The Art of Decision-Making
> Before having children, you may enjoy clubbing, skydiving, and LSD; you might find fulfillment in careerism, travel, cooking, or CrossFit; you may simply relish your freedom to do what you want. Having children will deprive you of these joys. And yet, as a parent, you may not miss them. You may actually prefer changing diapers, wrangling onesies, and watching “Frozen.” These activities may sound like torture to the childless version of yourself, but the parental version may find them illuminated by love, and so redeemed. You may end up becoming a different person—a parent. The problem is that you can’t really know, in advance, what “being a parent” is like. For Paul, there’s something thrilling about this quandary. Why should today’s values determine tomorrow’s?<p>I hate arguments like this, PARTICULARLY when the topic is becoming a parent.  Sure, you might become a new person and love being a parent far more than missing the aspects of life you sacrificed to be there.  OR you might hate it - I have at least one friend that told me "I love my daughter, but I hate being a parent" in a terribly gut-wrenching way.  To say you don't know - that you CAN'T know - what it's like to be a parent without being one doesn't mean you should just shrug and give it a try.  Ditto the same rationale for other arguments - there are many things you can't know if you'll like until you try it, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to decide if you will in advance.<p>Of course you'll never know if you'll love being a parent, you won't know how it can change you, and EVERY parent has moments of frustrations that are not the same as regretting having a child/children.  But if you become one, there's at least two lives that can really really suffer if you hate it, so it's worth dedicating some effort to thinking about in advance.<p>Finding parenthood worthwhile is a very very common state for humanity (for good reason!) and most of us have benefited from that.  But we shouldn't assume that it will just work out that way, for ourselves or for others.