Given that I didn't really get to have a life before I turned 18, I kinda resent being told - kids or no - that all I've got ahead of me is waiting for death.

Could you distill "having and raising a family" to mean "give back to the community"? And if so, if you're a half-decent person, isn't that kinda inevitable?

If I don't have my shit together, I *don't have my shit together*, and I don't think kids would change that.

Back to the point about kids, it's a tradeoff. I will never see a child of my own graduate high school or soar intellectually/athletically/artistically way beyond anything I can do. I will also never have to help a child face bullies, active shooter drills, global climate change, and anti-semitism. In fact it's almost an indictment of that dude's whiteness. Easy to see parenthood as some sort of Norman Rockwell like state of bliss when there's no chance that your kid will deal with threats of eternal Hell, or segregation convenienced by assignments or mandatory Christmas pagaents, or striped-shirted corpses piled in the mud in old photos, or screaming right-wing politicians in the here and now. And that's not even getting into being a nurturing, responsible parent for a kid facing anti-blackness.