Something I'm grateful for with my other half is that when we first got together, we were both just scraping by. Then, for awhile, I made a good bit more than he did. Now, he makes a good bit more than I do. Somehow, with that history, it is easier to feel confident of each other's (and our own!) motivations.

I've never felt that "something primal about the notion have having kids" thing you described. I find them rather distasteful in thought at the least. It would be fair to say I am even hostile towards the idea. But kudos to your fighting the urge for crotch fruit.

@Bobsuruncle It depends on a number of variables.

Like you, I had an "18 and out" philosophy with my kids but then life happened. My son had trouble launching and wouldn't you know it, I married someone whose son had trouble launching. My 26 y.o. stepson lives with us after the (for him) Herculean effort of getting his undergrad degree in philosophy and math, and while it represents some sacrifice on our part, I am not only okay with it, but happy about it. I love him like my own even though I understand that as a high functioning person on the autism spectrum who has some associated issues with OCD, he probably could fade into the woodwork when he eventually does leave. He simply isn't, and quite possibly never will be, able to chew gum and walk at the same time relationally, so to have an S.O. or demanding job or both and remember my birthday or something ... isn't going to happen. He'll remember to get his Mom a Mother's Day card and take her out to dinner because I'll make sure he does.

But there are a hundred and twelve things I'll miss about him when he's gone -- the gourmet meals he cooks for us, his love of reading, the way interacting with the dogs transforms him and opens him up. So I focus on that.

In any event, he respects and appreciates me and he comes through where it counts. When my son died he said I'd always have him. Recently he told me he loves me more than his biological father (his clumsy way of saying he's completely comfortable with me and not at all with his Dad, which of course I understand to be partly a difference in dynamics that happens to favor me). He's doing excellent work for me as a subcontractor and it's a joy to mentor him; he's curious, bright, has a fabulous work ethic. I'd take a bullet for him. He doesn't know it yet but by teaching him software development, I'm laying the foundation for his work life, after he figures out he won't be the next Slavoj Zizek but has a natural aptitude for IT work. He's an interesting mix of maturity and naivete, what can I say.

I suppose all this is impolitic to confess to in a "child free" domain. I'm here mostly because our relationship with our respective daughters is not that great, and all things considered for various reasons both my wife and I wish we had, as @PadraicM put it, not had "crotch fruit". At the same time, we're capable of being grateful for what we have rather than irritable about what we don't, so it's possible to love him unreservedly even while worrying about his future and being frustrated with his rigidity and irrational fears and his unresponsiveness to medication. The alternative would be to punish him for being who he is and to let him down as parents. The fact that I would not have kids if I had some kind of magic do-over doesn't mean I don't love my kids. The fact that I would not remarry yet a fourth time if something happened to my wife is not a judgment on her, but on the human condition and my increasing awareness of my own limitations and that of others.

So it's complicated, this business of living and loving. I'd have approached it very differently knowing what I know now, so I'm here to advocate for a lot more realism and self awareness and humility around having kids, rather than my breezy assumption that it is Just What One Does and just sort of magically works out cleanly and farily readily for everyone. But I'm not here to hate on kids either, or to judge others for having them.