Note: This post captures my best effort to convey my current perspective on having a kid, and how it affects my mind, perspective, and life at this time. June – 2024

The goal for 2023 was to get a baby in the oven.  It is a strange feeling to do the act knowing that you’re doing it with intention to actually reproduce, and not just the joy of having sex that usually accommodates the action.

When I was in my 20’s, I was confident I didn’t want to have kids or get married.  I didn’t see the point.  But I knew approximately every 4 years my mindset on most things has changed, and ever since I was 14 or so, and this has held true even today as a 35 year old.  As a result, I hold feelings, perspectives, and opinions less strongly than I did before, and always keep an open mind to the possibility of my mind changing on anything.

It is good to do it not only to prevent becoming stubborn, but to be open to change, something most people should strive to do more.  And as we age, we obviously change as we have more perspective on life, and more experience of existence.

Before getting pregnant, the entire focus was on how do we maximize the chances of it happening. The average couple today takes 6-12 months.  As soon as the pregnancy tests positive, our focus quickly shifted from trying to make it happen to then ensuring that it goes as smooth as possible to produce healthy offspring.  It is interesting how quickly that shift happens.  One step at a time.

As things progress, and you can hear the heartbeat, it changes you in profound ways.  The best way I can describe it is the actualization of something.  It’s one thing to imagine a friend dying, it’s another to actually experience it.  It’s one thing to imagine flying somewhere on vacation and having a life changing experience, it’s another to actual experience it.  Many things in life are like this, the actualization changes you in ways that can’t be actualized without experiencing the event itself.

Having a kid is the most profound of any of these experiences, and one that we’re supposed to have.  It changes you in overwhelmingly positive ways.  It is surreal to first hear the heart beat of life you’re creating that is 50% you, living inside of your partners body.  It is your partner, and your partner is it.  It then develops eyes, lungs, a heart, and countless blood vessels, all at the direction of the DNA, the mother just has to eat and the miracle of life works its magic.  It is hard to fathom how experiencing this changes you.

It is generally true that if we live within our evolutionary instincts, life is better.  Our bodies and minds evolved for billions of years to work in precise ways.  For example:

  • Health – you have to be active and outside or else your body weakens, you feel terrible, and you become frail.
  • Sleep – sleep with the sun and you live longer, have more energy, and are more aware of the experience of life as more neurons fire.
  • Social – we’re social primates and need friends, if you’re lonely it slowly kills you and you feel horrible.
  • Diet – we need real whole foods or we get diseases that kill us.
  • Sunlight – simply being outside in nature is vital to the mind and the body, and without it, you feel worse.

Mating and reproduction are also perhaps half of that pie of the core evolutionary requirements.  Not reproducing is like eating an unhealthy diet, neglecting your health, rarely getting sunlight, or sleeping poorly, you’re living way outside the bounds of what we evolved to do.  How this affects our mind can’t be overstated – for both men and women.  I don’t think as humans we can understand how much it affects us if we don’t do it, but you can certainly feel the positive effect if you do.

You can speculate and imagine, but without the actualization, you’ll never know.  The effect is profound and life changing.

If you observe pretty much all life on earth, animals are born, spend virtually all of their life eating and mating, then reproducing before dying.  The eating is a massive part of their lives, as is the mating part of life, as well as the raising the young.  The raising the young is vital not only to the survival of the species, but what it teaches the elders about their own lives.  Humans are no different.  We’re born, our parents spend 18 years preparing us for life, and then we venture on our own, to then reproduce.  That experience is core to who we are humans at the most fundamental level.  And for all of human history, it was normal to have 5+ children, without question.

But in just the last 50 years or so, something radical has changed.  Birth rates are rapidly declining and fertility rates are falling off a cliff in all of the western, developed world.  Why is a very interesting and important question to ponder, but for a later article.

If we don’t reproduce, we have a gaping hole in our existence, one that is impossible to over exaggerate, and it is only an illusion to fill it.  Throughout history, if you didn’t reproduce, it was because you had some deformation that prevented the possibility, or you were unlucky to find a partner to reproduce with – both which were incredibly rare.  In modern day, most are choosing not to reproduce for a number of reasons.  It is a radical and abrupt shift.

