Or they know the costs will be picked up by the people paying for Medicaid/CHIP and free school lunch. Those people will now be less able to afford their own children.

Don't we want people in general to have more kids, not just middle-class people and rich people? And don't we want those kids to have healthcare and lunch at school?

Are you saying that middle class people are less able to afford children because they pay too much in taxes? Really? Taxes are a primary consideration, not the cost of housing and education?

Poor and less educated people already have more kids than middle class and more educated people.

So there seem to be systematic incentives that skew the desire to have kids.

We should work towards counteracting those systemic incentives, by making it easier for middle class, educated people to have kids (an example would be % tax breaks for each child, which would be more money for middle class people).

> We should work towards counteracting those systemic incentives, by making it easier for middle class, educated people to have kids (an example would be % tax breaks for each child, which would be more money for middle class people).

Yes, and we should also reduce poverty as well, no? So that we can make it easier for currently-poor to have kids as well?

I pay way more in taxes than I spend on housing or education. I pay more in taxes every year than I paid for 4 years of college. So yeah, taxes are definitely a bigger consideration.

Congratulations! You really make a lot of money. Going by the averages, based on the information you shared, and assuming you live in the US, it’s likely that you make north of $300k per year.

Thanks for sharing that with us. Now we know that you are a member of the group that we are talking about here (the middle class and rich). Maybe you can shed some light on how members your demographic actually think about having children.

So, am I wrong? Are you avoiding fatherhood primarily because you pay too much in taxes to afford children?

> People who are irresponsible probably aren't calculating the costs..or they don't care.

Are you saying that poor people who have children are implicitly irresponsible for having had children? That seems to be what you are saying.

As a general rule, don't we want everyone to have kids—including poor people? What do poor people have to do to have kids "responsibly", in your view?

As a would-be parent, it is your duty to guarantee a comfortable childhood for your child. This means having a reliable and sufficient income stream to provide for a reasonably comfortable life. If you lack that sort of income, it is irresponsible to become a parent.

So to answer the question of whether poor people should have children: No, they should not. Absolutely no child deserves to knowingly live a destitute life if it can be helped.

All these comments, like this, are hilarious. I grew up below the poverty line, and it was great. Big screen TVs are not what makes life worth living. Something tells me you commenters value belongings so much because they're all you have and are.

I think you might be missing the point.

The apparent concern that these comments show for the well being of children is misdirection and rationalization, hiding the true intent behind anti-natalist perspectives, which are fundamentally eugenic in nature.

At their foundation, these comments presume that there are people who deserve to have children, and that there are people that do not—in other words, that there are children that deserve to be born, and that there are children that do not deserve to be born.

Poverty is just a proxy for other qualities that would be much too controversial to articulate explicitly.

Not really, just that there is a lot of suffering (not to mention many willing adoptees) out there, and that there is no need to create more suffering by having children one cannot adequately care for, it is not some sort of hidden conspiracy theory to advance eugenics. If that is what you believe, then it is likely that nothing anyone says here will sway you out of that viewpoint. If anything, the anti-natalists will extinguish themselves anyway, so the problem solves itself.

I think you might be misreading some of these comments. I also wonder if you are aware of the history of eugenicist ideas in the west, and how enmeshed those concepts are in many every-day attitudes about who should be having children—often without people understanding the history (and original intention) of policies they espouse. I am not advancing any kind of conspiracy theory here.

And I think you misrepresent the potential harm. Anti-natalists don't just want to forgo having children. Many anti-natalists also want to discourage or prevent other people from having children. In fact, I'm sure many people making anti-natalist comments here do intend to have children themselves—they just want to discourage or prevent other people they find undesirable from having kids.

I have not seen or met any anti-natalists that explicitly want to stop others from having children, and if there are any, that's such a fringe minority as to be inconsequential (just like in other thought groups, like vegans). The vast majority of anti-natalists are like the ones in some of these comments, asking whether it is moral to have children. They are not pushing that onto others.

I have at places like PP.

I was surprised to find such confidently ignorant and repulsive takes. It's one thing to have your own goals for your kids, it's quite another to set some ludicrous standard for others.

Would-be parents aren't authority figures when it comes to either what the goal of parenthood should be, who meets the criteria, or what reasonably comfortable means. Would-be parents get to have their own goals based on their own constraints.

My differing opinion is that it's irresponsible to opt-in to raising a child if you lack the facilities to care for your basic needs, with a bit of margin. If one minor setback risks putting you on the street, and you have no support structure at all, probably don't try and get pregnant. You should be able to provide their basic needs until they can provide their own. That's it, except that income/expense pressure is intense enough now, in many areas, that meeting those requirements can be even more difficult than it might have been with an above-average income than in previous decades.

