Discussion Do you think bringing children into this world is immoral?

[Goose774]

Do you think having kids makes them owe you everything for giving them life or do you owe them everything for burdening them with it? I mean without being alive you wouldn't be able to perceive anything and therefore nothing would be even real or exist. I don't have an opinion I was just wondering. Any thoughts?

 

[Valky]

I think both. Even if your life is complete shit, if your parents tried their best to give you a good life and provide for you, you should be grateful. But parents only treat you good if they have the feeling of owing you something because they put you in this world. And that is love. So I guess it goes hand in hand :)

 

[FuneralCry]

The reality is that procreation is an absolutely disgusting and unacceptable thing to do, it's extremely cruel to create new life and burden them with existence, creating existing beings is just creating unnecessary problems and needs in a world where there is unlimited potential to suffer and feel pain.

The nonexistent should just be left alone in peace, in fact it's tragic to procreate in such a chaotic world filled with risks, I see existence as being slavery and imprisonment as we are both slaves to suffering and our decaying flesh prison, existence isn't a desirable state so the human species should go voluntarily extinct. Giving people life could never be a "gift", it's cruelly forcing existing beings out of the ideal state of nonexistence all for selfish reasons, it's so sad how humans aren't aware enough just to recognise that existence is nothing more than just an unnecessary harm.

 

[freedompass]

Not immoral, but in many cases ill advised.

 

[unnormal9]

I think they're gonna do whatever the fuck they want; no matter what.

 

[uniqueusername39]

as it is immoral to cause suffering, and suffering can only be experienced by those who exist, i think it's immoral. i think it would only be morally neutral (not exactly moral) if it can be determined with 100% certainty that the child will never suffer.

like that's gonna happen.

 

[Close-Minded]

The reality is that procreation is an absolutely disgusting and unacceptable thing to do, it's extremely cruel to create new life and burden them with existence, creating existing beings is just creating unnecessary problems and needs in a world where there is unlimited potential to suffer and feel pain.

The nonexistent should just be left alone in peace, in fact it's tragic to procreate in such a chaotic world filled with risks, I see existence as being slavery and imprisonment as we are both slaves to suffering and our decaying flesh prison, existence isn't a desirable state so the human species should go voluntarily extinct. Giving people life could never be a "gift", it's cruelly forcing existing beings out of the ideal state of nonexistence all for selfish reasons, it's so sad how humans aren't aware enough just to recognise that existence is nothing more than just an unnecessary harm.

Pretty intense take. "The reality" is nothing more than your opinion. The reality is that you're declaring the results of billions of years of accidents to be nothing but suffering probably because of your own life. I usually don't mind people who say it's all suffering but it's not "The Reality", don't you think you can just decide that because you feel suffering yourself.

 

[TransilvanianHunger]

I think it is immoral, yes. I think that, overall, a living being will experience a lot more suffering than pleasure in life, and I can't find a halfway decent reason to yank another sentient being out of non-existence just to live through this. It's unnecessary, human biological urges notwithstanding.

That being said, I'm not in the business of judging others or believing that I know better than them. This is just my perspective, and the reason why I don't want to ever have children. I'm not going to tell anyone what to do with their life.

 

[Huntfish34]

It can go both ways Imo, All depends on the situation and how the parents act.. It Can be immoral if the parents are complete fuck heads with no regard to their responsibility, but that's certainly not always the case. Every situation is different in their own way.

 

[The_End_Is_Comfort]

It depends, if the parents are shitheads who would abuse their children then yeah it's irresponsible in that case, but the child should be given a chance to have a happy life. If the parents are just struggling parents who want the best for their children then no it is not immoral.

 

[Source Energy]

I had loving parents who gave me all I needed. And look how I turned out.
I had suffered and had intense emotional pain from my issues all my life. Had never been a happy kid.
Once you give birth to a child, you gamble with their fate. They might turn out ok, or be among the unlucky ones and live who knows what horrors.
Especially since suicide is not allowed if they will hate it here, bringing children into the world IS immoral.

I am pro-choice, of course, socially. I don't tell anybody not to have children - because I know they will not listen and won't understand, not because it's their life. It's not their life only - it's the new life as well! It's like not telling people not to murder - wrong, but if you known the killer can't be resonated with, you refrain.
Giving birth is also murder - you condemn someone to die, who otherwise wouldn't if you didn't make them exist in the first place.

Pretty intense take. "The reality" is nothing more than your opinion. The reality is that you're declaring the results of billions of years of accidents to be nothing but suffering probably because of your own life. I usually don't mind people who say it's all suffering but it's not "The Reality", don't you think you can just decide that because you feel suffering yourself.

