I'm conflicted because the carbon footprint of another kid is substantial.

Then again, individual action is utterly meaningless. With ~8billion people it just doesn't matter what I do. Only large-scale action that brings about systemic changes matters. And hey, maybe one of my kids will be the one to help fix it!

Then again, if people viewed 2 as a nominal max then we'd still be on the right path (a bit below replacement rate would be OK generally speaking)

But I already brought one life in to the world when I worry about global collapse and am not sure I want to do that for another.

But siblings are pretty great!

But if I have an only child I can afford a better school for them..

Anyway, still thinking. So is the partner.

Also, "fuck the job" is easy to say except it's not my job, it's the opportunity for my partner to do the thing she's wanted to do her whole life and has worked her ass off for. It's crazy hard to actually build a career in museums and heritage (related... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16792942) and maybe she shouldn't have to give that up.

Then again, being in an industry where employment is that tenuous sounds like a crappy way to spend life.

FWIW, if you care about the environment, the right move is to have kids. All species expand to fill their ecological niche. If you abstain from having children, their spots will just be taken up by other people's children. We are powerless to influence the number of people, but we can influence the proportion of people who have an environmentalist bent.

I hear you about the career thing. I have sacrificed immensely to be able to afford a family. But now, when I am surrounded by my children, I think about all of the possibilities that lay ahead of them, all the grand adventures they will have and the adversities they will overcome, and I remark to myself, "I made all of this possible".

> FWIW, if you care about the environment, the right move is to have kids.

This couldn't be more wrong. Every new life is another body consuming resources.

> All species expand to fill their ecological niche.

This doesn't apply to humans. Unlike other animals, we've mastered agriculture and can produce our own food. But there are still non-renewable resources that we're constantly consuming and will eventually run out of, but we'll continue to reproduce.

> If you abstain from having children, their spots will just be taken up by other people's children.

This implies the inverse, that if I choose to have children, someone else will react by choosing not to. If I choose not to, that won't cause someone else to have more to "take up my spot". There will still be fewer children.

> We are powerless to influence the number of people

On an individual scale, yes. My choice to not have children has no significant impact on the population. But lots of people choosing to not have children does. Your argument is similar to the one made by people who don't vote because they think their one vote won't change the outcome of the election.

> but we can influence the proportion of people who have an environmentalist bent.

This part is at least true.

The thing is that, after you decide to not have kids, time keeps up it's inexorable march. The earth has a carrying capacity for humans. We haven't hit it yet. But we will. This is the one absolute of life: species expand in population until there's no more niche left to occupy.

So after you decide not to have children, other people will have children. Eventually, their descendents will take up the space in the earth's carrying capacity that your descendants would have taken up. There is nothing you can do to stop this. So the best strategy is to change the proportion of people who have an environmentalist bent. Children are an effective way to accomplish that.

Umm... at the risk of being dramatic..

In addition to worrying about the carbon footprint of another kid, I have a much bigger concern that

* We will do nothing regarding climate change (seems likely)

* The predictions for Business as Usual will have been too conservative (seems likely given that the Arctic is melting well ahead of schedule, and who knows how clathrates pan out)

* Temps rise by a good 8C or so in the next 8 decades

* My child, or their children, will die horribly in a new global Holodomor as our resource chains (webs, really) collapse and the world's civilizations implode.

Anyway, I already had one. But I have a deep, pervasive dread that I have doomed them to the above. However, I also might be wrong! Maybe it just gets a bit warmer and they can open a nice winery in Sweden and it's all fine.

Let your kids worry about that. I know I, personally, would rather be alive and facing catastrophe than not be alive. And history is filled with examples of people who persevered through all kinds of calamity. We're a resourceful bunch. And it'll be easier for your children to face the future together than for your child to face it alone.

Just checking in to say I sympathize. I don't have any kids yet, and was thinking about having none (not having a kid is as effective as being vegan and biking to work for the rest of your life...). But I'm worried about how my life would look with and without kids and how hard it would probably be to convince my future spouse to not have kids, etc. And in light of that I start feeling helpless and maybe it's worth just having a kid and enjoying my life because it's not my fault that so many people are fucking up the environment, driving trucks on hour long commutes, and having 5 kids. ¯\_(⊙︿⊙)_/¯

Population stability is probably the metric to optimize for if you care about sustainability. Rapidly growing or shrinking populations cause problems.

Given how much the West flirts with the replacement rate, I think you should do whatever you feel like doing.

I hope to have a large family for this reason.

I dont know if I'll have the time to give kids my full attention.

