6 ms·

Child rearing is a possible solution—it is our evolutionary “purpose” to reproduce, after all, and most people in the developed world today aren’t doing it.

by jaco6 2y ago

dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
>Child rearing is a possible solution—it is our evolutionary “purpose” to reproduce, after all, and most people in the developed world today aren’t doing it. I doubt it, that's because to most people it does not feel purposeful, it's a chore. Most people who say it's purposeful are generally the most vocal ones, and I suspect the minority.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  Whatever purpose you decide you have, do you think it will come without chores?
- chowchowchow 2y ago
  Beg the question that a purpose can’t involve chores or unpleasantries much?
- dismalaf 2y ago
  As someone with a young child, it definitely feels purposeful. Also the opposite of a chore, it's lots of fun and what I look forward to after a day of work. And I'm someone who, for most of my adult life, thought I'd be childfree...
  - dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
    Well I've heard people say this. What about the ones that regret it? I know of one personal acquaintance of mine who confided that he regrets having his kid. He would under normal social circumstances not mention it, for obvious reasons. The problem is that it's a one-way street if you decide to have a child. Now if only one had an option to 'trial-run-before-one-commits' that would be ideal. I suspect (but not sure) that most people will still opt not to have them.
    - warkdarrior 2y ago
      You can always give away the kid, the whole adoption industry is here to help. In some countries you can even sell your kids, but it is frowned upon in many Western societies. Finally, fostering is the trial run you are looking for.
      - h4ch1 2y ago
        Wish I had the rep to downvote a comment, > you can always give away the kid a child is not a goddamn pet or a commodity that you can just give away > In some countries you can even sell your kids, but it is frowned upon in many Western societies A common country where that happens is Pakistan/Afghanistan where young boys are sold to be prostitutes. I am GLAD it's frowned upon as it should be everywhere in the modern world. > fostering is the trial run you are looking for Again, children are not pets, fostering is the same as raising a biological child, if you're doing it any different and treating the child differently, in my opinion, it's tantamount to child abuse. Frankly this comment lacks any humanity, and hopefully you choose not to have or foster children.
        selimthegrim 2y ago
        The other thing that happens is that they (both genders) are sold into begging rings
    - dismalaf 2y ago
      Well, I do think children is maybe idealized a little. I'm probably pretty happy because I went into it having heard all of the negatives, decided I was ok with it and came out pleasantly surprised. Also too many people do it because of societal or family pressure. Also some people will just always be unhappy. The grass is always greener syndrome.
    - nradov 2y ago
      Traditionally people would get a trial run by babysitting for relatives. Now that's becoming less common because families are smaller and more geographically distributed.
- beowulfey 2y ago
  I would guess the only ones who do not feel it is their purpose are those for whom it happened accidentally. Anyone who chose to have kids most likely did so with purposeful intent.
- jaco6 2y ago
  [dead]
- Aunche 2y ago
  Chores are a great way to make you feel a sense of purpose. You can directly observe the fruits of your labor. Your kitchen is shinier after a deep clean. Your baby is no longer crying of hunger after a feeding. The same can't be said for scrolling through TikTok for hours or even a lot of employment. Sure your livelihood may depend on moving items from big boxes into little boxes, but it's hard to feel any sort of accomplishment for that.
  - dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
    There is a difference between considering a task a chore i.e a drudgerous task and 2) doing a chore (a mundane task, which may/may not be drudgerous). Same word but different connotations.
- JKCalhoun 2y ago
  Dogs are a chore. Cats too. Oh well.
tokioyoyo 2y ago
A bit off-topic, but it’s interesting how this became the de-facto answer to any question related to “meaning of life” in the last 2-3 years in HN/tech circles. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but it’s a bit weird. Like I’m sure everyone knows that? If a person isn’t having a child in their 30s, they either can’t because of multitude of different reasons, or they decided they don’t want to. Disclaimer: I’m as pro-kid as you can get, just haven’t met a partner who would be on the same page as me yet. When I was talking about it with my friends, our guess is, people with kids are getting worried. If others aren’t having kids, then their kids might suffer big time in a long run, thus the renewed pressure to keep suggesting the idea to others. Obviously this doesn’t relate to you, just weird how it started in the last few years.
- nullstyle 2y ago
  Yes, I've noticed it too. The most blaring example was DHH going on a "Just have some kids you'll be happier than you've ever been!" rant in some zoom talk ostensibly about coding that he gave in the past year. it's gross and condescending and not someone speaking as a public figure should be advocating for. IMO, We need better parents, not necessarily more parents, and if you're having kids because you're sad with life then IMO you should reconsider the ramifications of having a kid and then fucking up the parenting process. It's incredibly selfish
- JasserInicide 2y ago
  Like many online sentiments I think it's reactionary, specifically to the stereotype of the liberal atheist DINK milliennial couple.
  - ANewFormation 2y ago
