Because I want to.
I've always wanted kids, biological or adopted. I see EA as a question of "how can we use our resources effectively to do good... for the resources we choose to allocate to doing good".
Most people draw the line somewhere between what they want for themselves and what they want for the world. I believe kids will enrich my life and can be done in a way which still enables me to do a lot of good.
The following list is not ordered.
All this being said: the first three months after childbirth is literally torture for whoever is waking up at night to feed the baby. Plus there is a strong possibility that I and/or my baby would have died if I hadn't given birth in a high quality hospital (we had a prolapsed cord and then a lot of maternal hemorrhaging). So despite all the nice stuff written above, I don't think it's an easy decision to make.
Thanks for sharing!
I don't think anyone denies this. People say that having children will reduce effectiveness, not completely obliterate it.
This is nice to hear. How do you think your work productivity now compares to what it would have been if you hadn't had children?
Also, how confident are you that this will continue? I'm not sure how the difficulty of being a parent is supposed to vary with the age of child, but it seems at least plausible that things can get even more difficult in the years when children are functioning human beings with their own flaws and troubles!
As a parent with older kids, I'll point out that the demands differ, but (when there isn't COVID,) you get back to having "work time" when kids are away, without the sleep deprivation that happens in the first year. (Mostly. There are still the occasional night waking, but these are sporadic and get fairly rare, instead of being chronic and making you horrible sleep deprived overall.) And yes, kids will dominate your free time while they are young, but in an enjoyable way (Mostly enjoyable. How much depends on the kids, and the age.)
And as they get older, the problems become much more like ones that you'd talk to a (younger, less mature) friend about, rather than being physical issues. Also, around the same time, they start to get more interesting to talk to, and you can teach them cool things, which is awesome. (And yes, I'm sure this changes again once they get to be teenagers. But I'm taking things a year at a time.)
Thanks for sharing!