Why do people choose to have children if it is so much hard work

People face fundamental uncertainty about the future: they cannot predict exactly how demanding parenthood will be, what life circumstances will change, or what joys will emerge. This uncertainty interacts with two cognitive limits. 1. Planning limits — people can imagine general outcomes but cannot simulate all future details or the cumulative weight of everyday caregiving. Plans are framed by present values and foreseeable tasks, so unforeseen stresses and small burdens often exceed what had been anticipated. 2. Optimism bias — people systematically underestimate future problems and overestimate their own capacity to handle difficulties. This bias leads prospective parents to expect they will adapt successfully, recover from sleep deprivation, and rehearse coping strategies that in practice prove harder to sustain. Together, these factors make the future costs of childrearing feel more manageable in advance than they often turn out to be, while hope and anticipated rewards (emotional meaning, relationship fulfillment, social norms) further motivate the decision despite the real workload. References: Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) on planning fallacy and optimism bias; Gerd Gigerenzer on uncertainty and decision limits.