What is the definition of "reasonably comfortable life"? From the point of view of most of human history and most of the people currently living on earth, even the poorest people in US and Europe live _unreasonably_ comfortable lives.

If the viewpoint you promote was common anytime in history humanity would not exist today.

    even the poorest people in US and Europe live _unreasonably_ comfortable lives.

This is ridiculous. They do not.

If you can raise your kid on a median, as in your kid isn’t spoiled and not lacking - you’re good to go.

Median? So the bottom 50% of the population as measured by wealth or income should not have children, according to you?

Median of their environment.

> So the bottom 50% of the population as measured by wealth or income should not have children, according to you?

If that means world where kids are presented with equal opportunity for happiness - then yes. To give you an example: whole class goes on a trip for X sum, one child's parents can't afford that trip. What is moral to do in this case?

Moral thing is for the child that doesn't have enough money to not go on that trip. It is a valuable lesson that to get something useful from other people you need to do something useful for them first. The difference of what you did and what you took is the money you have.

Taking children to the same trips and giving them all the same toys does not give them equal opportunities, due to natural differences of abilities and interests the children have.

I myself was a child who very often had to stay at home when my class went to cinema or to play computer games. I never would even consider to want to have one less sibling in exchange for going to more trips. In fact i would happily give most of what i had as a child in exchange for having one more brother. After all the best memories are not from expensive things, but from reading a book, or playing together with toys made from simple sticks and newspaper.

If your answer to your question is that, if a child can't go to a trip with the rest of the class then that child is better to not exist at all, then your system of beliefs is immoral and abhorrent. And it is a good thing that such a system of beliefs also leads people holding it to not reproduce and by that select such horrible thinking out of population.

You're so hellbent on proving your point that you don't even read what I write.

> Moral thing is for the child that doesn't have enough money to not go on that trip. It is a valuable lesson that to get something useful from other people you need to do something useful for them first. The difference of what you did and what you took is the money you have.

Child doesn't have enough money?! What are you even talking about?

> I myself was a child who very often had to stay at home when my class went to cinema or to play computer games. I never would even consider to want to have one less sibling in exchange for going to more trips. In fact i would happily give most of what i had as a child in exchange for having one more brother. After all the best memories are not from expensive things, but from reading a book, or playing together with toys made from simple sticks and newspaper.

And what about single children families?

> If your answer to your question is that, if a child can't go to a trip with the rest of the class then that child is better to not exist at all, then your system of beliefs is immoral and abhorrent. And it is a good thing that such a system of beliefs also leads people holding it to not reproduce and by that select such horrible thinking out of population.

I love how all of your message is focused on kid, like parents are just passive observers in all of this.

Keep searching for the boogeyman who wants kid to not exist, and not horrible parents to not procreate.

Either way, none will be able to convince another as it's impossible to provide whole life context to one another. Maybe if we had more extended chat in real life we'd be able to come to some conclusion together, but definitely not on a forum with limited time and limited text.

> Child doesn't have enough money

Yes child has the amount of money that parents are able to provide.

> Keep searching for the boogeyman who wants kid to not exist, and not horrible parents to not procreate.

Why do you think that not being able to send a child to school trip with the rest of the class makes one a "horrible parent"? Not providing child with a sibling is a significantly worse thing.

> I love how all of your message is focused on kid, like parents are just passive observers in all of this.

Parents are trying to give their kid as good a life as possible, and having several siblings gives more opportunities in life and better life overall, than being a single child and having more toys, trips, etc.

Median compared to which group neighbourhood/city/world?

What you are saying is basically equivalent to selling one child in order to buy a toy like the neighbour has for another.

Median of their environment. All kids should have equal opportunities.

So the bottom half shouldn't have children? And who appointed you an authority on deciding who should be conceived and who should not?

But also this:

> All kids should have equal opportunities.

That's your rationale for your position? Your position does not follow from your rationale. Even if only median-or-above families have children, that won't create equal opportunities. That will just make the children of median families the poorest children, with the fewest opportunities.

So your position doesn't follow, even from your stated moral standard.

(Your stated moral standard is also far from self-evidently correct. But even accepting your standard, your position still doesn't follow. What follows is forced wealth equality.)

> As a would-be parent, it is your duty to guarantee a comfortable childhood for your child. This means having a reliable and sufficient income stream to provide for a reasonably comfortable life. If you lack that sort of income, it is irresponsible to become a parent.

