Is it truly wise and good to bring children into existence?

[No Self]

16 minutes ago, Blackhawk said:

Notice how you are only seeing it from your perspective as a parent.

Even then, we are only allowed to hear a romanticised perspective. Sometimes parents regret having children, but are censored and tabooed by society from sharing their story, lest they be accused of not loving their children. This leads more people to go into it with naively optimistic expectations. It's a vicious circle and unfortunately it's hard to talk about it at all without sounding 'dark'.

No doubt child-raising in a healthy community with high-consciousness individuals, ecological sensitivity and financial security is a wonderful thing for all concerned, but still quite rare.

[Willie]

On 12/25/2020 at 10:50 AM, No Self said:

Sadly, due to Dunning-Kruger, the end result is that the most incompetent and narcissistic people will gleefully pump out new life, while the more thoughtful will abstain. It takes intelligence to recognise a lack of intelligence.

Pretty much what happens in Idiocracy.

I’m one of those selfish people who wants sex and fun times, but no kids. It’s just my perspective on life. I’m not sure if I’d be a good or bad parent, but I don’t want to find out the hard way. It’s not a big deal in the big picture.

[Guest SirVladimir]

Wisdom follows the Heart.

[Elshaddai]

Replying to this 3 months later so i'm not going to reply to everyone's comments but i'll adress some of the points people brought up.

First of all, I never claimed to be an antinatalist, of course the are many amazing and beautiful things in life, my point was to emphesize that there is also tremendous and undeniable amounts of suffering and pain that all living beings experience on some level.

 

On 27.12.2020 at 9:11 PM, blankisomeone said:

Whatever your answer is to that question is wrong.

care to explain why?

 

On 27.12.2020 at 6:37 PM, John Lula said:

It's Russian roulette. Even if you can "guarantee" financial, educational, and a generally healthy environment for the next 25 years, you still can't be sure this kid won't suffer tremendously. And who is to blame if it does? You, you should take 100% responsibility for that. I have worked with disabled kids, and many of these don't enjoy life. Born without skin, born without the ability to think straight, born blind, born awkward. I'm just in my twenties and know too many people who seemingly had great lives but ended their lives due to financial crisis, mental illness, physical pain, and drugs.

I find it ridiculous how many people, even in here, can't think about it like this. Of course, they can have wonderful lives, but it can be really fucking bad as well. And unless you know what a sufficient amount of bad is, you'll remain ignorant. No matter how wise any of these comments seem, they can't experience the child's reality directly.

I completely agree with this sentiment, no matter how rich or powerful and healthy a person is, suffering is guaranteed to come his way.

[Bodhitree]

I’m surprised no-one brought up the environmental aspect. The world is under a lot of pressure with 7 billion people on it, and having more kids is hard to justify if you care about pollution, the climate, biodiversity and the wild. If you don’t want to deny yourself a family, consider having just one child rather than a whole bunch.