Is bringing a life into existence a good or bad act?

[The Reverend]

Having a conversation with your 5 year old daughter that she will die one day shouldn’t be trivialised. It’s actually quite thought provoking and ultimately very sad.

Not just that she will die, but everyone she has ever known and loved too.

This is an undeniable truth. Arguably it’s one of the only concrete truths we know in this world, and yet people often act incredibly defensively when you mention it.

If you have a child, that child will one day die.
That child will also eventually become aware of this fact. Why is there such taboo about discussing what are irrefutable facts of life?

[CEB]

The reactions to this thread are interesting. It seems to have made some people very uncomfortable.

I quite like these existential threads, keep ‘em coming.

But also can you clarify if you’re BleedsRed or not

[Long slender neck]

Bringing a life into existence is neither good or bad. How that person uses their life could be either though.

[The Reverend]

The reactions to this thread are interesting. It seems to have made some people very uncomfortable.

I quite like these existential threads, keep ‘em coming.

But also can you clarify if you’re BleedsRed or not

If BleedsRed is another user on this forum then I can confirm that I am not.

Glad you enjoy the philosophical threads. I find these topics interesting and it baffles me that people don’t talk about them more frequently.

What are your thoughts on the topic of this thread?

[CEB]

Well my wife and I have decided to not have children, but the morality/ethics of whether or not to do so didn’t really come into it - it was more a balancing of pros and cons and honest discussion about impact on my partner’s health. It’s interesting though how much discussion around having children is framed around ethics though. On balance, not having children is probably “ethical” in the same way that buying fair trade chocolate is, but I don’t think anybody makes these decisions on ethics, but only based on circumstances.

[Rich Tea Wellin]

Well my wife and I have decided to not have children, but the morality/ethics of whether or not to do so didn’t really come into it - it was more a balancing of pros and cons and honest discussion about impact on my partner’s health. It’s interesting though how much discussion around having children is framed around ethics though. On balance, not having children is probably “ethical” in the same way that buying fair trade chocolate is, but I don’t think anybody makes these decisions on ethics, but only based on circumstances.

The amount of people who say ‘when you having a 2nd?’ completely ignoring the health impact of my partner. Not to mention the trauma involved in having the first one!

[Long slender neck]

Didnt women have about ten kids each less than a century ago?

[CEB]

Didnt women have about ten kids each less than a century ago?

Depends how much less than a century ago. My wife and I didn’t have any kids two years ago, and that’s 98 less than a century.

[Rich Tea Wellin]

Well yeah, but not sure they cared too much about the physical or mental impact back then. We do now. Sort of.

[StillSpike]

Well yeah, but not sure they cared too much about the physical or mental impact back then. We do now. Sort of.

Plus - amongst other factors, higher infant mortality mean that the parents had to have more to ensure enough made it to adulthood. My grandparents were all from very large broods, and 3 of them lost more than one siblings in childhood.

[Dunners]

Correct.

Urbanisation and increased access to education for women have driven down fertility rates across the globe. Even just a little bit of education has a remarkable effect, something the abundance of smartphones has amplified.

Empowered with knowledge, women choose to have fewer kids. And this is the decade that most societies are going to notice the implications of reducing generational cohorts.

[CEB]

Ultimately whether it’s “good” or “bad” depends on whether you mean for the life you create, for the species, or for the world. And the answer depends on context and circumstances at the time

[Max Fowler]

Having a conversation with your 5 year old daughter that she will die one day shouldn’t be trivialised. It’s actually quite thought provoking and ultimately very sad.

I just told mine vampires are real so as long as they get bitten by one, they’ll be right.

[The Reverend]

Ultimately whether it’s “good” or “bad” depends on whether you mean for the life you create, for the species, or for the world. And the answer depends on context and circumstances at the time

I think whether it’s “good” or “bad” should be viewed from the perspective of the life you bought into existence.

They had no choice in the matter yet your actions bought them into this world. The question then becomes “is being alive a good thing?”

Most are would say that being alive is good. Although this isn’t an objective fact.

Ok, the next question should be “is being alive better than not existing”. For me, this is where it gets interesting because whatever answer you give here has tricky implications.

If you think that being alive isn’t better than not existing then you caused that person harm by yanking them from non-existence into life.

If you say that being alive is better than being non-existent, you’ve condemned somebody to a horrible fate because the person you bought to life now has to live with the knowledge that they will one day return to the state of non-existence that is apparently worse than being alive.

It’s a lose-lose really. However you could argue that someone who was never bought into existence doesn’t have to suffer the anxiety of being alive for a period whilst knowing that they will soon not exist again.