I'm pretty sure that having kids contributes in the _opposite_ direction to the maintainability of our planet and our species as a whole. Why do you think it's a service to humanity when population growth is a growing problem, continuing to get worse, which exacerbates issues like conflict between groups, resource contention and climate issues.

I want to emphasize that a sustainable average number of children per family is not zero [0] but around 1-1.5 for a sustainable population size in 100 years, according to the linked article. So given that you presumably live in a developed country (well educated, and don't need children for labour), and have a human's normal biological urges to reproduce, it's not immoral to produce children, but it's certainly not morally commendable.

[0] https://mahb.stanford.edu/blog/yes-overpopulation-problem/

I would put it as half a surviving child per person and we can bring numbers down to carrying capacity within 150 years.

I also think we should work towards preserving genetic material so in case of a catastrophe we will still have a diverse human gene pool.

>way too many people just cannot be bothered so someone has to

This couldn't be further from the truth. I don't know anything about you but I can confidently say for every person like you, there are 5 that have a lot of kids purely out of inability or unwillingness to try not to. We are so far from not having enough children that your service to humanity is nothing but a stroke of your own ego. If you really, truly believed what you're saying, would you give up your right to have children under a guaranteed contract that someone else would in your place? Probably not.

It’s not a service to humanity. There are 7 billion of us out here. There are plenty of great reasons to have kids but I don’t buy the “for the greater good” argument.

i agree - if them having kids is "for the greater good", they could just as easily donate half their own paycheque to a charitable organization that deals with orphans and starving kids in parts of the world. That might make for a greater good than one additional child they may make.

Seriously. We have >8% of the world population living in poverty. If these supposed self-less "I did it for the good of the species!" procreators really wanted to help humanity, we'd see a lot more adoption.

I can't fathom this perspective. Who looks around themselves, seeing the amazing, world-altering scale of human population and says to themselves "You know what this place needs? More of me!"?