    In my case this is probably partly true, but more because I think many people are actively deluding themselves and trying to reject their own mortality with fantasies of digitally transferring ones conscience, bio/medical immortality a la Kurzweil, singularity stuff, and so on endlessly. But if people look at these things objectively, there is essentially 0% chance of any of this happening, let alone in our lifetimes or anytime remotely near it. And when you look at the people spreading/making such predictions the timelines always coincidentally come just before their expected end of life. When you accept the fact that you, and near to every other person alive today, will be dead in 80 years (and mostly far sooner) it rather significantly changes your perspective on life. Want to transfer your consciousness? Not gonna happen, but having a few children is at least a reasonable second.
mbrumlow 2y ago
A thought. What if we have judged the healthiest of a society on the wrong metrics. And the right one is birth rate? We might say things are bad for a society if it’s too dangerous or not enough food so the birth rate goes to near zero and as a result it dies. How is a society that has people being too busy or occupied with other task that neglects reproducing a better society than the latter? Obvious too much of a birth rate is bad, but too little could also be a sign of an unhealthy environment.
- cj 2y ago
  Basically what you’re saying is that the healthiest society is the one whose population is growing the fastest? I would think life expectancy would be a better measure of a healthy vs unhealthy environment.
  - kaashif 2y ago
    You're talking about individual health. Regardless of what specifically makes a society healthy, a necessary condition is that it doesn't die out. A society with a 120 year life expectancy and 0 birth rate isn't healthy. A society with 20 life expectancy and 6 birth rate is unhealthy but for different reasons.
    - cj 2y ago
      It’s pretty easy to find high birth rate countries with low life expectancy. While it’s much more difficult to find countries with high life expectancy with low birth rates (assuming we define “low” as any birth rate lower than necessary for the society to not die out) I agree with you the 2 need to be balanced, but I assume any society with high life expectancy would also have a sustainable birth rate.
      - mbrumlow 2y ago
        Are Japan and Korea not both high life expectancy but low birth rate. Along with a by other developed countries birth rates dropping while life expectancy is increasing?
marcusverus 2y ago
This is the best answer. From a strictly rational perspective, parenthood makes little sense. The negatives are obvious and intimidating, while the benefits (which are not rational but instinctual) are less clear. Happily, oxytocin is a helluva drug. It will rearrange your universe in the course of an hour, such that all of its substance revolves around a splotchy, squinty little ape. I highly recommend it.
- Apocryphon 2y ago
  And then the sleepless nights of screaming will twist it up again. Postpartum depression can affect any gender when it comes to sleep deprivation.
dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
> jaco6 : Maybe the minority who want to reproduce will be paid to reproduce for everyone else in the future? This latter comment of yours was down voted by idiots to the point where it's dead, so I could not respond to it directly. Anyway, specifics aside, it is actually a good idea - for a variety of reasons.
- gosub100 2y ago
  I like the converse: pay certain people to NOT reproduce.
  - dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
    That's also great.
dragonwriter 2y ago
> Child rearing For what purpose? > it is our evolutionary “purpose” to reproduce Yes evolution selects for having children survive to reproduce, but that’s not a purpose, that’s just “that which continues, continues”. > and most people in the developed world today aren’t doing it. Plenty of species have evolved such that when they sufficiently saturafe their environment and resource carrying capacity, reproduction rates drop through behavior changes based on various signals.
soulofmischief 2y ago
Doesn't this seem like a tautological purpose? Our purpose is to create a new generation of beings who question their own purpose?
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  It's not tautological because it's objectively wrong. There is no biological purpose. We are just a multitude of chemical reactions falling down the entropy slope in a slightly odd way. "Purpose" is a concept entirely made up out of whole cloth for hairless apes who accidentally invented language and that allowed them to do a lot of thinking outside the confines of their biological processes. We are perfectly free to CHOOSE reproduction as a "purpose", but nothing about biology actually cares. If you don't reproduce, oh well, something else will take that spot in the ecosystem.
- everybodyknows 2y ago
  That's the most plausible gloss I've heard. The new generation must be capable of framing a question at least as sophisticated as its parents can if there's to be hope of progress in the world. Otherwise we're on the way to "Idiocracy".
hollerith 2y ago
>most people in the developed world today aren’t doing it. Untrue: e.g., in the US, "Among women and men aged 40–49 in 2015–2019, 84.3% of women had given birth and 76.5% of men had fathered a child." https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr179.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr179.pdf
mancerayder 2y ago
The replies are bit harsh. It is a solution to meaningless of life. I am reminded constantly by some of my friends. But it's also a problem for some. For example, it means moving out of expensive cities, it means worrying about making lots of money (if you live in the U.S.), it means child care is thousands a month, it means health care is thousands a month. It means you have to be responsible and not drink every day. It means potentially not sleeping for a year. Personally, seeing the stress of my workmates, and how they became more dependent on their jobs, on the shit of the jobs, and how now they're more competitive on the job, and worried... I'd personally choose to write that off. But I know people who found meaning through child-rearing, as you say!

