As weird as this might sound, having children has given me a significant sense of relief for similar reasons to those outlined in your comment, even though I'm far from a natural parent (but I'm working at it!)

Being a bit of a paranoid and morbid guy at the best of times, reproducing seemed inherently and intrinsically important to me in some hard to quantify way, and I feel so much mentally better for having descendants. I can't really explain it well though and have chalked it up to one of those messy, animalistic "instinct" things.