And you don't actually need a child at all to experience those things.

Except for hope, but I'll quiet down on the hope-bashing today.

Darn right. "intelligence" may or may not roughly breed true, but what the inheritor does with it is in any case not usefully predictable. Popping out kids as a basis for changing the world for the better has nearly always been a thin rationalization at best, hypocrisy at worst.

My wife and I did NOT have kids, though able. Instead, we have done our best to pass on our rational conclusions, methods and ethics to the children of others. Having one's thoughts and values 'inherited' in that way is perhaps more satisfying in a sense, and certainly doesn't make the problem worse.

"yi zi er shi-- swap children, then eat"... good link, L, and it's not fiction. It's what a policy of outbreeding the resources can lead to, and the world is currently heading for famines that will make the historic chinese ones look like fad diets. The fact that "children are our future" doesn't mean "more is better".

I would be quite sad now if I'd had kids, for their sakes.

Exactly. I was saying my goodbyes to the folks at the post office, where I'd mailed so many packages out over the years while my business was going OK, and one Indian lady there said, "But don't you have children, to help you?" And I said "No, no children, American children don't help their parents." and that is the actual truth in this country. Everything's a cost-benefit analysis. It's probably one of the most atomized societies ever to exist. So, the idea of having kids to take care of you in your old age or in hard times has no meaning in the US.