Child rearing is a possible solution—it is our evolutionary “purpose” to reproduce, after all, and most people in the developed world today aren’t doing it.

by jaco6 2y ago

Child rearing is a possible solution—it is our evolutionary “purpose” to reproduce, after all, and most people in the developed world today aren’t doing it.

dennis_jeeves2 2y ago

>Child rearing is a possible solution—it is our evolutionary “purpose” to reproduce, after all, and most people in the developed world today aren’t doing it. I doubt it, that's because to most people it does not feel purposeful, it's a chore. Most people who say it's purposeful are generally the most vocal ones, and I suspect the minority.

marcosdumay 2y ago
Whatever purpose you decide you have, do you think it will come without chores?
chowchowchow 2y ago
Beg the question that a purpose can’t involve chores or unpleasantries much?
dismalaf 2y ago
As someone with a young child, it definitely feels purposeful. Also the opposite of a chore, it's lots of fun and what I look forward to after a day of work. And I'm someone who, for most of my adult life, thought I'd be childfree...
- dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
  Well I've heard people say this. What about the ones that regret it? I know of one personal acquaintance of mine who confided that he regrets having his kid. He would under normal social circumstances not mention it, for obvious reasons. The problem is that it's a one-way street if you decide to have a child. Now if only one had an option to 'trial-run-before-one-commits' that would be ideal. I suspect (but not sure) that most people will still opt not to have them.
  - warkdarrior 2y ago
    You can always give away the kid, the whole adoption industry is here to help. In some countries you can even sell your kids, but it is frowned upon in many Western societies. Finally, fostering is the trial run you are looking for.
    - h4ch1 2y ago
      Wish I had the rep to downvote a comment, > you can always give away the kid a child is not a goddamn pet or a commodity that you can just give away > In some countries you can even sell your kids, but it is frowned upon in many Western societies A common country where that happens is Pakistan/Afghanistan where young boys are sold to be prostitutes. I am GLAD it's frowned upon as it should be everywhere in the modern world. > fostering is the trial run you are looking for Again, children are not pets, fostering is the same as raising a biological child, if you're doing it any different and treating the child differently, in my opinion, it's tantamount to child abuse. Frankly this comment lacks any humanity, and hopefully you choose not to have or foster children.
      - selimthegrim 2y ago
        The other thing that happens is that they (both genders) are sold into begging rings
  - dismalaf 2y ago
    Well, I do think children is maybe idealized a little. I'm probably pretty happy because I went into it having heard all of the negatives, decided I was ok with it and came out pleasantly surprised. Also too many people do it because of societal or family pressure. Also some people will just always be unhappy. The grass is always greener syndrome.
  - nradov 2y ago
    Traditionally people would get a trial run by babysitting for relatives. Now that's becoming less common because families are smaller and more geographically distributed.
beowulfey 2y ago
I would guess the only ones who do not feel it is their purpose are those for whom it happened accidentally. Anyone who chose to have kids most likely did so with purposeful intent.
jaco6 2y ago
[dead]
Aunche 2y ago
