Let's not get caught up on what dead ancestors may think. The world is already overpopulated. Overpopulation causes depletion of natural resources, degradation of the environment, conflicts and wars caused by such lack of resources, and there being less resources per capita. Adding people when it is causing problems like these is harmful.

However, people having 2 or 3 or thereabouts children isn't something to be worried about too much, so go ahead if you want to. But people who have lots of children has to stop. This is per person, so it includes men who have children with different partners. If it is left too late, then less can be done about it.

Just in terms of numbers isn't a man having a single child each with 10 women better than 10 couples each having two kids?

In response to your question, have another question. Does a man having a child with woman mean she won't have other children? I don't see any reason it does.

Would a man having a child with 10 women cause huge social problem? It certainly does. Do you want to be a single woman with kids? Doubt it.

Why should men get special status over women with the number of children they have? I really don't see any reason for that. There are men who deliberately get women pregnant and then leave them because they think they are great and winning life because they have so many children and let other people care for them. Those sort of people would support only having limits applied to women.

> Why should men get special status over women with the number of children they have?

I never said they should.

> There are men who deliberately get women pregnant and then leave them

What in the world does that have to do with anything?

> Those sort of people would support only having limits applied to women.

What are you talking about? I never said anything about any sort of limit.

Having kids is a far more selfish act than not. Our species and our planet would be way, way better off if about 9/10 of us elected not to reproduce for a few generations.

You are presumably delighted to know that Europe is in fact dying off with only France having a fertility rate of 2.0 (2014) which is not enough to sustain the population. One wonders who's going to be paying those taxes to fund the pensions of the elderly and the other massive liabilities of the European welfare states.

At < 2 replacement rate, the populations of Portugal, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria just won't be around in a few generations. The cultural identity of Europe will disappear on present trends.

Relying on fertility to prop up the welfare state was never a sustainable model to begin with. The adjustment will not be pleasant whoever is left in 200 or so years will be a lot better off because of it. To say nothing of all the non-human species with whom we share the world.

> One wonders who's going to be paying those taxes to fund the pensions of the elderly and the other massive liabilities of the European welfare states.

Can't pay for it. It's all gonna collapse =)

Couldn't agree more.

That's one of the reasons we decided to not have kids. There are too many humans consuming too many resources in an unsustainable lifestyle.

You are normally "way more harsh to people" for making the very personal decision as to whether they will have children?

You do realize just how offensive you are being? Whether other people have children is not for you to decide or deride.

I wrote "...because it's too much of an effort" was a really selfish reason. If you decide not to have kids on some grounds, I don't mind at all.

It amazes me how shallow has people's attention on HN become. Not even bothering to read the whole sentence. I feel like I'm on Reddit.

> I'd put this up there with racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination.

This is probably the most offensive thing in this thread.

You are allowed to disagree with other people's choices. You are allowed to voice that disagreement, even publicly. People are allowed to think you're stupid for caring whether or not someone else has children.

Nothing about any of that is even remotely "discrimination" and to imply it's anywhere in the same universe as racism or sexism is offensive to real problems everywhere.

I'd argue that being harsh to women for their reproductive choices is a key component of modern sexism.

Discrimination has a variety of forms.

It takes a man and a woman to have a child. Stop trying to shoehorn cries of sexism into everything.

Sure. And women and men can both obviously face discrimination over their reproductive choices. The discrimination just disproportionally falls on women. Ie. less likely to be hired because she may have children. Expected behaviours and judgements if she doesn't.

What do women have to do with it?

> You're throwing away all the effort

How many children must one have before one is morally absolved of this sin?

Zero. I only wrote that for those citing "it's too much of an effort" as a reason not the have kids.

I intended to ask: how many children must I have before I'm allowed to cite "it's too much of an effort" as my reason for not having another child?

The topic is deciding to have kids or not. I doesn't matter how many.

As I understand it, though, the argument applies almost equally to deciding whether to have fewer than $n$ children, whether $n$ is 1 or larger.

You have no idea what his ancestors wanted.

I have two kids and whether or not they have kids makes no difference at all to me. Likewise, my parents never pressured me to have kids.

Most of our ancestors didn't get to reproduce all that offspring by being nice guys.

If you think about it for a moment they can't nearly have been as noble as they're made out to be, by far.

Reproduction is not a virtue in and of itself. There will come a moment when the next generation will not forgive us for this overpopulated earth.

But of course I never tell my friends what I really think when they tell me the happy news of their expectancy ...