What motivates someone to have children?

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the more i think about it, the more this life does remind me of basic training. the drill instructors are our bosses and superiors and school bullies etc. we are confined to the base [earth] for the duration. and in many places in our formative years we even have to wear uniforms. only we can't play hookie from this school, we can't go AWOL, we can't desert. we're IN IT for the duration.

if you offer me a billion odd buck$ to incarnate next time, i'll take that. in that environment of ease and security, even somebody like i am at present could raise children after a fashion and make sure they turn out ok.

Holy shmoly.
Good thing we're all entitled to our own opinions here and because of choice.

Yes I wanted children and I'm thankful I had children despite my ex being a d***.
I'm thankful I adopted.
I'm thankful I had the experience of miscarriage, even though conception and loss were both traumatic.
Every life is a gift and every child helped me to grow.

It's not all about me though.
It's about them being incredible human beings, and me having the honour to know them.

If I didn't want children that would be my choice and I would have acted accordingly.

I'm not sure if I should chime in here or not, yet here I am. I never tried to have kids, I actively tried to not have them. My reasons back then... I didn't want the responsibility. However, despite using two types of birth control, pregnancies happened. My decision? Do the best I could for my kids. Now they're grown and out of the house and looking back I can say that it was a really cool experience and then some.

When you have children you get the chance to watch someone grow from this helpless little blob to an actual person. You get to watch these little beings grow and develop their own thoughts, preferences, sense of humor... you get to be there through good, bad, all between. You get to watch them become these people unique unto themselves and see all the ways that they shine. I lack the ability to really do that all justice with my speech here. I don't know why people choose to have children, but if they do, I think that kind of stuff should be up near the top of the list for reasons why just because it's so freakin awesome.

i will always wonder if i reproduced, would i have contributed to the delinquency of a minor/made a psychopath/catatonic, or made the next Volodymyr Zelenskyy? or at least something on the positive side?

Personally I kind of agree with Pepe but I hold it more as a personal stance than a universal one. I've been for the most part of my life, life dysphoric. So naturally it doesn't make sence for me to wish to bring children to life just so they can experience dysphoria. Maybe they won't, but that's how life has been for me as an experience, I don't know any other experience of life. It wouldn't make any sence for me to want to have children.

Sometimes I see the desire for having children as a programmed behaviour of automata. This is what we are instinctively hardwired to do, not unlike other animals and living organisms. I believe that the self conscious intellectual choise to not have children may be an act that manifests true free will. It may be an act that hints at a separation of the intelect from the determinism of the material world.

Opinions are like as*holes. Some are just plain wrong.

And that's alright. If there was no wrong, there would be no right.