Chores are a great way to make you feel a sense of purpose. You can directly observe the fruits of your labor. Your kitchen is shinier after a deep clean. Your baby is no longer crying of hunger after a feeding. The same can't be said for scrolling through TikTok for hours or even a lot of employment. Sure your livelihood may depend on moving items from big boxes into little boxes, but it's hard to feel any sort of accomplishment for that.
- dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
  There is a difference between considering a task a chore i.e a drudgerous task and 2) doing a chore (a mundane task, which may/may not be drudgerous). Same word but different connotations.
JKCalhoun 2y ago
Dogs are a chore. Cats too. Oh well.

tokioyoyo 2y ago

A bit off-topic, but it’s interesting how this became the de-facto answer to any question related to “meaning of life” in the last 2-3 years in HN/tech circles. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but it’s a bit weird. Like I’m sure everyone knows that? If a person isn’t having a child in their 30s, they either can’t because of multitude of different reasons, or they decided they don’t want to. Disclaimer: I’m as pro-kid as you can get, just haven’t met a partner who would be on the same page as me yet. When I was talking about it with my friends, our guess is, people with kids are getting worried. If others aren’t having kids, then their kids might suffer big time in a long run, thus the renewed pressure to keep suggesting the idea to others. Obviously this doesn’t relate to you, just weird how it started in the last few years.

nullstyle 2y ago
Yes, I've noticed it too. The most blaring example was DHH going on a "Just have some kids you'll be happier than you've ever been!" rant in some zoom talk ostensibly about coding that he gave in the past year. it's gross and condescending and not someone speaking as a public figure should be advocating for. IMO, We need better parents, not necessarily more parents, and if you're having kids because you're sad with life then IMO you should reconsider the ramifications of having a kid and then fucking up the parenting process. It's incredibly selfish
JasserInicide 2y ago
Like many online sentiments I think it's reactionary, specifically to the stereotype of the liberal atheist DINK milliennial couple.
- ANewFormation 2y ago
  In my case this is probably partly true, but more because I think many people are actively deluding themselves and trying to reject their own mortality with fantasies of digitally transferring ones conscience, bio/medical immortality a la Kurzweil, singularity stuff, and so on endlessly. But if people look at these things objectively, there is essentially 0% chance of any of this happening, let alone in our lifetimes or anytime remotely near it. And when you look at the people spreading/making such predictions the timelines always coincidentally come just before their expected end of life. When you accept the fact that you, and near to every other person alive today, will be dead in 80 years (and mostly far sooner) it rather significantly changes your perspective on life. Want to transfer your consciousness? Not gonna happen, but having a few children is at least a reasonable second.

mbrumlow 2y ago

A thought. What if we have judged the healthiest of a society on the wrong metrics. And the right one is birth rate? We might say things are bad for a society if it’s too dangerous or not enough food so the birth rate goes to near zero and as a result it dies. How is a society that has people being too busy or occupied with other task that neglects reproducing a better society than the latter? Obvious too much of a birth rate is bad, but too little could also be a sign of an unhealthy environment.

