What are your criteria for a reasonable life?

Over here, a jelly wrote “If we had a kid, it would be an overweight, diabetic, nearsighted, paranoid savant with a short lifespan.” This was given as a reason not to have a kid.

This made me feel sad. It seems to me that one can have a very nice life despite many different kinds of problems, depending on what one’s attitude towards that life is. Many people enjoy short lives. They live the hell out of them. And many people cope with all kinds of illnesses just fine.

I have bipolar disorder. I’m fat. I’m near-sighted. I have diabetes in both my grandparents. There’s heart disease. Bipolar on both may parents sides. But I’m pretty well off. I’ve had a good education. I have two lovely children and have been loved by several good women. I may have been depressed enough to want to die, but I didn’t, and I feel like I have a very good life.

I have advantages, but it also seems to me that even if I was poor or had more medical issues to deal with, I could still be happy. It all depends on my attitude. I know people who seem to have horrible lives my various material standards, and yet they are very happy.

Some people seem to think that if you can’t guarantee 80 years and decent health and especially mental health, then you wouldn’t want to visit such a life on a child.

What are your standards? What are the things that would make you not want to have a child? What would make you say, “I wouldn’t make my child bear that?” Why is it that you wouldn’t want to have a child if they had to put up with that? Why couldn’t a quadriplegic child have a good life, for example?