I am having a kid this year. I also have worked for MIRI for about four years, and CFAR before that; I’m in the cluster that is approximately the doomiest of doom-forecasters.
I think some people have already mostly said what I want to say, in their own answers, but I wanted to add the strength of my … money-where-my-mouth-is example?
Separately, some people have already pushed back on this, but I want to push back much harder:
but the joy of childhood seems inextricable from a sense of hope for the future
This is a super false-to-the-experience-of-most-children sentiment; it might’ve been true for you and it’s probably true for nonzero children, but it is extremely wrong as a statement about children in general. I don’t know what perspective it emerged from, but I’m fighting back … feeling pretty offended, on behalf of young children (and I dunno how much I’m succeeding). It is very very very wrong, and it has harmful social effects, up to (for example) possibly being the swing vote that causes an entire person not to exist, when otherwise it would’ve seemed good to you to allow them to exist, but also including smaller things like delegitimizing the everyday experience of a child as being somehow fundamentally impoverished, lesser or less important than that of an adult.
A valid concern about whether-or-not-to-have-kids that I do think is timeline-adjacent is something like “there will be a lot of time/energy/attention/happiness consumed prior to it ‘paying off’ in a sufficient sense for both you and the kid.”
Like, parents tend to dip pretty hard into a place that’s sustainable for a year or three, but would be unsustainable/bad if it were “this is just what life is like for me now, forever.”
So I think “I have a lot of weight on us being two years away from disaster” is a pretty solid argument for “okay, well, let’s not spend those two years pregnant or with an infant.”
I am having a kid this year. I also have worked for MIRI for about four years, and CFAR before that; I’m in the cluster that is approximately the doomiest of doom-forecasters.
I think some people have already mostly said what I want to say, in their own answers, but I wanted to add the strength of my … money-where-my-mouth-is example?
Separately, some people have already pushed back on this, but I want to push back much harder:
This is a super false-to-the-experience-of-most-children sentiment; it might’ve been true for you and it’s probably true for nonzero children, but it is extremely wrong as a statement about children in general. I don’t know what perspective it emerged from, but I’m fighting back … feeling pretty offended, on behalf of young children (and I dunno how much I’m succeeding). It is very very very wrong, and it has harmful social effects, up to (for example) possibly being the swing vote that causes an entire person not to exist, when otherwise it would’ve seemed good to you to allow them to exist, but also including smaller things like delegitimizing the everyday experience of a child as being somehow fundamentally impoverished, lesser or less important than that of an adult.
“NO,” in other words, to your last question.
A valid concern about whether-or-not-to-have-kids that I do think is timeline-adjacent is something like “there will be a lot of time/energy/attention/happiness consumed prior to it ‘paying off’ in a sufficient sense for both you and the kid.”
Like, parents tend to dip pretty hard into a place that’s sustainable for a year or three, but would be unsustainable/bad if it were “this is just what life is like for me now, forever.”
So I think “I have a lot of weight on us being two years away from disaster” is a pretty solid argument for “okay, well, let’s not spend those two years pregnant or with an infant.”