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Carinthium comments on Happiness and Children - Less Wrong
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For me having children feels "closer to being a terminal value" than happiness does. So saying "you should have Children because it makes you happy" sounds like "You should have a meaningful job and a loving relationship with your wife because it decreases your chances of having a heart attack by 8%!" or "You should avoid murdering people because it looks bad on your resume".
I can believe that that's true for a significant portion of humanity- that they would choose to have children even knowing it would be bad for their happiness in the long run. It isn't true for me, though, and there are large numbers of people for whom it isn't (or else childlessness in the West wouldn't have risen so much).
I think there are too many confounding factors to make that connection.
Having children fundamentally changes you, mentally. What may not have been a priority before, suddenly becomes a terminal value in itself once you bond with a little one. This is definitely something hard-wired into brains by evolution--ask any parent about their experience!
I think you're probably right about this (not based on first-hand experience of having a child, mind - I haven't), but I can't quite see what it's doing here. Is this meant to be some sort of objection to the comment you're replying to? It isn't obviously in tension with it.
Just explaining why it is certainly true for the vast majority of people who actually have had children.