The "reality" is that life contains a lot of potential for suffering. What you do you do when your child shouts at you "why did you bring me here I want to die!" and you know they mean it? Is it worth taking the chance? Just because some people have good lives and there is beautiful stuff on this planet, doesn't mean your child will like it here. And when your kid ends up on SS and commits suicide, whose fault would it be? He/ she would be the "selfish"one for not liking the gift you gave them and quitting this world before you.

My mother - a former natalist and religious lady - came to agree with me that I should never have been born. Imagine how much suffering that took.
Wanna risk this for a kid?

 

[Forever Sleep]

It's difficult because I can't say I hate or blame either my own parents- or, any of my friends who have decided to have children. I would say that for the majority of people- I expect their INTENTIONS are good when they have children.

Still... as an act- yes- I think it's immoral. I'm an anti-natilist at heart. For one- we all KNOW that this planet is struggling to sustain the 8 billion of us already here. Unless someone is likely to give birth to some genius that can reverse global warming and save the world- it's likely that all their children and their children's children etc. etc. will do is just take more resources from the world and pollute it.

Also- in the very act of it- you are bringing a sentient being here against their will. Most people realise that life isn't easy. I suppose I have an extremely negative view of this world but I can't honestly get my head around why you would do that to someone you purportedly love. If there is even a 0.01% chance that my child could experience the unhappiness I've felt in my life- it wouldn't be fair- in my opinion.

I suppose the reverse has to be true though also. I can only imagine that people who have children have either known themselves- or, can imagine the real potential in life to be happy- so, I can only assume (hope) that is what they want for their children- and I suppose they realistically think they can aid them in finding it.

That- or- two people were just super horny and careless and got pregnant by accident. I guess we all make mistakes. I am actually pro-abortion though- not that it should be done lightly of course. Still- I find it even more likely that a person's life will be shit if they weren't even wanted to begin with. I'd say it's definitely immoral to bring a life into the world if there is no real intention/ ability to support it emotionally/ physically/ financially.

 

[TheNihilisticViking]

Speaking as an Anti-Natalist/Efilist, yes I think it is immoral to do so, but these are entirely my own views. If other people want to have kids, that's their choice, but we should be realistic on such a serious subject and say that it is basically rolling the dice with someone else's life...

 

[DarkMilk]

It's only immoral when you are having children for shallow reasons like status, or impressing other people, when you are selfish, which is very common now in Western society today.

But to have children, even in very difficult circumstances, is not immoral when you do it for the right reasons. When you dedicate yourself wholly, and love deeply, that is beautiful - tragic when the conditions are squalor, but certainly beautiful in a romantic sense.

Some of the happiest children I've seen were in borderline poverty. But their parents loved them selflessly, in the most righteous way one could. It doesn't if the whole world is against you, love like that grants its own raison d'etre.

What causes people to believe children are immoral is because they were brought up by self-centered parents. Even if they ostensibly loved you, they did so in a selfish way.

I think this concept is hard to grasp unless you have seen it or experienced it for yourself. I had a terrible father, a mediocre family overall, but my mother loved me in a unconditional, virtuous way. If I wasn't going to kill myself I would have many children and love them the way she loved me

 

[OceanBlue]

Always immoral and criminal
if people were rational we would've agreed to voluntary go extinct thousands of years ago.


But what does a human monkey do in the 21st century? Same as before, mostly interested in resources, expansion, control. Still a big fan of wars, rape, murder. Looks down on other species so much they breed them just to kill for taste. Watches genitals being licked for fun. Builds churches, prays to invisible creators. Takes spirits/drugs to forget the reality, that includes genocides, natural disasters, all kinds of diseases. Some of them are so crushed, they end up on a SUICIDE forum and still... they log on and argue AGAINST leaving other human monkeys safe in non existence.

Grade: F-

 

[odradek]

I think having kids can be immoral, context depending but I wouldn't put a blanket on it and say the general concept is immoral. Things are never that simple imo.

 

[BlueBaby]

I don't think it's necessary immoral, even though you might cause your child a lot of suffering. (not by your hand per say, but by making them.) I see a lot of people saying it's immoral because of all the suffering but the way I look at it. Before you were born, you were in an infinite sleep, and after you die you will continue sleeping. In the scale of your existence before and after being alive. Life is but a small disturbance in an endless slumber. When you're back to not existing again, which you've been doing for longer than the earth exists. Your life in comparison to that will have felt like a split second. So do I think it's wrong to quickly inconvenience someone with like, a quick needle sting? Not really, it can suck a bit, but y'know, who cares. Some people seem to enjoy this quick needle sting so it might even be worth the try.

