Having or Not Having Children

Interesting interview with two philosophers, Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman, who wrote a book around the question of whether to have children. To start with, this:

Anastasia Berg: When people think about the way in which the role of children in human life, especially in the West, has changed, they often think in terms of children no longer conferring the same advantages. They’re not useful in the same way that they used to be, say, economically. And people talk about the rising cost or sacrifices that they demand. On this model, having children is a possible choice that was more advantageous before and has become less so now. But we think there’s been a far more radical shift in the role of children in our lives. In the past, children were understood as an essential part of a well-lived human life. Human life was understood, essentially, to be intergenerational. It wasn’t just that an individual happened to be related to people, it was essential to who you were. What’s new is not that people find kids are less advantageous, but that they’re considered one possible project among many that one can choose. And once they’ve taken on this framing, compared to the other things one can pursue in life, and considering the costs and sacrifices and risks that, historically, children almost always implied, it’s not surprising that people are finding it hard to justify.

I think this is exactly right. All the stuff about affordability is nonsense; my wife and I have raised five children as nurse and an archaeologist. Some people don't have children because they never find a partner, but married people who don't have children have just decided to do something else.

The interviewer asks:

You speak specifically about a societal evolution that you call the end of “the motherhood mandate.” And you quote a pair of sociologists who say that the “oughtness” that used to be associated with parenthood has been removed for a substantial number of people. 

To which Berg, again, responds with a little discourse about how the argument among feminists over whether motherhood enslaved or empowered women ended with a sort of truce: every woman gets to choose.

In their book Berg and Wiseman note that anti-natalist arguments are ancient. Asked about this point, Berg says:

From the early days, when people asked any philosophical questions, they asked whether human life is so miserable and so full of harm and tribulation that perhaps it is better not to perpetuate it. This argument took two guises. The first is the argument from suffering: human life is full of unhappiness, whether actual or potential, and of so many risks that from the standpoint of the individual, it’s better to never have been born. And from the standpoint of a prospective parent, it is outright irresponsible, maybe morally negligent, to subject another human being to such a fate. There is also the argument from evil. This starts not with the premise of human suffering, but of human character: human beings are bad and evil and harmful. In a theological register, we talk about fallenness and essential corruption of the human heart. And from this, we’re led to the conclusion that it would be morally irresponsible to have more of these beings—whether because we’re perpetuating evil in the world or, in the environmental register of today, because we’re harming the planet.

We bring this up not just to historicize our present moment. We want to show that what is experienced as a contemporary concern is, in fact, pointing to a deep philosophical question: that of the value of human life in the present and future. We also want to point to what is unique about our moment today. While this question was raised historically, it was raised theoretically, abstractly, as an intellectual exercise. What’s different today is that people feel they need to justify that choice in the face of these arguments.

I generally think of childbearing as a personal choice and I wouldn't judge anyone for not having children. But when I think about the universe, I absolutely do see a positive role for humanity in the future. We are the ones who know. Other species are in amazing in their own ways, but we are the ones who have mapped the galaxy, parsed the atom, and walked on the Moon; we are the ones who write epics and build cathedrals and come up with theories about how everything came to be. It may be that we will eventually hand this role over to others, to conscious machines or human/machine hybrids. But it seems very sad to me to imagine a universe with no inhabitants that can appreciate its scale, its intricacy, and its wonder. I think we belong here.