Why Do People Have Children?

Why Do People Have Kids?

I have always wondered why people choose to have children.

There is nothing rational about purposely raising one's own stress level, or having less discretionary income, or doing things your normally would not do in life. The answer most people often give for having kids is having a bloodline continuation, joy, or happiness. But why are children so expressly associated with happiness? Just because one has a child does, not automatically make everyone happy. Some people get rather depressed by having children, case in point (post partum depression).

All reasons for having kids are personal. In fact the times in which people had children out of necessity are non-existent in the modern civilized world. If you had a large farm that needed workers, okay that makes some rational sense. But these days if your an accountant, and she is a chef, you have no large amount of fields that need to be tilled, or livestock taken care of, so why? Continuation of a bloodline? I've driven around America from NYC, to California, to the deep south...some bloodlines should not be allowed to continue. We know for a fact not all persons whom are parents are good parents. We know some folks that have children should probably not have had children. I do not think many folks would have objected to Hitler's folks getting an abortion, but of course hindsight is 20/20.

Is there any way to logically arrive at an objective reason for having children?