Elizabeth Kolbert has written a piece for the New Yorker that sketches several contemporary ethical analyses of procreation, leading with Charles Knowlton’s 1832 Fruits of Philosophy: The Private Companion of Young Married People, by a Physician, one of the first books to introduce a distinction between sex and procreation. Christine Overall, to begin with, finds that most of our reasons for having children are morally repugnant:
Some people justify the decision to have children on the ground that they are perpetuating a family name or a genetic line. But “is anyone’s biological composition so valuable that it must be perpetuated?” Overall asks. Others say that it’s a citizen’s duty to society to provide for its continuation. Such an obligation, Overall objects, “would make women into procreative serfs.” Still others argue that people ought to have children so there will be someone to care for them in their old age. “Anyone who has children for the sake of the supposed financial support they can provide,” Overall writes, is “probably deluded.”
Another is David Benatar, and his new book Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence, appropriately dedicated to his parents. His case turns on the doubtful notion that life’s suffering can be quantified, and concludes that pleasure missed out on because of nonexistence does not count as harm, while suffering avoided for the same reason counts as a good:
“One of the implications of my argument is that a life filled with good and containing only the most minute quantity of bad—a life of utter bliss adulterated only by the pain of a single pin-prick—is worse than no life at all,” Benatar writes. He acknowledges that many readers will have difficulty accepting such a “deeply unsettling claim.”
Finally, Caplan draws on economics to make his case in Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think. He concludes that the golden number for progeny is three. While provoking, these books prove that utilitarian ethics and economics may not be the only tools necessary for deciding how many children to have. And what’s missing from all three accounts is any reason to believe that there is something objectively good about procreation: When did perpetuating the genetic line become a serious concern for the modern family?
Read the article here.
April 10th, 2012 | 1:09 pm
To say that it is wrong or bad to want to continue one’s family is nonsensical. It is what we are, and while people can and do disagree about the purpose, point, or meaning of life, I think it’s pretty self-evident that whatever the point or goal, survival and flourishing is a good thing.
Our families survive and flourish for the same reason we as individuals are: it’s who and what we are. To question whether certain families “should” exist is little different from questioning whether certain individuals “should” exist.
And for individuals within a family to question whether their family ought to continue is as much a sign of sickness IMO as it would be if a cell or organ within an individual could decide the organism doesn’t deserve to exist. It’s suicidal ideation – the real question is not whether we should indulge it, but how we heal it.
April 10th, 2012 | 2:38 pm
I don’t find Benetar’s claim that a life with the tiniest blemish of suffering is worse than no life at all to be “deeply troubling”. Deeply stupid seems more to fit the bill.
April 10th, 2012 | 3:14 pm
The screwy thing is, Professor Overall and book reviewer Kolbert BOTH have multiole children of their own!
So, why did Kolbert try so hard to endorse a position that she and Professor Overall obviously don’t believe in or practice in their own lives?
April 10th, 2012 | 4:03 pm
I’ve never understood why such people don’t think about applying their philosophies to themselves, let alone their children.
April 10th, 2012 | 9:42 pm
This is really an underlying theme in the degenerative ‘wing’ of Western Culture. It is pure nihilism or as Blessed John Paul would call it, “The Culture of Death”
Yet, the Mystery of Creation, the Incarnation and Christ’s Resurrection reveals and calls us to believe in “Life”.
Although the powers of this world killed ‘the Author of Life’, God raised Him from the dead, affirming Life.
Married couples witness to this Life when they join with God in creating every newly conceived child, bringing it into this world and giving the child the new life from above in the waters of Baptism.
April 11th, 2012 | 12:01 am
Huff and puff. Too many people who don’t really know people. Or only know academic people. The rest of us are in love with children, their wonder and acceptance. We participate in the creation of new life because it guarantees new love. Yes, guarantee. And in creating new life my wife and I are honoring our love of each other. Gee, love leading to life and life then leading to love and around again we go. Think someone might have planned it this way? By the way, this seems to be following the pattern of thought used by our president: ascribe silly or sinister reasons to why people do something so it can be regulated.
April 11th, 2012 | 3:56 am
As Pascal says in the Pensées:
“548. Not only do we know God by Jesus Christ alone, but we know ourselves only by Jesus Christ. We know life and death only through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves.”
He thus describes our earthly existence, “199. Let us imagine a number of men in chains and all condemned to death, of whom some are butchered each day in the sight of the others, and those who remain see their own fate in that of their fellows and wait their turn, looking at each other sorrowfully and without hope. It is an image of the condition of men.”
By the light of fallen human reason, these authors are abundantly justified in their nihilism.
April 11th, 2012 | 8:04 am
I’m gonna go with John on this one. My observation among people I know who are having children is that they are having them for love. And that love begets love–the more one gives it, the more one has!
There’s another reason for having kids, and I speak for myself. They come to us as little prophets, to teach their parents what is important in life, and to help their parents become grown-ups. A very difficult task, but someone’s gotta do it!
I’m also gonna go with John on finding the analogy with Obama’s customary modus operandi.
April 11th, 2012 | 8:09 am
I think people often miss the competitive aspect of having children. If my sister or brother have children, it can be a cause of great shame, envy and anxiety if I have none. In many cases, it’s simply a case of sibling rivalry. It’s a matter of psychic survival in the context of the larger family.
April 11th, 2012 | 12:59 pm
it’s as if these experts would have me believe that when i look at my 3 month-old daughter, that what i should really be seeing are dollar signs and “utility.” as peter kreeft likes to say, some ideas are so crazy that only phd’s believe them.
in any case, if this sort of crass worldview weren’t so sad and endemic, it would be a little funny.
p.s. i was standing at a parking lot of a grocery store recently and holding my crying daughter when a brand new ferrari pulled up, engine roaring and echoing through the whole zip code. i watched for 30 minutes as people stopped to take pictures and study the car. then the thought hit me like a truck: i would have to be insane not to behold the treasure in my arms, not to realize how she dwarfs that little red toy in meaning and worth and beauty. which brought a smile to my face, along with a renewed awareness of my own capacity for self-deception and insanity.
April 11th, 2012 | 2:48 pm
[...] Have Children, II Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 2:48 PM Mark Misulia Following up on reasons for and against having children, reasons that arose from the comparably new distinction between sex and procreation, Business [...]
April 11th, 2012 | 5:48 pm
The only understanding of eternal life Abraham probably had is that he would live eternally through his descendants. I think this ancient paradigm of eternal life is a true one, alongside the more modern understanding.
You are not just you, but also all your natural and spiritual descendants (people you have invested your life in–see Isaiah 64). The big picture is that your life is like a vast tree, expanding through all eternity. The enemy is always trying to steal, kill, and destroy from it, to cut it short, to take away from our inheritance. But Jesus has come that we may have life abundantly, to the fullest extent.
April 11th, 2012 | 9:52 pm
I meant Isaiah 54!
April 12th, 2012 | 12:53 pm
This is ridiculous! How could you wish nonexistence upon future generations? What does this professor get out of this stance? narcissism to this degree cannot be that enjoyable.
April 12th, 2012 | 3:41 pm
holding my crying daughter when a brand new ferrari pulled up
LOL yes, the daughter is worth more – and will probably ending up costing more, too, but it’s a better investment. At least for those who are capable of discerning the difference between joy vs mere pleasure.
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