I first wanted to comment on 5, because I had previously read that having children reduces happiness. Interestingly, when searching a link (because I couldn't remember where I had read it), I found this source (http://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2012-013.pdf) that corrobates your specific expectation: children lead to higher happiness for older, better educated parents.

(This might seem obviously stupid to someone who's thought about the issue more in-depth, but if so there's no better place for it than the Stupid Questions Thread, is there?):

and I don't know what evidence I could reasonably expect for or against #3.

I think some tangential evidence could be gleaned, as long as it's understood as a very noisy signal, from what other humans in your society consider as signals of social involvement and productivity. Namely, how well your daughter is doing at school, how engaged she gets with her peers, her results in tests, etc. These things are known, or at least thought, to be correlated with social 'success' and 'benefit'.

Basically, if your daughter is raising the averages or other scores that comprise the yardsticks of teachers and other institutions, then this is information correlated with what others consider being beneficial to society later in life. (the exact details of the correlation, including its direction, depend on the specific environment she lives in)

I'd like that personal painting experience if it went well and I have experienced glimpses of it with some kids not of my own.

Unfortunately it's not clear to me at all how much success of the project could be of my own doing, and I've seen enough examples of when things go horribly wrong despite of optimally seeming conditions. I wonder what kinds of studies could be done on the subject of parenting skills and parental satisfaction on the results of upbringing that aren't hugely biased.

ETA: my five year old step brother just barged into my room (holiday at my folks). "You always get new knowledge in this room.", he said, and I was compelled to pour that little vessel full again.

There is certainly an inner drive, more pronounced in women, because species without such a drive don't make it though natural selection.

Really? The reproductive urge in humans seems to be more centered on a desire for sex rather than on a desire for children. And, in most animals, this is sufficient; sex leads directly to reproduction without the brain having to take an active role after the exchange of genetic material takes place.

Humans, oddly enough, seem to have evolved adaptations for ensuring that people have unplanned pregnancies in spite of their big brains. Human females don't have an obvious estrus cycle, their fertile periods are often unpredictable, and each individual act of copulation has a relatively low chance of causing a pregnancy. As a result, humans are often willing to have sex when they don't want children and end up having them anyway.

Being rational doesn't necessarily change your values.

True, but it might make you weigh them very differently if you understand how biased your expectations are. I'm interested if people make some rational predictions about how happy having children will make them for example.

I already have a pretty good idea about how people in general make these decisions, hence the specific question.

I think you mean "humans"?

Nope, not planning to go Spock. I also edited the original question now for clarification.

having your own child allows you more control over the circumstances

I'd like to see some evidence how much control I can have. You're describing just the best case scenario, but having a child can also be incredibly exhausting if things go wrong.

Personally, I'd recommend a dog or cat to this person.

Children as match makers when you're too old to stand on your feet? ;)

I've always been curious to see the response of someone with this view to the question:

What if you knew, as much as any things about the events of the world are known, that there will be circumstances in X years that make it impossible for any child you conceive to possibly take care of you when you are older?

In such a hypothetical, is the executive drive to have children still present, still being enforced by the programming of Azathoth, merely disconnected from the original trigger that made you specifically have this drive? Or does the desire go away? Or something else, maybe something I haven't thought of (I hope it is!)?

Not to me obviously. Not necessarily to my parents either, but I think they might have been quite lucky in addition to being good parents.

Doesn't money take care of you when old too? As a side note, if I were old, dying and in a poor enough condition that I couldn't look after myself, I'd rather sign off than make other people take care of me because I can't imagine that being an enjoyable experience.