I’m surprised this hasn’t come up yet: Because by being a parent, you become responsible for someone else’s life besides your own, permanently and beyond the transactional or contractual sense of a job or a passion project. It is a life experience unmatched by anything else (though I think that being a teacher or the caretaker of children in an orphanage come close). You get free reign over the shaping of a person who will touch the lives of others, and the good or the bad that becomes of it is the consequence of your own values and way of existence.

Not disputing you either—I once said I will never have children, too—but indeed and as with other life decisions, you should stay childless while you find the meaning of it incomprehensible. It’s not for people who are not ready to stop thinking about themselves.