What is the benefit of having children

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I believe that having children is one of the main reasons for our existence on this planet. Due to natural selection the species will become more advanced as centuries go by.

Now i never had the urge to pro create and i know i am not equipped to raise children.

But I try to understand how this urge must feel to others, but i can not imagine.

How does it feel to have that urge and what, in your opinion, is the benefit of having children?

I don't know about the urge (I would like to have a kid one day but I don't feel ready yet and possibly never will) but there are benefits.
For me personally it would be permission to act like a kid again and be socially awkward - you can do pretty much everything when you are talking care of a toddler/preschooler. That includes playing on playground and using toys! You can also eat food for kids and go to places where it would be too awkward to go alone as an adult ("you are just showing some frogs to your kid"). And as your child grows up you can learn all the development steps together with him. Perhaps I would finally get through my "teenage years" if I had a chance to observe a kid going through puberty and dealing with all the social situations related to growing up and becoming an adult.

In the US, the benefit of having children, more money back in taxes. Keep on popping out more kids to get more and more money and if you are on disability, you get more Social Security benefits. I don't know if there is a limit though on how many kids you can claim on your taxes and if Social Security has a limit. People can easily abuse this system so there should be a limit on kids.

I think it's a very bad idea to have them because you have some kind of benefit in mind (like getting child allowance, wanting someone to take care of you in your old age or someone to accomplish what you didn't) and strictly in my experience people like this make for terrible parents.

That being said, I think most people have them for mostly selfish reasons or because they follow the biological impulse to reproduce - and the social pressure to do it - without thinking much about it. I never had this impulse and I don't give a toss about social expectations. I had two children rather late in life and while my reasons were to some extent selfish (as mentioned I think that's unavoidable), I chose to do it at a time in my life when I was certain I was willing and capable to take care of them and never saw them as either an extension of myself, my property or means to get some kind of financial or social advantage.

In the East (yes, most Eastern countries, From Morocco, through Middle East, to Japan), it is to have someone who will literally shelter you, feed you, bath you and diaper you when you get too old.

I had that strong maternal instinct from a young age.

I agree with Bender, though. We all have children for selfish reasons, but what matters is what that selfish reason is.

I certainly didn't have my daughter for her sake. If we hadn't created her, she'd never have existed to know any different. It's not like she was just sitting around somewhere, waiting to be conceived.

I had a child because of that maternal instinct, because I had a lot of love to give a child, because I wanted to create another human being with my husband so that there would be someone in this world that was a fusion of the two of us. I had a child, simply, because I wanted to be a mum.

Benefits? Love. That's the only one that matters to me.

And it's love going out, not love coming in. I will live the rest of my life having experienced the incredible feeling of being a mother that loves a child, and no other feeling compares. I cannot, however, guarantee that my daughter will grow up loving me.

I am not in this to BE loved, though it breaks my heart to imagine that not being the case - the benefit is knowing that I've felt love for my child, that I've spent time with the one person in all of history and all of the future that, to me, is the most amazing person ever to exist.

sometimes i wonder what if i slept with 23,000 women from all over the world whites blacks asians and got them all pregnant, so i become the father of at least 23,000 kids.

it's possible.. it just never happens
scientists should pick me as a volunteer since i know i have some weird freak of nature genetics

I like the different points of view. So basically there are two types of parents: the first ones are the ones that have kids so they can give (love) to them. The second types have children in order to get something ( that is missing in them) from this kids.

And most agree that the first category is the best?

My question now is: what is the benefit of having a child and giving ( love) so much to it. Why not give all this things to yourself and/or your partner/familie/friends/...?

^
There's something unique that I can't really describe about the way you can love a child, especially when they're very small. And for many people it can be the only way to experience unconditional love. You would put their needs and happiness first without even thinking about it and this type of selfless love seems to be quite rare between adults - one way or another you always get something out of it if you know what I mean. Sorry, I'm not being very articulate about this, it's really hard to describe.

To carry on your successful gene pool.

Most people have children because they are told to.
Some have them to get state financial support or husbands financial support.

Having children can be good, they can be helpful, and are a little version of yourself (though not always the good bits).

They will often love you more than anyone else, and you will love them deeply too (though not always).
Some people have children because they are lonely.

Personally I'd like to see more high functioning (even not high functioning) Aspergers out there.
I think it would be a good idea to prevent the criminals from procreating (they seem to do it despite their circumstances), even if it was by via locking them up for longer.

Population explosion is possibly the biggest issue we face. Wars have helped control it, and are still helping.
Disease will probably be the next big saviour, famine might be a good one too.
Eugenics is fraught with problems, China's two child policy (they upgraded it from one recently) is good, unfortunately it is only applied to urban citizens. Farmers can have as many children as they need to help on the farm - farming needs to be modernised and become a valid career choice. Also their are major issues with favouring male babies around the world.

Farmers need children. It is less work for them.

Middle class suburbia... It is a pet, or a toy.

The vast majority of people don't contribute to human advancement anyway, so it's highly unlikely that the world is really missing out much in a particular person not having children. Have kids if you want to, but don't feel pressured into doing so.