There is no meaning of life if you don't have kids. Childless people realize this when they're around 50 and it's too late to have kids.

And likewise plenty of people raised into modernism arrive at 50 and resent that having kids interfered with their personal fulfillment or experiences.

The reality is that people in middle-age just tend to look backwards and reflect on what could have been. Some prove happy with what they have, and others are sure the grass would have been greener some other way. What they decide has more to do with the moods their personality gravitates towards and the current state of their life as they start reflecting.

Specific details of the road there -- like kids vs not -- are not all that determinative.

As has been pointed out by philosophers for a long time, there is no inherent meaning, beside what you yourself create. For some people, children. For others, art of some sort, or building a business that creates value. For some, pure hedonism, or building relationships and helping the people around them.

I'm way older than 50, and don't miss having kids at all.

My impression is that voluntarily child-free people have a very low regret rate, but there are dozens of conflicting studies on this. Interested if you have anything concrete to link to.

>There is no meaning of life

Don't half ass it, brace the full absurdity of the universe.

The only purpose why we are here is to take entropy from an ordered state to one of maximum disorder.