The book “Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids” was a bit of an influence. The quick summary: People often overestimate the downsides of having children, people often underestimate the upsides of having children, people overestimate the marginal benefit of more labor-intensive methods of parenting, therefore maybe you are underestimating how many children you should have (including underestimating the benefit of tradeoffs where you have more children but use a less-intensive parenting style).
I think choosing to raise a child rather than not will probably make me happier when I’m older, even though it’s not very pleasant a lot of the time currently, and there is the constant additional exposure to the risk of terrible tragedy. It gives me a reliable source of significant responsibility, which overall I value. I like that I’m playing a small part in creating the next generation of humans (and thus in creating the whole set of future humans), I think that’s cool, though having children is not the only way to do that.
I think that human beings are very psychologically flexible, and I haven’t been persuaded by arguments that it’s not the case that the vast majority of human beings have lives worth living. I also am not persuaded by arguments that favor autonomy to the extreme that it’s bad to bring someone into existence because they had no choice in the matter. While I don’t think this amounts to a moral imperative, I think having children is a good thing, if the quality of parenting is even minimally acceptable. Overall, I think having and raising children is good for parents but primarily it’s good for the children (and, indirectly, their descendants).
The book “Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids” was a bit of an influence. The quick summary: People often overestimate the downsides of having children, people often underestimate the upsides of having children, people overestimate the marginal benefit of more labor-intensive methods of parenting, therefore maybe you are underestimating how many children you should have (including underestimating the benefit of tradeoffs where you have more children but use a less-intensive parenting style).
I think choosing to raise a child rather than not will probably make me happier when I’m older, even though it’s not very pleasant a lot of the time currently, and there is the constant additional exposure to the risk of terrible tragedy. It gives me a reliable source of significant responsibility, which overall I value. I like that I’m playing a small part in creating the next generation of humans (and thus in creating the whole set of future humans), I think that’s cool, though having children is not the only way to do that.
I think that human beings are very psychologically flexible, and I haven’t been persuaded by arguments that it’s not the case that the vast majority of human beings have lives worth living. I also am not persuaded by arguments that favor autonomy to the extreme that it’s bad to bring someone into existence because they had no choice in the matter. While I don’t think this amounts to a moral imperative, I think having children is a good thing, if the quality of parenting is even minimally acceptable. Overall, I think having and raising children is good for parents but primarily it’s good for the children (and, indirectly, their descendants).