Opinion

13 parents share the best reasons to have children

“People love to tell expecting or new parents that their lives are going to be miserable,” Reason magazine senior editor Elizabeth Nolan Brown tweeted in March. A reckoning with the hardest parts of motherhood, she argued, has become a dire overcorrection. “Parenting needs better PR.”

Indeed it does. And when I asked, these 12 other parents were eager to share what they’d tell anyone considering having kids. Their families come in all sizes, and these moms and dads have a wide range of political perspectives. But they all agree that parenting is sublime — even, and maybe especially, when the job involves illness, loss or an out-of-the-blue creepy question about construction-site skeletons.