Wow! That was amazing! You’re children are very lucky to have a father like you. Glad you enjoyed your father’s day so much. Thanks for sharing! : )

Amen to that Leo! I love being a father too. It’s given me a whole new appreciation of my father as well.

This kind of talk always strikes me as very superficial.

Can and want don’t imply should, that is, normative (moral) judegement is very different from a judgement on the facts of life.

I can’t help but think that you created a new life simply because you wanted (oh, the joy of parenthood) and you could, a true cost/benefit analysis devoid of any moral implication. Go tell your kids they could have born with terrible diseases, that the world is overpopulated, that they will die. They maybe don’t know that, but I guess you do and that makes you responsible for you choices.

Remember that the first noble truth of buddhism is that life is suffering.

peace

This is actually my first time celebrating father’s day. Just get promoted exactly 20 days ago :)

I don’t know about others, but I’m enjoying the 20 days just looking at my daughter sleeping and crying. If these 20 days can already bring me such amazing feeling of happiness, I can’t wait to experience my whole life being a father.

Happy father’s day Leo..

You are a blessed man, Leo, and you write like you know it. I’m glad, and I wish you all the best as you live your life with your wonderful family.

My own heart was pierced with a grief when my daughter came into the world, because she died the day she was born. New grief was laid on top of that wound, for my wife and I have been unable to have other children, and just found out for sure that we never will.

Father’s Day isn’t so happy for me, but I gain the most joy out of it that I can when I see happy Father’s recognizing their blessings and rejoicing in them with their kids.

God bless you and yours, Leo. I’m envious.

Such a great day to recognize all fathers out there. I was so excited to see many local papers and card stores recognizing gay fathers this year. It is nice to see we have moved on to just celebrating fatherhood in any shape or form.

Wonderful thoughts. Thanks for sharing. Happy Father’s Day!

To “myself” above: you’re free to suffer if you want but don’t expect everyone to adapt the same masochistic philia.

Happy fathers day Leo and all the other parents reading this :)

Happy Father’s Day, Leo! From what I’ve read, it looks like an awesome day.

A very heartfelt post. I guess being a parent really makes the littlest thing count and all the more amazing. ^__^

That’s a pretty big family
I hope I have a big family
I am going t0 propose to my girlfriend this year
Im excitedIm building my financial blog as a second income for us, you inspire me
Do you go to church?I thought u were buddhist from all the posts you do?

I found your page looking pictures for minimalism houses. Sin ce then, I been reading almost all the articles related to frugal life, some of them more than once!. And they have helped me a lot.

I love your family picture. I come from a family of 6 children too. I am the only girl. I would like to tell your kids that is really nice have a lot brothers (or sisters). You get a lot help from a lot people!

I use to ask myself how my dad and mom did to growth up 6 kids, now I realized they were really frugal!!
Happy father day. Keep blogging, you may not have idea how much you may be helping others. Greeting from El Salvador. C.A.

As I write, my twelve-year old step-daughter is planning an elaborate Father’s Day Scavenger Hunt. The two of us have bonded for the past nine years planning Father’s Day celebrations. Later today, we will take more jokes and a chocolate cheesecake to my Dad’s house. I love my Dad; he gave me poetry and the invitation to question authority. Now he thinks there are some downsides to that particular parenting practice :o). Yet several of my dearest friends have lived their lives in fear of their fathers. There is horror and terror in the world “Myself” so why not celebrate the good…

I do wonder about the origins of Father’s Day. Recently, it seems to be a response to having a celebration of Mothers. In the U.S., the roots of the Mother’s Day is often attributed to a peace activist Julia Ward Howe who tried to promote a “Mother’s Day for Peace” after the US Civil War.

Cheers to all the peaceful Fathers! Thank you Leo for your word pictures.

Wow what a great post and so timely for me. I have just found out last week that I’m going to be a father for the first time. Both my wife and I are over the moon as we have been trying for about a year. Now I just can’t wait for the day I can enjoy my such happiness myself.

(from Portugal)
Hi Leo,
I love to see this kind of family united and happy. Unfortunatly in the “1rt world” that’s unusual to see a big family like yours. Here in Europe, the medium is 1,5 son per couple.