Unless your family is very well to-do, you likely only have to look back 2-3 generations on yourself (or anyone) to find parents who don't meet that line. Are you saying the vast majority of humanity are irresponsible parents, or do you believe this to be a new standard that must be followed?

> Are you saying that poor people who have children are implicitly irresponsible for having had children? That seems to be what you are saying.

I am not sure how this is a controversial point? If you cannot properly take care your children, don't have one. It doesn't matter if its poverty, mental health or anything out of your control. Obviously, that is not to say that poverty is their fault but we have better standard of how much suffering a child should suffer.

In what world is this NOT a controversial point?!? Genuinely, I ask: what is the cultural environment in which you exist, such that you can make this argument without at least knowing that other people would find it deeply offensive?

> If you cannot properly take care your children, don't have one.

OK, so poverty prevents a person from "properly" taking care of children? Would you say that poor people able to take care of their children, but only "improperly"?

What, might I ask, is the minimum acceptable level of income that a couple should have before having children? What do they do, those hard-working, upright and moral couples who don't make enough money to meet your standard? Should they live their whole lives childless, and die alone?

Poverty is a variable to properly taking care of a child, that does not mean that the parent means that being poor automatically makes one unfit to have a child, which is what you're conflating, if I understand correctly. If one is poor but can provide the proper nutrition and housing to a child, then great, have them, but if not, then no, I don't believe it is controversial or offensive to say that it would be better for them to not have a child. Child abuse is a big problem for a reason.

> Poverty is a variable to properly taking care of a child, that does not mean that the parent means that being poor automatically makes one unfit to have a child, which is what you're conflating, if I understand correctly.

In fact, the other commenters were conflating these two things, which I wanted to point out. I agree that they should not be conflated.

> If one is poor but can provide the proper nutrition and housing to a child, then great, have them, but if not, then no, I don't believe it is controversial or offensive to say that it would be better for them to not have a child. Child abuse is a big problem for a reason.

The right decision for an individual couple to make is not the same as the right policies and practices for society to implement.

There are people who are unsuitable for having children, but that number is vanishingly small (or at least it should be). Everybody else just needs support, resources, and instruction.

It might be better for a couple that does not have support, resources or knowledge to forgo having children. Whenever that happens, though, it is a tragedy for humanity. The rest of us should need to find ways to support families that are otherwise lacking, so that having children is the best option for them.

> In fact, the other commenters were conflating these two things, which I wanted to point out. I agree that they should not be conflated.

Yes, my bad. Being poor does not mean that you are automatically immoral for having children. But I clarified further that poverty is one of the variables in that judgment. Let's not pretend that being poor have no bearing on what the children will experience.

> What, might I ask, is the minimum acceptable level of income that a couple should have before having children? What do they do, those hard-working, upright and moral couples who don't make enough money to meet your standard? Should they live their whole lives childless, and die alone?

The whole tone of your message, talking about child as a passive thing that you conceive for the sake of making parents “not alone” already speaks a lot about how much you give a shit about whether A KID would be happy being born into this family.

In which family did you grow up? Pops and moms were happy campers with middle class income?

It's such a strange thing to argue that a child who is poor would be better off never to have been born at all—and then to characterize that argument as somehow being in favor of that child's interest.

My point is that a hard-working, upright and moral couple that wants a child should have one even if they are dirt poor, and shouldn't stop themselves because they don't have money. If the child ends up being unhappy in that environment purely as a result of the lack of money, then that is society's failing—our failing—not a failing of the parents'. We haven't done our duty to help this couple raise a happy family.

> In which family did you grow up? Pops and moms were happy campers with middle class income?

This is a strangely personal comment. Is this argument very personal for you? Is there something about your own life that makes you want to deny life to others?

Of course it is. You didn’t pick that up from the time of my comment?

I think we’re discussing this from different dimensions. You’re talking from some abstract concept of family and society relationship and I’m talking from a real word experience of growing up poor. It sucks, big time. So don’t start rationalizing suffering of millions growing up poor as “we’ve failed them, oh well, back to the drawing board!”

Not everyone growing poor has the same experience. I also grew up much poorer than my peers, plus that was in a war torn country where we didn't even have electricity for several years. And it did not suck at all.

Your mistake is thinking that the goal of life is to minimize suffering. But that is completely wrong, only result that this goal can lead to is complete elimination of life.

The goal of life is maximizing complexity, divercity, and capacity of life.

The amount of suffering i had to experience was completly justified because i had a chance to grow up and improve the lives of others. I happened to be lucky enough to realize that chance, but my parents had no way to know beforehand if i would be successful or not, that's why they were right to try.