I found my brother was/is the reason I'm a nerd. Sure my dad was a database manager, but I spend hours daily with my brother gaming. I dont even think I wanted to spend a half hour with my 'boring' dad.

When thinking about having children and about the level of care and attention you’ll be able to give them, I think it’s useful to have the right comparison in mind. If you’re considering having another child, that child’s choices are not between your limited time and attention on the one hand and, on the other, parents who can shower them with time and attention. Instead, the alternative to your limited time and attention is never getting to be alive.

When you frame things that way, the answer for parents who are considering another child is pretty much always to give the child the gift of life. In the developed world, at least.

Life isn't automatically good!!! Bad parenting can, and does, create lives that are arguably better to have never existed.

I think it’s pretty patronizing to make this choice for other people. IMO, there’s only one person whose moral right it is to decide whether a life is worthwhile. And that’s the person whose life it is.

No there's not, because one lifeform's existed can effect others. Additionally when debating if life should come to be, the lifeform in question can't have an opinion until after the fact.

Think about the kind of life you think would have been better off not existing. Surely there are people alive whose life fits your criteria. Now imagine telling one of these people that it would have been better if they never existed.

Probably they'll tell you where you can stick your notions.

I'm not suggesting someone goes and tells them, that would just cause more pain. I'm suggesting we stop that life from existing in the first place.

If you have other reasons for not wanting a life to exist, that’s another matter. But if your only reason is that, in your estimation, that person would have a life not worth living, that seems awfully presumptuous. Life is optional. Let them decide if they want to be alive.

"is never getting to be alive."

I suppose we may differ on this but I don't really view that as a negative. I don't think there's a pool of "potential people" from which we draw when making a new person. An infinite number of beings don't exist, and won't. I actually would love to see more work on the nature of consciousness and the self, and what exactly gives a new foetus or baby its awareness of the fact that it exists.

And yet I'm not entirely consistent internally because even though "I want someone to hang out with when I'm old" is part of the reason kids sound fun, most of it is "bringing a new being capable of experience joy into the universe", so I guess I sort of agree, in a roundabout sense.

>the alternative to your limited time and attention is never getting to be alive.

Eh, if anyone should have kids, it should be the financially well off and educated people.

Remember that your logic isnt going to stop impoverished people from having 4 kids and welfare.

Yeah, you and I might not want impoverished people from having kids that they can't afford (since guilt will compel us to step in and assist). But I would bet that 99 out of 100 people who grew up in the worst kind of poverty would happily do so again rather than never have existed. So, from the child's point of view it's a good tradeoff.

I'm the older brother in my family and what the hell are you talking about!?

Someone once told me: "The best gift you can give to an only child is a sibling. Shows them they aren't the center of the world."

You can do that via good parenting too. The myth of the self absorbed only child is just that, a myth.

My cousin is an only child and he turned out great and had a great childhood. I kinda envy the amount of family time and adventures they were able to go on. Part of it might be family culture, but seems like with one kid you can "do" a lot more, where as with 3 kids, doing things were often frustrating endeavors and just "maintaining" was more the norm.

This is true. But I was thinking more about just getting through life. Governments and pension systems come and go. But as long as you have living siblings, you’ve got pretty damn good insurance against all the stuff that goes wrong in life.

As someone with 4 siblings I'm going to have to disagree with this. Siblings aren't inherently good things to have in life. I know plenty of only children who have never wanted a sibling and plenty of folk who are largely indifferent to their siblings. It depends massively on the personality of the people involved.

> I know plenty of only children who have never wanted a sibling and plenty of folk who are largely indifferent to their siblings.

Then there are siblings who are a literal burden on their families. Some people just use others and walk all over everyone. Someone in my extended family tried to burglarize the home of someone else in the family. That’s not someone I want in my family.

That too. I was more suggesting that some of us aren't particularly close with our family or people people. That and you can not particularly like someone without them being horrible, sometimes personalities just clash or are indifferent to each other.

If you think that life insurance, disability insurance, and a social safety net are good things, then you think that siblings are a good thing.

I don't expect my siblings to be any of those for me. It's incredibly unfair to put those expectations on family.

Yeah, nobody wants to burden other people with dependence. But shit happens. The history of our species is basically one conflagration after another. If I were to die with dependent children–which, up until about 80 years ago was a common occurrence—I know that my siblings would help care for my children. Or even if I just fell ill and needed assistance, my siblings would be there as a safety net.

And it goes both ways: I would do the same for them.

Family are the people who, when you need help, they have to try to give it.

Just had this with my brother. He's got a fairly expensive illness. I asked if he needed help. It never even occurred to him to ask - he's pretty independent. But if he has to have help, I'll try to help.