Cornelis—from my evolutionary psychologist perspective, a big difference between becoming a parent and becoming a super-generous donor, is that we’ve evolved for 70 million years to be good mammalian mothers, and for about 3 million years to be good, high-investing, hominid fathers. So there are many evolved adaptations for parenting just waiting to get switched on after kids arrive, that make parenting feel generally rewarding. (Likewise, kids evolved to be cute, charming, and interesting to their parents, so it’s a coevolutionary interaction.)
The basic problem is that with contraception, we’re not in a situation where kids just start popping out after we start falling in love and having sex, so many young people don’t have the experience of feeling their parental adaptations get activated automatically by kids arriving. So there were quite limited selection pressures to ‘want kids’ before kids arrived.
Cornelis—from my evolutionary psychologist perspective, a big difference between becoming a parent and becoming a super-generous donor, is that we’ve evolved for 70 million years to be good mammalian mothers, and for about 3 million years to be good, high-investing, hominid fathers. So there are many evolved adaptations for parenting just waiting to get switched on after kids arrive, that make parenting feel generally rewarding. (Likewise, kids evolved to be cute, charming, and interesting to their parents, so it’s a coevolutionary interaction.)
The basic problem is that with contraception, we’re not in a situation where kids just start popping out after we start falling in love and having sex, so many young people don’t have the experience of feeling their parental adaptations get activated automatically by kids arriving. So there were quite limited selection pressures to ‘want kids’ before kids arrived.