Quick disclaimer, I'm not disregarding the unbearable suffering some people have or anything. I'm not saying that life is just a quick owie and that's it. It's more in the perspective of someone outside of the living realm.

 

[excelsior]

One of my most controversial opinions is that creating life is the same thing as murdering someone and inflicting upon them all the suffering they will experience. Though it is immoral from how I describe it, I think that's not what matters most here. The emphasis should be on helping people find other means of finding their needs met that they would otherwise get from reproducing, and also helping people realize that it's unethical. What I'm failing to convey here is that we shouldn't condemn people for wanting to reproduce.

 

[odradek]

One thing that confuses me about antinatalists on here is how they always frame having children as a want or a choice. We are on a website where the existence of survival instinct (SI) is not up for debate. This is a biological process or instinct we must all overcome. Yet procreation, this is strictly a choice... Like access to contraception or abortion does not validate this argument imo as it's not universal and access has begun to erode in places.

SI and procreation are probably two of our species oldest and most ingrained instincts. Yet if you do not overcome the drive to reproduce , it is somehow immoral. I feel like this is a false framing. This dissonance has always stuck in my mind.

 

[blackwidow]

No

 

[Stylite]

No.

 

[thgilrats]

As a moral relativist, I don't think there's anything moral or immoral, but I think that it's okay to have children, since they can come into the world and, if they like it, they can stay, but if they don't – well, they are always free to leave. I think, having children (of course, if you have all the required resources, like money and available and high-quality education, medical treatment and stuff) is okay in terms of suggesting them (a child) a choice – you can live here and feel sorrow, happiness, hatred, love and etc, or you can go back to the calming and welcoming darkness and it's only your choice to make.

 

[ntrmo]

Pretty intense take. "The reality" is nothing more than your opinion. The reality is that you're declaring the results of billions of years of accidents to be nothing but suffering probably because of your own life. I usually don't mind people who say it's all suffering but it's not "The Reality", don't you think you can just decide that because you feel suffering yourself.

In this current economy, with the world in the stage it is in right now, having children is purely bringing them into a realm of suffering no matter how you spin it.

If you really want to argue, any objectivity is nothing but less-subjective-subjectivity. We're all just expressing our opinion and truth here. The undeniable "objective truth" in this case, is that living is more suffering than happiness, so by bringing a life into this world, it's just causing more suffering.

On top of all this, the world is not in a very good state right now. A lot of people are discovering that it's more important to improve their own quality of life (which is already hard as heck) before bringing another life into this world to suffer, so they're making the conscious choice to not have kids.

The need to reproduce goes hand in hand with the hope that the future generation improves the world we're living in, or at least get to enjoy the world the previous generation have built. But right now looking at everything, the future generation can't really save this dumpster fire and they don't have anything to enjoy.

My personal take is just don't have kids. They don't make anything better. If the sole reason someone is getting kids is because they think children will make things better somehow, then that person is nothing but selfish.

 

[Giraffe]

Do you think having kids makes them owe you everything for giving them life or do you owe them everything for burdening them with it? I mean without being alive you wouldn't be able to perceive anything and therefore nothing would be even real or exist. I don't have an opinion I was just wondering. Any thoughts?

This world contains evil, that much is true. But I also believe that every force has an equal and opposite force. Human beings have free will, and can choose between doing good and doing bad.

Bringing a child into the world is a beautiful thing if you do it in good faith, caring and nurturing them. You shower them with love, but it is important to note that you cannot force them to become good. As the age old adage goes, "You can bring a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." Similarly, you can raise your child by instilling good morals in them, but at the end of the day, you can't make them do anything. You can increase punishment on them, but you can't force them to do it.

In essence, procreate. I believe all children are innocent, and Innocence is a good thing. The bigger take away is this though, "A knife is neither good, nor is it bad. A knife is a tool, it only becomes good or bad depending on it's use and the person using it." -My dad

 

[NumbItAll]

All morality aside, the idea of having children is so foreign to me and freaks me out, especially the way it is carelessly approached by many. Literally creating a new (heinously annoying, problematic, and expensive) sentient person for no reason, bossing them around, obsessing over them for a lifetime, etc. Whatever it is that makes people want to do that has never been inside of me. I imagine it is something like how an asexual person views sex, which on paper is disgusting (playing with each other's genitals and exchanging bodily fluids), but is actually awesome if you are horny. Anyway add it to the list of reasons why I don't belong in this world.

