> Does that mean that he should give up on his dreams, due to bad timing?
I don't know about giving up on dreams in the abstract, but yes, having kids should change the priorities in your life and that will most likely mean giving up some of your own wants, big and small, in order to care of your kids. If you aren't comfortable with that change, then you shouldn't make the choice to have kids.
Contributing genetic information and some parenting can be a net positive even if the parent is ultimately absent (for whatever reasons).
Take the extreme case of a parent who disappears just after the child's birth. The other parent may still be thankful to have the child, and the child may still be a credit to society.
Is the disappearing parent a good parent? Not really. Should he/she have never had the child, as you suggest? Well, that's up to the child, really.
I.e. it's hard to fault your parents for making you, whether they're good parents or not.
Do you have kids? It's relevant because I used to make arguments like yours until I had a child and realized how much more nuanced these arguments actually are.
He believed in this. His wife presumably knew he did.
I salute them.
Now could we please get the hell out of their personal decisions? Seriously. I'm not comfortable with HN acting as if they're entitled to judge his and her choices. I doubt any of us would want our community to judge ours.
I upvoted you for the 'never a good time...' line lolz, but your last statement is truly absurd. I assume you don't have kids. Nothing replaces a parent, even a flawed one.
Not to mention two sons, two and three years old respectively. There is a season of life for climbing mountains. This was not it.