I’ve two daugters and the oldest one has 14 yo, and had indentified your conversation about your oldest, with mine.

Thnks for sharing your hapinness.
In Europe father’s day is in 19Mar, St Joseph day.

Thanks for sharing your outstanding clearness of lifes view.

Um abraço de Portugal

Paulo Silva de Pombal (that’s my name)
:-)

Congrats on Father’s day Leo.

You have a very beautiful family! Your kids and your wife are very lucky, and it’s awesome that you realize that you’re lucky too :) happy father’s day!

The biggest blessing of being a father is to receive love and compassion from his children by their expressions and words. My older daughter talks to me with a grace and intelligence of an adult as Leo has mentioned about his daughter. It gives me a great deal of pride to nurture a child that has all the goodness that one needs to embark upon life of her own when time comes.

Shilpan

Lovely post! I write as a mother to say that it’s a blessing to have a 2 parents. A father’s energy is different from the way a mother parents and both are important in order to raise well-balanced children.

My husband and I separated when my son Sebastian was 5 years old. But we still continued share our parenting - and he has turned into a fine young man.

Congratulations on being a good father as well as a successful internet entrepreneur, Leo!

Personally, I think that being a good parent is much more important than being successful in one’s career. The effects last a lot longer…

Hi Leo,

My day started with your lovely post.
Feels good man.

Happy Father’s Day to you.

~ Vamsi.

I received my first Fathers Day card this morning.
My wife and I have been married for 2 years and 5 months.
We have a beautiful baby girl of 10 months.

It was one of the most sentimental and heartfelt cards I have ever received!
Just like Leo, I too, am in love with being a father — and husband!

I hope you had a great Father’s Day. Sure sounds like you did.

I think it could be pretty cool to be a dad, but I’m going to wait a while. I’m 24 right now, but I’m thinking maybe in my 30’s I’ll start having a child or two. I guess this decision also depends on the wants of my future wife. :)

Six children? Um, wow. I’m glad you’re happy, but it’s not REMOTELY environmentally sustainable for everyone to have six children. I’m sure you’re aware of that and recognize it, but a little note along those lines would have been a nice addition to your post.

@Rachel, who wrote: “it’s not REMOTELY environmentally sustainable for everyone to have six children.”

We can sustain our current population easily. We make enough food. We have enough supplies.

Our problem is distribution. There are some with too much and many with not enough. If it could be distributed correctly, we’d all be fine. If we could get our excess of food in America to countries where people are starving, we’d all be fine.

Also, Leo isn’t recommending that everyone have six children. I think any more than two would drive me insane.

@myself, I think you might be reading into Buddhism and taking it to a nihilistic end. I know I came away from reading The Buddhist Bible probably feeling the same way. I have since found other texts that were more helpful and can read said book in a new light.

But I want you to consider Tibet, they have been primarily Buddhists for hundreds of years and if they all felt the same way as you there wouldn’t be any Tibetans.

I wouldn’t deny it being a selfish reason to have kids, but you also hope that you can instill in them something that will help make the world a better place for everyone. So, I want to be clear your view is valid but it doesn’t seem to be one that even Buddhists would adhere too.

While I think six kids would drive me crazy, I think that having Leo for their father is a good thing. Those six could grow up to help many people who may be ’suffering’. You just never know.

OK, so Father’s Day was yesterday, but I hope everyone had a wonderful day!

I don’t understand the argument that it is selfish to have children. Sounds silly to me. What’s next?

Is it selfish for me to eat something because other people are hungry? Is it selfish for me to wash my hair when some people are bald? Is it selfish for me to brush my teeth?

