What's the point in having children?

[SvennoJ]

One more reason I don't think I have seen yet in this thread, is to give your parents grand children. For most parents that is the greatest reward you can give them for raising you. It will also bring you closer together as a family and meet other parents. It takes a village to raise a child.

Of course if your parents didn't really care about you, you can either break the cycle and do better or find other ways to be happy. Having parents that care are a great help when raising kids, it's a lot harder when you're on your own.

As for worrying about over population, population is actually declining in western countries. Simply having kids a few years later is enough to reduce the population.