and wonderful. Politics is shit, but it's always been shit. Technology is amazing, AI is going to make so much cool stuff as long as they can manage to avoid having it kill everyone. If you want kids, have kids. But only if you have the resolve to do what it takes to be a good parent. I don't think I do, and I don't want to roll those dice on an unsuspecting kid who doesn't deserve me at my worst.
I have nothing to offer, other than that reading this made me feel sad.
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Is there any Motteposter who doesn't feel like this? It's just that when you have a demanding upper-middle-class career and kids "ungodly" is 90 minutes a day, whereas when you are single in grad school it's 4+ hours a day.
Procrastinators of the world, u
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