No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.

Parenting is commitment or nothing

We often talk about parenthood as an identity or achievement, but Plato's pointing at something harder: it's a commitment you either make fully or shouldn't make at all. The tricky part is that this isn't just about showing up physically. It's the willingness to stay engaged through every messy phase—the frustration of teaching a kid to read, the teenage years when they seem to reject everything you've built, the expensive years, the uncertain years when you're not sure you're doing it right.

What makes this relevant today is how easily we can half-commit to parenting while fully committing to career, hobbies, or self-improvement. We outsource, we check out, we wait for easier seasons that don't quite come. Plato isn't being harsh so much as realistic. Kids need consistent presence and follow-through to actually develop into capable people. The counterintuitive part? This doesn't mean you have to be perfect or always available. It means being honest about whether you're genuinely willing to stick with the unglamorous work of actually raising someone. If you're not, that's clarifying information worth sitting with before the decision gets made for you.