> It's such a strange thing to argue that a child who is poor would be better off never to have been born

Someone who didn’t grow up poor will never understand this.

It's the same reason we catch and fix stray cats.

It's better that they not have kittens, than their kittens be born and starve to death.

With people, it takes even longer and more suffering to die of poverty than one first winter.

Sounds almost like some old slogan, "life unworthy of life" was it?

There is nothing dehumanizing about saying that any person in significant poverty, regardless of any membership in any demographic sector, should not have kids, because their kids are going to suffer.

I'll go a step further and share my personal belief that no one should have kids.

Children, while traditional, are nevertheless (and this fact seems to be inconvenient to many) optional. Every human has the choice available to them to not have children.

I grew up poor and I don't understand it either.

Children a century ago had a high likelihood of dying before they were 5. Now, that risk is greatly diminished.

At the same time, the standard of living has greatly increased across the board for rich and poor.

I am sorry that you had a bad childhood. Future generations of children, even the poor will have it better.

> I grew up poor and I don't understand it either.

> Children a century ago had a high likelihood of dying before they were 5. Now, that risk is greatly diminished.

I think our misunderstanding of each other comes from having different standards of what's considered good for child and what not.

> I am sorry that you had a bad childhood. Future generations of children, even the poor will have it better.

I never said that I had a bad childhood.

> It's such a strange thing to argue that a child who is poor would be better off never to have been born at all—and then to characterize that argument as somehow being in favor of that child's interest.

> My point is that a hard-working, upright and moral couple that wants a child should have one even if they are dirt poor, and shouldn't stop themselves because they don't have money. If the child ends up being unhappy in that environment purely as a result of the lack of money, then that is society's failing—our failing—not a failing of the parents'. We haven't done our duty to help this couple raise a happy family.

This is such a ridiculous point. Hypothetical children do exists because they will be when its enacted upon. For example, if a couple keep giving birth KNOWING that their children will suffer, are they not responsible for their children suffering?

Sure, it is not their fault that the children suffers. Perhaps because they have bad genes, stuck in a warzone, lives in an awful country, have mental health issues, cannot provide for their children, or whatever. The fact is still that they KNOW this hypothetical children will suffer.

Imagine if we are able to write an executable that will startup a simulation where it will simulate a universe with maximum suffering. I have compiled the program, its right there to be executed. Is it immoral to execute this binary? Yes of course it is. Similarly, if I KNOW that having a child right now, given all the circumstances that I am in, whether its my fault or not, will cause this potential child to suffer, then I am immoral.

The logical reasoning here, is that a poor person needs to become 'not-poor' to be able to have children responsibly.

This greatly trivialises the reality of poverty.

People aren't poor by choice; they're often poor through situations that are beyond their control.

To also suggest they're not allowed to have children because of these factors beyond their control is tantamount to an injustice.

This is like saying people with life threatening congenital defects not being allowed to have children because of factors beyond their control is an injustice.

Nobody's stopping them, but it's still and irresponsible and terrible idea.

If you believe that poverty is truly outside of individual control, the situations are analogous.

Absolute nonsense.

Extra chromosomes don't come about due to unjust political choices being made on behalf of parts of the electorate.

Poverty is generally outside of the control of _those who suffer it_ largely because money brings power.

Those without money naturally have less.

Consider your views carefully, because at present they're definitely not worth reproducing.

We're not talking about the electorate, we're talking about individual people's decisions to have children.

If you are impoverished (and thus unable to meaningfully effect change in the system that impoverished you) it is irresponsible and bad to have children because the outcomes for those children will be bad.

You may decide that this state of affairs is bad, but that doesn't change the fact that it is still bad today to make an individual choice to have children in poverty.

Only if you believe the only worthwhile thing in life is money.

As someone who grew up in a poor family as an unplanned child I have to agree.

> Are you saying that poor people who have children are implicitly irresponsible for having had children?

Yes. Not implicitly, explicitly. That’s how I was born and suffered for 20 years until I earned my way out of poorness.

> What do poor people have to do to have kids "responsibly", in your view?

If you can’t give your kid what other parents can (and I’m not talking about obscene gifts, just basic activities such as going to clubs, or attending social places) - you shouldn’t have kids.

You are incorrect.

What if you can give them positive things that money can't buy?

Do all rich kids get the benefit of wisdom, experience, compassion, joy?

I grew up poor, my life is awesome now, so you are wrong in at least one case :)

The assumption that people are irresponsible is too strong. Often all it takes is this: "Mom, if I have a kid will you help me raise it?" - "Of course".