Yes, it was a conscious choice for me. I’d always believed that becoming a parent was important to me, even when I was too young to really understand what that meant.<p>Parenting also aligns toward an important personal belief of mine that things that make you happy often make you feel fulfilled or content, and things that make you fulfilled or content don’t necessarily make you feel happy. Of the two, I believe feeling fulfilled and content is more important. Parenting doesn’t always make you happy (although there are moments of profound joy that I doubt happen elsewhere), but it certainly seems to often make people feel fulfilled and content.<p>Child rearing/parenthood can be a difficult thing to describe, its full of conflicting descriptions. The negative ones are easier to see from the outside- the exhaustion of new parents, the amount of time it takes, watching a kid have a meltdown.<p>The benefits are profound, but harder to describe if you haven’t experienced them. The best I can say is that I haven’t felt ennui since my first child was born, I haven’t felt bored (except on business travel), when I feel saddened or upset about something being around my kids pulls me out of faster then even my spouse, and being around kids unlocks a part of my self that I’d forgotten about since I was a kid myself.<p>I even suspect that being a parent has made me better at my job- the disruption and fresh perspective managing kids actually seems to have spurred my creativity, I’ve become a more patient and better teacher/coach to others, and I’ve become a better public speaker after deliberately practicing voice control while reading to my kids every night. I don’t want to oversell the job benefits (I believe the overall data suggests a net benefit for men and a net deficit for women. In our case, both of us have been successful) but that has been my experience.<p>Also, agree with dr_dshiv- the fire does get lit like nothing else. It's amazing what operating under constraints gets you to do.<p>A final thought- it is rare to find someone with kids who thinks their kids aren't worth it. I can hardly think of anyone in my upper-middle class existence. The one exception I can think of is the parent who expects thier children to be clones of themselves, to be easy, or cannot accept tradeoffs. If you go into parenthood wide eyed and open hearted you'll be, perhaps not necessarily happy, but content and fulfilled.
Really glad I knocked up my gf (now wife), because it would have been really hard to do it deliberately.<p>I recommend parenthood generally. I know a number of people who have waited too long now. It is hard, either way I guess. We have 3 now. Many tradeoffs, to be clear, but babies bring baby magic. Besides, the fire gets lit under your ass in ways you never imagined!<p>Child raising is easier than marriage, imo.