America and most other high-income countries are not responsible for the large human population. I learned about this in Sociology. The poor countries are the ones who have all the children, many of which unfortunately don’t live to adulthood.

to Jonathan B:
you completely missed the point.
We are morally responsible for the foreseeable results of our actions and inactions. Everybody who is alive will die, so if you are responsible
of creating a new life you are also responsible of its death. Yes, you are morally responsible for the death of your children. It sounds bad,
but it’s actually not a big deal, it’s a normal fact of life, it’s just that people don’t like to think about this. Now, as grown-ups we
should just accept our death as a normal fact of life. Having kids is a different thing, because you’re making such decision for someone
else. Now about the selfish part: it’s obvious that “to do something for another person” this other person has to exist. When you decide to
have a child, the child doesn’t exist yet, so you’re clearly not making such a choice for him/her. The other option left is “doing it for
the society”. Yes that’s a possibility, but it’s quite hard to justify in a overpopulated word where politicians are busy building bigger
fences around our countries, and it’s clearly not the argument of someone who starts every bullet point with “I love” and ends the post
with “I’m in love with being a father”. So if we remove the “doing for the child” and “doing it for the society” options we are left with
“doing it for yourself”.
The bottom line is that having kids implies deciding that someone else’s suffering is acceptable and is justified by our own interests and
desires.

To myself:
I understand your view — I just think it’s incorrect. I’ll now share more of mine. :-D

What’s the point of saying that we are responsible for our children’s death just because we created them? There’s no point. We might as well blame our ancient ancestors for our deaths too. We might as well blame the sun for giving Earth the life (and death!) it has. But why? There’s no point. We’re just rambling about something that doesn’t matter. We live and we die. So what?

You said, “When you decide to have a child, the child doesn’t exist yet.” They do exist. They are an egg and a sperm. When a human is made, it’s not coming out of thin air. It’s just changing form. You’re giving a new person a life. You can choose to see this in a negative and selfish way, but that’s a personal choice. It’s not objective.

You wrote, “The bottom line is that having kids implies deciding that someone else’s suffering is acceptable and is justified by our own interests and desires.”

Not really. Your thinking defeats itself because you’re basically implying that creating new people automatically hurts someone else. Tell me, if Leo decided to have one less kid, would that have saved the life of some poor child suffering from AIDS in Africa? The answer is no. And if anyone in this world should be having children, it should be good fathers like Leo. Instead, we have horny irresponsible teenagers running around having sex and creating unwanted babies. Those kids are the ones with the problem. If we should call anyone selfish with their children, it is them.

But how far do you want to take this selfish idea? Why are on you the computer reading a blog when you could be helping someone who is hungry? Why do you do anything nice for yourself? We’re all selfish. We all want what we want. We can’t escape that. Even your desire for people to be unselfish is a selfish desire, based on the moral way you see the world.

You WANT people to be unselfish. It’s all about what YOU want, isn’t it? How selfish. ;-)

What is your point?

“The bottom line is that having kids implies deciding that someone else’s suffering is acceptable and is justified by our own interests and desires.”

If this is your bottom line, your main point, then we have nothing more to discuss. The argument itself lacks any support or foundation to begin with. It would be like arguing with a child that the Earth is round. “But look, Jon, look at the ground. It’s flat!” “No, child, you’re just kidding yourself…”

I was just talking to my wife about something like this: My little girl has the bad habit of waking up anywhere from 3am to 6am and come can crawls into bed with us and I LOVE IT! I love having her sleep in my arms!

But you’re right that it’s work. It’s work and stress and heartache that pays off like nothing else can! Nothing will stress a father more than to see his baby in pain. My little boy was born with spina bifida and seeing him go through some of the surgeries he’s been through has been so tough. He’s a 3 months old now and it’s so amazing to see him smile and a recognize me and his mom and his big sis.

Keep up your work. It’s great to hear your sincerity on the things you write about.

I’m not an expert in Buddhism, but I always found this site to be a good basic guide: http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/Buddhism/footsteps.htm

Hopefully someone reading these comments finds it useful. And like Stephen simply pointed out, the Buddha says that suffering exists (no duh, right?), not that life IS suffering.

@myself,

You’re so cute with your slightly rude comments. :)

I did quote correctly. I said what I wanted to say, and I linked to a good web site to provide more information. There is no need to say everyone suffers at some point in their life because we all already know that. Like I said above, “no duh.”

myself wrote: “Remember that the first noble truth of buddhism is that life is suffering.”

myself wrote: “I never implied, thought or wrote that life is only suffering,”

You never implied, eh? Ooookay.

@JB

Yawn ….

thanks for the personal attacks.

Any actual rational arguments against my points?

ok, I see you don’t have any arguments.
I gladly accept your gracious defeat.

