I ask this question because many anti-natalist points have in the last years gone mainstream and this includes the view that it’s unethical to bring a child into our current messed up world. I myself have had to battle with this view because me and my partner have wanted children since we were children ourselves and being challenged on that from a ethical perspective have forced us to really think about it closely.
When I think of my own birth I view of it as a very positive thing. I really can’t say life has been perfect or without troubles but I mostly enjoy life as it is both today and when I was younger, even with everything going on. So would I have chosen to be birthed again? I absolutely would! However this does not support myself having children because this could only rectify my own parents decision to have me. While I do know I have enjoyed my own life I can’t know in advance if my future children will enjoy life. The question is, will my own children born in the 2020s have liked to have been born?
This is of course an impossible question to answer since it requires predicting the future. I think 2015 was better than 2025. But how will 2035 be? How about 2100? My potential children will live so far into the future it’s incredibly hard to know if the world will be good or bad at the end, or even the middle of their lives. However if a life is not worth living it must be an absolutely horrific and torterous experience. Is that really where we are headed? Is it really gonna get THAT bad? Well that depends on how optimistic/pessimistic you are. No one actually knows what it is gonna be like.
There is one point however that I think is not discussed enough and that is about who are the ones having children? No this is not about the immigrants or muslims or whatever you have heard from the far right in regards to this. No this is about the fact that today if you are conservative, without a college degree and highly religious then you’re much more likely to have children. If all of us liberal and educated folks stop having kids what will the world look like? According to current projections the US will be majority amish by 2233. Is that the future we want? If conservatives and especially ultra-conservatives are the only ones having children then the liberal movement will have to be fighting an uphill battle if their only members are “converts” from those brought up in conservative households. That can’t end well can it? If I manage to raise reasonable and well brought up people, then that will improve the life quality of other people as well wouldn’t it? But at the same time I can’t expect my children to become future politicians who will save our decaying world. What are you all’s thoughts about this?
Having kids is always an act of selfishness. You don’t do it because you are trying to ‘gift’ life to the child. You do it because you think it will make you happy. Look at your reasons.
“me and my partner have wanted children since we were children” There’s your reason. You have the biological imperative. You want your genetics to continue.
" if a life is not worth living it must be an absolutely horrific and torterous experience." That’s life. ‘Worth’ is purely subjective. Objectively, life is worthless. If you have the right genetics and circumstances, you can ignore this fact, but it’s always there.
“If all of us liberal and educated folks stop having kids what will the world look like?” This is just the ideological version of the biological imperative, the idea of ‘my ideas must be passed down’ instead of ‘my genes.’ But it is based on faulty assumptions. It assumes your kids wouldn’t become fascists just because you aren’t. It assumes the children of members of a political party will automatically join the same one when they grow up. Why would you assume this? Do you have the same views as your parents? Grandparents?
If you want to have your kids, go ahead, but don’t delude yourself that it’s your gift to the leftist cause or to the child. It’s a way to scratch your biological itch to be a parent, just as much as masturbation and sex.
Calling it selfishness implies one only does it for himself/herself and no other reason. I don’t think that’s always true. At the same time it’s not a totally selfless act either. For me it has to be a positive to both me and the child or else it wouldn’t be worth it. Currently I can’t know if the child will enjoy life or not. But if I somehow knew the child would only suffer in life I would absolutely refuse to have that child. But I can’t know and that makes this complicated.
I think I can connect this back to the comment I made about adoption. I could adopt a baby and be just as happy with that as if I had a biological one because to me that is a comparable experience. However I wouldn’t adopt a violent and problematic teenager. Doing so would probably decrease my life quality and endanger my and my partners life. For the calculation to work I want both me and the child to have good lives. I admit it’s not a totally selfless act. But it’s not a totally selfish act either.
For the ideological stuff I don’t have that as a main reason personally but brought up because I think it’s important in a broader perspective. It’s absolutely true that one parent’s ideology has a huge influence on a child’s future. The Amish for example has only ¼ of those born in the community eventually leaving. And how many join the Amish? About zero. It’s a religious movement solely run by those born into it. However the high rate for the Amish is extraordinarily high when looking at other religions and this is because ones ideology is not only influenced by one’s parents but by one’s community as well.
There are a lot of people who were born in conservative or religious households and only left that ideology when they started interacting with people outside the family, for many that’s highschool or College. Internet as well in today’s era. The Amish keep so many because they have their own closed community. However think about it like this. If only one category of people had kids of ideology x. Then all kids would start out with that. In addition they won’t talk to people with a different ideology at school or college or maybe not even youth oriented internet because all other children were also born into ideology x. Suddenly they end up in a bubble and converting them would be much harder. For any other movement but ideology x it would be an uphill battle. Again having children for this sole reason would be stupid in my opinion. But it was a worrying thought of mine when I see through the statistics of who is actually having children nowadays.