cj 2y ago
Basically what you’re saying is that the healthiest society is the one whose population is growing the fastest? I would think life expectancy would be a better measure of a healthy vs unhealthy environment.
- kaashif 2y ago
  You're talking about individual health. Regardless of what specifically makes a society healthy, a necessary condition is that it doesn't die out. A society with a 120 year life expectancy and 0 birth rate isn't healthy. A society with 20 life expectancy and 6 birth rate is unhealthy but for different reasons.
  - cj 2y ago
    It’s pretty easy to find high birth rate countries with low life expectancy. While it’s much more difficult to find countries with high life expectancy with low birth rates (assuming we define “low” as any birth rate lower than necessary for the society to not die out) I agree with you the 2 need to be balanced, but I assume any society with high life expectancy would also have a sustainable birth rate.
    - mbrumlow 2y ago
      Are Japan and Korea not both high life expectancy but low birth rate. Along with a by other developed countries birth rates dropping while life expectancy is increasing?

marcusverus 2y ago

This is the best answer. From a strictly rational perspective, parenthood makes little sense. The negatives are obvious and intimidating, while the benefits (which are not rational but instinctual) are less clear. Happily, oxytocin is a helluva drug. It will rearrange your universe in the course of an hour, such that all of its substance revolves around a splotchy, squinty little ape. I highly recommend it.

Apocryphon 2y ago
And then the sleepless nights of screaming will twist it up again. Postpartum depression can affect any gender when it comes to sleep deprivation.

dennis_jeeves2 2y ago

> jaco6 : Maybe the minority who want to reproduce will be paid to reproduce for everyone else in the future? This latter comment of yours was down voted by idiots to the point where it's dead, so I could not respond to it directly. Anyway, specifics aside, it is actually a good idea - for a variety of reasons.

gosub100 2y ago
I like the converse: pay certain people to NOT reproduce.
- dennis_jeeves2 2y ago
  That's also great.

dragonwriter 2y ago

> Child rearing For what purpose? > it is our evolutionary “purpose” to reproduce Yes evolution selects for having children survive to reproduce, but that’s not a purpose, that’s just “that which continues, continues”. > and most people in the developed world today aren’t doing it. Plenty of species have evolved such that when they sufficiently saturafe their environment and resource carrying capacity, reproduction rates drop through behavior changes based on various signals.

soulofmischief 2y ago

Doesn't this seem like a tautological purpose? Our purpose is to create a new generation of beings who question their own purpose?

mrguyorama 2y ago
It's not tautological because it's objectively wrong. There is no biological purpose. We are just a multitude of chemical reactions falling down the entropy slope in a slightly odd way. "Purpose" is a concept entirely made up out of whole cloth for hairless apes who accidentally invented language and that allowed them to do a lot of thinking outside the confines of their biological processes. We are perfectly free to CHOOSE reproduction as a "purpose", but nothing about biology actually cares. If you don't reproduce, oh well, something else will take that spot in the ecosystem.
everybodyknows 2y ago
That's the most plausible gloss I've heard. The new generation must be capable of framing a question at least as sophisticated as its parents can if there's to be hope of progress in the world. Otherwise we're on the way to "Idiocracy".

hollerith 2y ago

>most people in the developed world today aren’t doing it. Untrue: e.g., in the US, "Among women and men aged 40–49 in 2015–2019, 84.3% of women had given birth and 76.5% of men had fathered a child." https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr179.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr179.pdf

mancerayder 2y ago

The replies are bit harsh. It is a solution to meaningless of life. I am reminded constantly by some of my friends. But it's also a problem for some. For example, it means moving out of expensive cities, it means worrying about making lots of money (if you live in the U.S.), it means child care is thousands a month, it means health care is thousands a month. It means you have to be responsible and not drink every day. It means potentially not sleeping for a year. Personally, seeing the stress of my workmates, and how they became more dependent on their jobs, on the shit of the jobs, and how now they're more competitive on the job, and worried... I'd personally choose to write that off. But I know people who found meaning through child-rearing, as you say!