@observer,

Unfortunately, the way my mom teaches me things is by allowing me to look at her life and see what NOT to do. But anyway, heh, I haven’t heard that quote in a long time. I was just giving Leo something to laugh at when he gets back. ;)

I hope he doesn’t mind us cluttering up his comments. I apologize, if so.

Read your post last week and then my little 3 “and three quarter” girl said something to me yesterday that I could help but share.

During dinner she stopped eating, leaned to the side, gave me a little hug and a big smile and said “You are the best Daddy in life. Better than all the other Daddys. Here’s a medal for you” and then handed me an invisible medal.

Being a Daddy is tough and takes a lot of dedication, but you get out what you put in and little moments like that one make it all worthwhile. :)

@Stephen Smith:
Thanks for the constructive post.

As I stated many times, I never meant to offend, and I apologize if I did.

I still hold some very precise views, and those words you quoted were not “hastily proposed”. People are free to disagree of course, but they do a better service to themselves if they do so by using some careful reasoning, and don’t resort to personal insults.

Here’s my reasoning:

1) “life implies suffering”: this doesn’t mean that life is only suffering, but suffering clearly plays an important role in life. This makes scientific sense since pain is a trait favored by evolution since it improves the fitness of the gene carrying individual and makes it more likely that such individual escapes harm long enough to transmit the genes to future generations.
This is also common sense since inevitable experiences (death and birth, the two experiences common to everybody) are in general regarded as painful. This is also substantiated by Buddhism (see first noble truth), which I quoted because this blog has “Zen” in its title.

2) “we are morally responsible for the foreseeable results of our actions and inactions”: I regard this as a moral truism, and I don’t think much discussion is necessary.

3) (1) and (2) imply that deciding to create a new life carries the moral responsibility of the inevitable suffering of the newborn. Stated in strong terms: “you are morally responsible for the death of your children”. I understand many people have never thought about these facts this way, and they might not like the idea. They are of course entitled to their feelings.

4) “Reasons for having kids are selfish”. I see three broad classes of possibilities to justify having kids:
a) it’s good for the society
b) it’s good for the kids
c) it’s good for the parents
option (c) is the one I call “selfish”, it’s the one I see in most often when people talk about their reasons (e.g. see this post “I love”, “I love” , “I love” , “I love” , “I love”). I actually happen to believe that having kids is good for the parents. option (a) is clearly a possibility, it’s just very hard to use it to justify having six kids under the current social situations (but this point is debatable). Option (b) it’s a non-sense, since the child doesn’t exist before you decide to create him/her. That would be some “future causation”. Effects have to follow their causes, not the other way around.

5) from (3) I derive that having kids is deciding that our goals are sufficient to justify other people’s suffering, that is “having kids implies deciding that someone else’s suffering is acceptable and is justified by our own interests and desires”. Nothing hasted in my reasoning (but it might still be wrong of course).

For the people who don’t bother to actually think about what I’ve written and just like to disagree for the sake of it, I will also say: I’ve never made any moral statements about what is “good” and what is “bad”, I’ve never said that having kids is wrong, I’ve never said that being selfish is wrong … or any such things. Simple minds like simple answer, too bad life is instead very complex. Life can indeed be beautiful, and it can also be a nightmare, that’s a decision that the subject itself has to make. When you have a kid you make such a decision for him/her.

Bottom line: I still agree with the content of all the posts I’ve made so far, and find the original post a simple cost/benefit analysis (”the wonders of fatherhood far far far outweigh the troubles”) lacking any moral considerations, and disturbing in it’s self-centered “I love” approach.

Also, I’ve never made any statements about my personal life, and I will not respond to personal attacks. I write this simply because I enjoy it (and yes, that might selfish, and if you think that’s a valid objection you haven’t understood my posts). Relevant answers will make it more interesting, insults will not detract from it.

@myself,

Thanks for finally clarifying your argument a little bit. This is much more productive than your previous responses (or ignores) to my inquiries. You’re free to play “The Innocent Man Who Never Meant to Hurt Anyone” card (and I don’t doubt your sincerity), but I think calling (or strongly implying) that someone’s selfish IS a personal attack. I can just as easily say, “I never insulted you. I never said that being a jerk was a BAD thing.”

