My family has a history of mental illness and it seems irresponsible to me to create a life that runs a not insignificant risk of developing the sorts of problems that I ' ve seen firsthand in family members . I ' ve been called selfish for this standpoint , which really blows my mind . As an aside , an ex used to always pester me to have kids . She ' d try to force me to hold other people ' s babies , guilt me , call me selfish , etc . We finally broke up over a different set of issues . Not long ago , I Facebook stalked her . She ' s married with two children , one of whom is autistic . One of her posts was about how draining it was raising an autistic child . Now , I genuinely feel for the kid . He ' s got a hell of a lot of hurdles to overcome and I hope he can live a relatively normal life . My ex , though , who thought having a kid would be just like having a little dolly to play with , for her to not only have to deal with the realities of not just raising a child but a special needs child ? Well , I can ' t think of a better comeuppance .