[Sylvanfan]

Well I don't have kids, and its quite unlikely I ever will. Why is that? Well a few factors play into the equation. Parenting is something that takes a lot of time and energy. I'm not so sure that I'd be up to the challenge. I mean I like to be able to get my 7 and a half to 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep every night. If I don't I'm far less usefull the next day, and I don't like that. It also requires a lot of patience and understanding. I'm better than I used to be with that type of thing, but still not patient enough to deal with the way kids would test me. Than theres my wife who I think would have a real tough time dealing with the whole parenting thing, but I'd need pages to describe that.

Than of course theres the whole financial end of it. Unlike my parents before me I had to borrow extensively to buy my house. By the time I pay my mortgage, property taxes and utilities I'm out $2000 a month. So as a lowly draftsman in this world that sucks up about 60% of my monthly take home pay right there just to have a place to live. I mean am I going to downgrade to a condo after I have kids? I'd be left with very little to feed a family and do much of anything. I wouldn't want my kids growing up in a day care so only one of us could work. So I'd either have to spend 5 years going back to school to get a decent job, and lose out in a lot of income in the process, or have to work a tonne of hours after the kids came along to make ends meet. Which of course takes away my time and would result in me never seeing the kids which would lead to a bad relationship with my wife and the kids in the end. I mean there are a lot of benefits to the process and no doubt people who don't have kids will miss out on a lot of great things. But if your personality type isn't right, than having kids can be worse than not having them. I know damn well that I have the wrong type of personality for it.

I think having kids isn't something that people should be doing out of obligation. It requires a lot of thought, discussion and planning. If it's something people absolutely want than great, they'll probably make good parents. But I'll never be pressured into it out of obligation. It's not like the world is so sparsely populated that it's in danger of running out of people. If I don't have any children I'm sure I'll pay enough taxes in the process to allow a couple of young people from another part of the world thats over populated and has less oppurtuntiy for it's people to immigrate to Canada and take my place in the work force.