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Omid comments on Open thread, May 17-31 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Right now I think I do not want to have children. I'm 24. But I'm worried that if I plan not to have children, I'll change my mind later. How will I know when my preferences are stable enough to plan around? At what age should I expect to not change my mind about wanting children?
I distinctly remember telling a friend when I was 24 that I didn't think I would have children and didn't particularly want any. She laughed at me and told me I couldn't fight biology. I sneeringly informed her that I was master of my own existence and wouldn't be pushed around by evolution.
By age 27 I had a child, which, by that time, I wanted very much.
I would say the stability of your preferences depends very much on your reasons for not wanting children. I find that abstract reasons such as "the world is overpopulated and I don't want to contribute to that" or "my professional life would suffer for a few years" are very easily shrugged off, when it comes down to it. By far the most important factor is how your spouse and/or romantic partner feels about the issue, assuming you have or want one of those. So if you're really serious, be sure to choose a mate who also doesn't want kids, and be sure that they are just as firm in their convictions as you are.
Thanks for input. Did you start wanting the child before or after it was conceived?
Is there any information available about the latest age at which people are likely to change from not wanting children to wanting them?
Why is this a problem? Freedom of choice is a good thing to have. If you really want to commit future-you to the choices that now-you wants to make, there is a variety of surgical procedures that are moderately hard to impossible to reverse. But again, why do you want to give up future choice?
Future is uncertain. Your preferences will never be cast in stone and that's a good thing. Whatever you plans are, they should take into account the fact that things will (not may) change.
I'm worried about getting a woman pregnant, and I'm not sure reversible birth control is effective enough.
I don't think LW is a good source for male birth-control methods :-) but Google is your friend. You can start by looking at RISUG.
Except sometimes directly.
Use nicotine patches and porn to change your sexual preferences?
Irreversible birth control + frozen sperm?
My suggestion: find people who have young children right now, or are about to. Volunteer to help them out if they ever need any assistance, and see if you can observe what the daily routine with children is actually like. (If you had younger siblings, you may already know a bit of this, but seeing it from the view of someone who's actually responsible for them is going to be quite different.) If you find good reasons for why you'd absolutely hate the experience, then that's some evidence for your preferences not changing (though having your own child is quite different from helping with another person's child), and if you realize that it doesn't seem that bad after all, then your preferences have already shifted and you'll know it.