Is having children immoral?
“When are you going to give me grandchildren?” says every parent once you reach your 25th birthday and every birthday after that. You laugh at the question, to which you are subsequently met with angry remarks about how it is selfish to continue to live childless. “Who is going to look after you when you become old?” they may ask or lecture you on how life is a blessing from God. And it is not just our parents; society also echoes the same narrative towards the women who dare remain childless as if it is a moral failing.
However, as time changes, the promises of stability and structure provided by the nuclear family are now under threat. As climate change continues to show its true colours through wildfires, droughts, and flooding while geopolitical tensions increase, it is hard for young people to continue submitting to the over millennium-long social system their parents did.
Why have babies anyway?
Although the birth rate in most developing countries is declining, many people still desire a family of their own. In a world full of chaos and evil, children are innocent and tend to grow up slightly different from their parents. Besides, we are not doomed to commit the same mistakes as our forbearers. This line of thinking gives people hope that the younger generation will have a positive impact on the world.
Nationalism
Additionally, having babies is seen as a national duty. Many right-wing groups fear that, due to immigration, the native or dominant ethnic group will be replaced. For instance, the declining birth rate in Italy has been pushed as a moral and national issue by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. She has repeatedly eluded, in a Mussolini-esque fashion, to an “ethnic replacement” and has campaigned to increase fertility rates.
Throughout history, nationalist propaganda used images of nuclear families and urged women, in particular, to bear many children. In Israel, the birth rate is 3.1, the highest in the developed world. The driving force of Israel’s fertility boom is fear that Arabs would outbreed Israel, making it no longer Jewish and, consequently, threatening the status quo. Former Israeli minister Yossi Beilin argued, “If there is a similar number of Jews and Palestinians, they can choose to live together in one state or two. If the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or Democratic, but it cannot be both.”
Currently, Jews make up 73.6% of the Israel population, while Palestinian Arabs make up 21%. Israel’s increase in fertility can also be attributed to Orthodox Jews (Haredim), whose birth rate is double the national average at 6.6 births per woman. Lewis T March reported in the Mercator that Orthodox Jews make up 13% of the Jewish population, yet their offspring make up 19% of Israeli children under 14. Israel nationalism-zionism has increased post-Oct 7, and pressure on Israeli women to reproduce has also heightened. An Israeli demographer ‘joked’, “If an Israeli woman has fewer than three children, she feels as if she owes everyone an explanation — or an apology.”
Unfortunately, it is not just Israeli women’s wombs being used as a tool for political gain since the same rhetoric is also imitated by Palestinian nationalists. Yassar Arafat, PLO leader from 1994 to 2004, stated, “The womb of the Arab woman is my strongest weapon.” University of Montreal demographer Dr Anais Simard-Gendron highlighted the connection between Israeli high birthrates and nationalism: The total fertility rate in Israel, estimated at approximately three children per woman, masks significant regional disparities, including the case of Jewish women living in Israeli settlements, which have even more babies than Palestinians, the average being five. These women are aware of the political value of their fertility. The final sentence affirms the lack of agency the women have in the ongoing fertility war, one of many wars.
China one-child policy
On the opposite side, fertility was also a national dilemma for the CCP. In the late 1970s, China’s population was close to reaching 1 billion, which raised concerns over the impacts a large population could have on economic growth. Therefore, in 1979, China introduced the one-child policy, with a few exceptions added as the years went by, such as if the firstborn is disabled or a girl (how awful!). The ethicality of policing women’s reproductive rights remains controversial, as well as the various inhumane punishments towards those who were defiant to the policy, ranging from hefty fines to sterilization, intimidation, abortions, and infanticide. Nevertheless, the CCP presented the restrictive policy to the Chinese populace as a national service. In a series of Soviet-style propaganda posters portraying a mother and child, an infamous slogan at the time was: “Implementing family planning is in the interest of the country, people, and posterity.”
Family planning remains political in current China, as in 2021, the policy was revised again to a 3-child policy in hopes of addressing China’s aging population. The plan, however, is futile as it ignores unmarried women and same-sex couples. Unmarried women are not allowed to receive IVF treatment and egg-freezing, while same-sex couples are prohibited from adopting and receiving sperm or egg donation. Surrogacy is also illegal for all. This raises the question of who is allowed to reproduce.
Apathy
It is not just China experiencing a decline in birthrates; most of the “developed world” is also navigating a change in age demographic. In a study conducted by YouGov, 37% of childless adults say they do not want to have children, citing age, impact on lifestyle, cost, and overpopulation as their reasons. Teenagers in the UK also share similar skepticism about having children. Skynews reported that 45% of teenagers between the ages 16–18 say they are concerned about parenthood due to “ fears about pregnancy and childbirth, self-doubt, financial burdens, health and wellbeing, a hindrance to personal aspirations, and non-inclusive LGBTQ+ education” in addition to climate anxiety.
The expense of having children is a recurring concern across all age groups. The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) estimated that the cost of raising a child to age 18 was £166,000 for a couple and a staggering £220,000 for a lone parent. Furthermore, almost half of a parent’s spending on their child goes towards childcare. Meanwhile, the cost of childcare in England has risen four times faster than the growth of families’ wages.
Antinatalism
Therefore, it seems that we no longer live in a society where big families are aspirational to the masses. After centuries of religious morality hailing the traditional marriage and offspring as righteous, many people now feel that the act is the opposite. Antinatalism is the philosophy that argues that coming into existence as it exists presently is immoral; thus, having children is morally wrong. Antinatalists argue that life consists of a ratio of pleasure and suffering, whereas not existing entails neither. Subsequently, it follows that it is better not to know pleasure than to suffer. Arthur Schopenhauer, in his book “Studies in Pessimism” declared, “We generally find pleasure to be not nearly so pleasant as we expected and pain very much more painful.”
Similarly, Buddhists believe in the cycle of rebirth and death known as Samsara. The goal for Buddhists in their lifetime is to reach the highest stage of enlightenment called Nirvana: a state of liberation from the cycle of rebirth and freedom from desire and pain. Hence, Buddhism affirms the antinatalist line of logic that it is better to not exist than to suffer.
So, is having children immoral?
Reproducing is our evolutionary extinct; therefore, it is only natural to desire to have children. It would not be fair to label a natural desire as inherently immoral; suffering is universal, but it is also subjective. However, there are numerous factors one must consider before deciding on whether to have a child or not. The truth is, there is never going to be a ‘right time’ to have a child in this environment, but it would be cruel to ignore the red flags on the basis that having kids is a blessing. The quality of life will always be more important than the quantity.