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Is it that our society has shifted from about the group and others to about us? The 2 most common arguments I hear about not wanting children is the cost and the time.  Cost is a fair point, though the same people who often mention cost are the same people who fly for vacations regularly or have the luxury to purchase a new car or house.  Cost was rarely preventative in history because family was so important – it was the most important thing – more important than anything else.  Today though, prices are higher and we expect more luxury in our western lives.  In some sense, we take for granted how normalized luxury has become – even the poorest in the US on welfare still have TVs, air conditioning, and other luxuries that kings didn’t have 100 years ago.  It is up to each couple to decide what is best for them and their budget, and what their priorities are.

The second point about freedom is certainly valid, but also selfish in that it implies my time is best spent doing something else.  In fact, your time is likely best spent doing nothing more than having a child.  Again, the basis of our existence isn’t just about creating life for the next generation, it is about discovering ourselves, learning through our children’s eyes, having responsibility, and the actualization of it all that changes us in remarkable ways, remarkably positive ways.  I’d venture to say that having kids would make almost everyone better off, contrary to what they already currently believe.

The third part is that we’re social primates.  Social proof is a real and valid phenomena. If we see a lot of people watching something, looking at something, or going to a place, we therefore are more likely to go and do the same thing.  On the same token, if most people are not having kids, the default for us is to not have kids.  It goes against the grain and going against the group is hard.  Since we’re social primates, we evolved to do what the group does.  If the group is misled, so are we.

Society often behaves in ways that I disagree with, and likely you as well.  Overcoming the group instinct in modern day and really thinking independently about what is important and what you want to do is vital.  I think society has this point quite wrong, and most people would be far better off with children.  Society would be better off.

There is also a strong connotation that life is over when you have a kid in the sense that all the stuff you did before you can’t do anymore because you have a family. In fact, the opposite is true, life just begins. As mentioned, there is so much to learn about yourself, life, your family, your friends, and just experience from being a parent.  Again, it is core to being human as food is to us.  We need it, it is part of us, and without out, there is something missing deeply.

People also think they will lose freedom.  Sure, you give up some of your time to raise your child.  With that said, I’m confident I’ll still do whatever activities I desire, whether that be traveling, exploring the ocean, hiking, socializing with friends, or building a business.  Priorities do shift but that is the point. Make priorities or know what is most important in life. And also on that point, I feel more motivated than ever to build and create  It’s all about discovering that balance, seeing how you feel, and setting your priorities.  I have no idea what the future holds, but what I’m saying here is my experience on this journey so far.

It’s now normal to not have children.  As a result, I look around and notice we’re almost alone on this journey as very few of the people we know have any children.  Is it overcoming that tough decision of going against the crowd? Is it being ill-informed about the importance of family on our livelihood and becoming a flourishing human? Or is it that we’ve become such a selfish modern society that we don’t care about creating and shaping the next generation? I’m not sure, all I can do is convey thoughts and make the decisions that I think are best for answering the question of how to live a good life.

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Like most hard decisions in life, there is doubt, and uncertainty.  Most avoid making tough decisions because they are tough.  But, we have this life and we can’t wait around forever.  Think independently about it. Not an easy choice but a necessary choice. You never know the feeling until you try.  All I can convey from this moment is what it has been like for me and why I went about it.

Every hour throughout the day, I have a clear realization that “wow, I’m going to be a dad and Kemji is going to be a mom”.  It is a big responsibility, but a responsibility that I’m ready, confident and eager to learn, and excited to experience.  In my 20’s I was a seeker of ultimate freedom – freedom to do anything I wanted anytime I wanted.

But as I’ve grown into my mid-30’s, I desire responsibility.  Responsibility is not only deeply rewarding, it creates balance, and responsibility also often means you’re serving beyond yourself.  My motivation to wake up each day and build, create, share, and learn is largely driven by the impact I want to have on the people around me.  Many people in life now rely on me, I need to ensure I keep the foundation stable and don’t mess it up.  I want to use the position I’m in, seize the opportunity fully, and have the greatest impact I can doing it.  The world needs more people doing this, now more than ever.

Life is a gift. It is precious, and it is truly a miracle to exist at all.  I’m grateful to my parents for creating me, and if I can be any part of giving that to someone else, I will.

I will say, it has been way more exciting than expected and gives us something profound to look forward to.  It comes up many times a day, and is the last thing you think about when you sleep. It’s truly remarkable to think about, creating life.

As humans we evolved to create.  As men especially, I think we evolved to create and provide, and if we don’t, we lack it.  Life is the ultimate form of creating – having a child.  It changes you in ways that can’t be put into words.

The easiest way to see the perspective now and describe it is that as humans, we evolved to reproduce.  It is at the deepest core of life as we know it.  If you don’t reproduce and go through the act of creating, see the baby grow, be born, and raise them, it leaves a gaping hole in your existence and leaves a fundamental stage of the development of life missing.