Bottom line: I think you know that your posts were offensive. And you apologized. And I apologize for fighting fire with fire, it was pointless.

Something interesting we should all note: when the word “selfish” is used in our society, it is automatically implied to be something bad. So even though you never said “selfish is bad,” it is automatically assumed in our language. Just like the word “pain” does not imply something good.

As for my response to your clarification, Stephen above shares similar thoughts to myself.

@Stephen:
thanks for intelligent comments. I agree in principle with most of what you said. Let me point out where I don’t:

“Other suffering, created by human intent, does have a moral quality”: yes, moral considerations are relevant only for human actions. As you said that candle is not evil if it burns you (and for the time being let’s not get into discussions about free will and moral responsibility).

Let me add that we are responsible for the suffering we cause if we know that our actions will result in somebody’s harm, even if we do not wish to cause pain (for example if pain is an unavoidable consequence the subject accepts for some “higher good”, for example, on the “nice” side a dentist removing a tooth of a willing and paying patient, on the “evil”, an inquisitor burning the heretic to free his soul).

“Yet we are also responsible for the unforeseen consequences”: I disagree. If somebody connects a bomb trigger to a door handle, and by opening the door you unwillingly and unknowingly cause the death of somebody, I don’t think that you are morally (or even legally) responsible for such result.

“if they actually kill said children”, of course we agree in the case of direct action, but I think that we disagree on the core issue of “unavoidable and undesired consequences”. I see this as a straightforward logical link.

if a) “life => suffering” and b) “person A => life” I derive “person A => suffering”. Since the suffering is a foreseeable consequence person A is morally responsible for it.

“these particular children are not suffering from malnutrition”: absolutely, they look like a happy family to me. Of course if you have a kid knowing that he/she will die of malnutrition you are even more responsible for his/her suffering.

“Humans are equipped to have children and should do so, in furtherance of the goal of perpetuating the species.”. I’m happy we mostly agree on the “suffering” part. I have to disagree with the statement here quoted. I adhere to Popper’s distinction between “norms” (your “should”) and “facts” (your “are”). Facts (we have the “biological imperative” to reproduce) can never be a moral justification for our choices. Evolution gave us the ability, both manual and intellectual, to commit horrible crimes, and our violent abilities derive from the “imperative” to defend ourselves, our clans, our nations (and the genes we carry). As the short formula goes “might is not right”. There is no escape. We are responsible for what we chose (of course I avoid discussing about what is “right” and what is not, that’s a totally different issue).

As I said, life can be beautiful, and life can be horrible. Most likely our life will have some of both components. This doesn’t mean that life is not worth living, but that’s a very personal conclusion that everybody should draw for themselves. Having kids is making such a decision for somebody else.

Life has butterflies and sunsets but also cancers and earthquakes. I find dishonest painting only half of the picture, and I find it offensive with regards to those that actually have less fortunate lives. Life is a (hopefully beautiful and meaningful) drama, and creating a life is a dramatic decision.

Looking forward to your reply.

@Jon.
yes, “selfish” has a negative connotation. I know. And I used it on purpose. I believe, from his post, that having six children because “he’s in love with being a father” is selfish, even if he loves them as much as his own life. Maybe he has deeper thoughts, but he hasn’t shown them on his “notes on fatherhood”. I find my criticism to be strong but not rude (content vs form), and it shouldn’t cause any problem to somebody who blogs about such personal things.

@Stephen
I assume you can foresee what is normal, and what is not normal you can’t foresee. Otherwise I don’t understand what you mean with “normal”.
So for an example of unforeseen consequences I picked something that is not “normal”. What is the problem?
So, do you agree that we are responsible only for the foreseeable consequences?

And by the way this seems to me to be the rationale behind the different legal treatment for “mentally impaired” people when they commit a crime. They could not properly foresee the results of their actions.

Uncle Leo,
I adore the blog. We always need fathers like you.

I love the stories of father-daughter breakfasts and father-daughter outings to the park, and wherever else is meaningful. Its wonderful to realize that each parent forms a priceless bond with their child. Words don’t do the feelings justice. You simply feel good and value now.