For me being a father has been a great joy, not only for material reasons, but being being a father has allowed me to attain great insight into my spiritual life. There's struggles and tears involved but I would not trade anything in the world for those great experiences that have enriched my life these past few years.
Upon thinking about this, I recently read a great purport by Srila Prabhupada from the Tenth Canto, Chapter Seven, Verse Four. We hear so many stories today about people either giving up their children or killing their children. It's a very sad time in the human history that so many of these things are going, what to speak of abortion. So here's the purport all glories to the beautiful Vaikuntha children.
"There is no question of overpopulation or of children's being a burden for their parents in a Vedic society. Such a society is so well organized and people are so advanced in spiritual consciousness that childbirth is never regarded as a burden or a botheration. The more a child grows, the more his parents become jubilant, and the child's attempts to turn over are also a source of jubilation. Even before the child is born, when the mother is pregnant, many recommended ritualistic ceremonies are performed. For example, when the child has been within the womb for three months and for seven months, there is a ceremony the mother observes by eating with neighboring children. This ceremony is called svāda-bhakṣaṇa. Similarly, before the birth of the child there is the garbhādhāna ceremony. In Vedic civilization, childbirth or pregnancy is never regarded as a burden; rather, it is a cause for jubilation. In contrast, people in modern civilization do not like pregnancy or childbirth, and when there is a child, they sometimes kill it. We can just consider how human society has fallen since the inauguration of Kali-yuga. Although people still claim to be civilized, at the present moment there is actually no human civilization, but only an assembly of two-legged animals."
