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?
I really regret to hear that you feel that way about your own existence. I really don’t want to cause someone to exist who then regrets their own existence in such a way. I would be very interested to know what went wrong in your life and what your parents could have done differently. Or is it perhaps not the fault of your parents but the world at large that is to blame?
Have you considered adoption? There are SO many kids out there who need loving homes. If you’re worries about children regretting their existence, at least you could provide a safe place for those that are already here and also fulfill your desire to be a parent.
Are there really that many kids who need adopting? What I have heard there are far fewer domestic kids who need adoptive parents than there are people willing to adopt if you are looking at young children under 3. This causes a lot of people to adopt internationally which is insanely expensive, often very dubious ethically and a bureaucratic nightmare. A lot of source countries for adoption have banned international adoption in the last years making the supply lower than ever. Adopting internationally does not mean you’re giving a child a home who wouldn’t otherwise have one. No you’re just competing against other prospective parents. The child would just get adopted by another family.
What is available domestically and where one can actually do real good are older children, mostly male, around the ages 12-17 who come from abusive households. The people who adopt from this category are real heroes and do enormous good to the world. However this is a totally different endeavour that not all are able to tackle. Many of these kids are violent, criminal and may despite their young age already have drug addiction problems. It really is a lot and is often a real physical threat to the adoptive parent. I have considered it but right now I’m not ready for it. It also closes the possibility for your own biological children in the future because having a violent older step sibling can ruin your childhood and I wouldn’t want to do that to my kid. Maybe when I’m much older I’ll consider it. Those kids deserve loving parents too and arguably need them more than anyone else.
Yeah it’s mostly the world and everyone in it. I try to give my parents grace for the decision they made before the internet existed and before the reality of the world was so widely known. But if I were born in the last ~10 years or so, I don’t think I could ever get over it?
Then again, being born today and not experiencing what the world could be like with decorum, maybe it’s not as traumatic to have never experienced it?
There is zero trauma in nonexistence; there is indeed nothing at all, which includes all happy memories as well. No garlic pesto pizza, no Andor season 2, music, sports, games, Lemmy…
This post about why we should bother to stay alive is probably relevant and interesting: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/38873684