Adoption

Many people decide to adopt, which is certainly a net positive to life.  And likely you can love a child you adopt as much as yours, but love is a hard thing to measure in quantity.  I will say that the experience of conception, hearing the first heartbeat, watching it grow in the stomach and interacting with it from the outside changes you in profound ways.  Ways that I’ve tried my best to describe here.  I’ll have to write a post after he is born to convey how that changes me, but so far the first 8 months since conception has been overwhelmingly exciting, positive, and it’s hard to imagine life without doing it.  I wish everyone the best, nonetheless, on our journey of creating life and raising the young in the future of humanity that lives on long after us.


In addition to what I wrote above, these are the big changes I’ve noticed/felt, explaining in words to the best of my ability:

  • I’ve learned so much about myself, my relationship to Kemji, and my relationship to simply, life.
  • I’ve noticed and balanced emotions better – When you have an argument with your partner normally, it can get heated, it is human nature.  When your wife is now pregnant and having extreme increases in hCG, estrogen and pro-estrogen, it means the man needs to be calm and empathize with those emotions that she can’t help.  As a result, the man improves his ability to listen, communicate, and react.  I’ve certainly noticed this in myself, which has been massively positive.
  • The feeling of seeing life come to be can’t be exaggerated and is difficult to describe.  Hearing the heart beat, see a human grow, and react to your voice is remarkable, magical.  And knowing that it was created by 50% you brings sheer joy to life.
  • Thoughts leading up to having a kid – doubt, uncertainty, unknowns, responsibility, but a confidence that it can be done and is part of the journey of life.  Now the thoughts are that it is becoming very real in the next month, and it gives me such a feeling of responsibility outside of myself and the need to take better care of myself and become a leader to my son.
  • The future – legacy, meaning, purpose, responsibility, intention, direction – all of the above a child brings.  More than anything, it is a massive part of life to simply look forward to, a journey and a mission, and a new sense of being to perform at your highest level.
  • Others – I hasn’t considered this but it has now become apparent not only the joy our son has created for us so far, but also the joy he’s brought to my mom and brothers, but to Kemji’s mom and family.  Having a kid isn’t just about you, there is nothing more an older parent would rather become than a grandma or grandpa. It’s core to our existence as elders to see the new generation flourishing.  I hope when I’m older I get to experience the same.

This experience also helps create balance, because you have intention to improve your health, your fitness, your diet, and your mind.  This reason to improve is important, because you want to do the best you can.

Each morning we wake up and listen to him.  Each night we say goodnight to him. We deeply look forward to seeing him grow and welcome him to life.

Kemji is now 37 weeks pregnant, so in about 1-3 weeks Andrew will come into the world.  The experience you go through as a human to create life is something that can’t be explained, it can only be felt, but this is my best effort at putting into words.  It is at the deepest core of the human existence, and it changes in in ways that are profound and indescribable, as I’ve repeated here.  Again, only 8 months into the journey and I already feel it, a feeling where it is hard to imagine otherwise.  It’s like seeing the light on the other side, I had no idea what I was getting myself into but it has been a joy.

While our son Andrew hasn’t yet been born, the 8 months so far creating him has been nothing shy of magical.  I’m convinced at this point that most people would be far better off, far more fulfilled, and life would be far more exciting by having children, contrary to what the masses think and imagine.  At the end of the day, to each is their own given their own perspective, understanding, and expectation of what life should be.  When I ask the question “how to live a good life?”, no doubt having a family has to be one of the top suggestions.

This purpose of this post was to do my best to share my current views, and advocate more people to join the journey.  Life has been an absolutely blast so far, I’ve been incredibly fortunate and blessed to be able to do what I’ve done in life so far, and I’m eternally grateful for it.  At the same time, I feel like life is just beginning – I haven’t even experienced what it is like to be a parent, to grow old, and still have an incredible amount to learn, as I discover every time I talk to my elders.  While I’m new to the whole parenting arena, it is way more exciting than expected, and it has made life better in every way.  I’m very much looking forward to the experience.

What changed, of course, is that I had kids. Something I dreaded turned out to be wonderful. – Paul Graham

If you’d like to read Paul Graham’s excellent piece on Having Kids, check it out here.

Here’s to a great 2024 and beyond. All the best.

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Patrick

Web Developer
I write for fun, I travel for fun, and I enjoy learning. I hate sugar-coating things. Understand the world in reality, not by dogma. Question everything.

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