 

[Ailurus]

I've read quite a few posts in this thread (Far from all, starting at the top) and I'm happy to see there's a lot of anti-natalist sentiment in here. Saw some arguments I find really bad, but general vibe is that it's immoral.
To me it's a very easy question, being a practitioner of bdsm in the local bdssm community, we hear about it all the time. Consent. Consent is the cornerstone of what we do when it comes to moral actions. We speak about how consent should be freely given, reversible, informed, enthusiastic, specific FRIES for shorthand.
Do the person being born freely give consent to being born? Definitely not.
Is it reversible? Not really? I mean kind of. But also not. Closest thing to reversing it is to die. But I know from personal experience how grueling and soul crushing it can be to even attempt it, and it's not like I can go to a doctor and get help. Assisted suicide is illegal in most contries, simply knowing someone is about to go through with it and not reporting it can be criminal in many places. So while it's technically reversible. It's heavily gatekept.
Informed? Nope, not a chance. The person being born can, as far as we know, not know anything. (I'm an atheist and don't believe in spirituality, but for the purpose of this post, I won't make definitive statements on such matters.)
Enthusiastic? Not a chance. They don't exist. They can't show enthusiasm.
Specific? No, just because you consent to one thing doesn't mean you consent to another, mind you. The person being born haven't consented to anything. Specifics aren't even in the picture here.

When it comes to other antinatalist arguments I want to adress aa few of them here: Overpopulation, no. There's no real reason we can't support a population much larger than the one that exists at the moment.
The problem is profit incentives and the system of capitalism and greed we live in. As well as the standard to which we adhere to when it comes to food appearance. A very sizable portion of food is thrown out simply because it doesn't meet our beauty standards for food. Not to mention the food that goes to waste just going bad in people's homes. Or what's thrown out because people don't want to deal with leftovers. There's plenty of unused housing already and there's no reason we can't build more in decent locations, problem is that land is more valuable as a commodity than human comfort is to most people. So people having a place to live isn't a priority.

Suffering: Yes. So... Suffering is such a subjective thing. Most people suffer, but no one experience suffering the same as far as we know. How much you're willing to suffer is also highly individualistic. But in the end I think most people suffer, and even if some don't, it doesn't really matter. Sufering in itself isn't neccessarily bad. But unwanted suffering and non consesual is bad. Ergo, subjecting someone to that kind of suffering is immoral. This is unfortunately a relatively weak argument just due to how subjective suffering is and how it doesn't really... Mean much in of itself. But it's a strong support for other arguments.
A lot of people are not okay with the suffering they've been forced to go through. People are victims of a system that doesn't actually care about what they want or how they feel. As long as that system exists, excusing having children is the same as seeing this suffering as acceptable for the happy people's joy. In other words. My/our suffering is acceptable because they get to have a good time. To have a child under these circumstances is not only a non consensual act. But it's also feeding into the system of suffering that sustains a certain proportion of happiness. I don't think it matters much how much suffering there is vs how much happiness there is. The issue is that the happiness they feel is at the expense of our suffering.
There. Sorry for the very long post. This is a subject I'm very pationate about, so it just ended up that way.
Thank you for reading and hope I don't get shunned from here like I've been from other places I speak about this.

TLDR: It's immoral, there's no real consent mechanism for the person being born, and there's no good way to escape life. Also, the joy many people justify life with is at the expense of those who suffer.

 

[surewhynot]

Anti-natalist, efilist here. My answer is an unequivocal yes. If there were no humans, there would be no one to miss out of the good things, which isn't bad. Yet we have billions of humans (and other sentient animals), which leads to the asymmetry pointed out by David Benetar.

 

[Homo erectus]

Creating life without the prospect of a good/peaceful death is cruel. If parents are confident of putting their children on track to a successful life all the way to death, it sounds alright to give birth. If a society has a reasonably accessible euthanasia policy, it will also be fine, because the children will have the option to quit when they need to.

 

[Suicidе]

its always a cruel selfish act that gambles with the welfare of the person being born. it could have a life of minimal pain and struggle or it could be tortured for the majority of its life, either way it will most definitely cause suffering to other sentient beings one way or another such as through consumerism and supporting the industry that exploits and tortures animals for simple, convenient, temporary, insatiable, pleasures

 

[Gonnerr]

It should be a crime because society and mankind sucks and you bring somebody to life that will be so scared of dying.

I am personally so fucking scared of dying, that's why my SN is not in my body yet. If my parents knew that , i hope they would have leave me alone in peace.

It should be illegal, we should go extinct and leave that beautiful planet alone from our sick dna of apes and rats.

We are all selfish products of our parents. Think about it. Do you think one people in all mankind history said to himself ; no , i wont have child , i will leave them alone in this peacefulness that is nothingness.

No their selfish ass reproduce and bring us to life for less than 100 years just for them to have a purpose in life. Its a f...selfish crime having child who didnt ask for nothing.