Should you have children? Part 1: Arguments against

Christianity, EA, and the ethics of having children

by Vesa Hautala

This is the first post of a series about the ethics of having children. In this first post, I will lay out arguments against having children that seem especially relevant to Christian EA. First I will discuss an argument from opportunity cost, both an EA version and a Christian version. I will then look at some antinatalist arguments, which might appeal to some people in EA who subscribe to suffering-focused morality or are expecting a big catastrophe soon. In the next posts, I’ll go through some counterarguments to arguments presented in this post and start exploring the positive case for procreation.

Altruistic argument from opportunity cost

In an EA setting, discussion about the ethics of having children will almost invariably involve talking about opportunity cost. Raising children takes a lot of resources that could instead be used for impartial welfare maximisation. Instead of spending money on children, you could donate it, and instead of using time for childcare, you could work on the world’s pressing problems. One figure floating around in the community is that raising a child costs about $300,000 in direct cost plus opportunity cost.¹ You could save many lives with this amount of money. In addition, people who believe we are living in a pivotal moment in history might think they should concentrate on making sure humanity navigates this period successfully and only consider having children after the future is reasonably secure.

A similar case can be attempted from Christian principles: you can help “the least of these” more if you don’t have children. Jesus mentions giving up family, including children in Matthew 19:29 and parallel passages. In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul recommends celibacy so that Christians could more fully focus on pleasing the Lord. 1 Timothy 5 speaks of widows who did not marry again and apparently had some specific role in the church. There is a long history of Christian ascetics who choose to remain unmarried, and some instances of married couples living in abstinence for ascetic reasons. Jesus himself did not marry.

If we wanted to formulate this as one of those guilt-tripping consequentialist thought experiments, we could imagine a situation where you can save several lives at the cost of suffering an injury that will make you unable to reproduce. Should you do it? (Trying to imagine a realistic situation to fit the thought experiment lead me to comically convoluted scenarios—not that those are unknown in philosophical thought experiments. Perhaps it’s best to let this be one of those “A genie appears in front of you, offering you a choice…” situations.)

For a catchy formulation of the Christian version, we could try, “How come you have two kids when your neighbour has none?”—assuming the cause of the neighbour's childlessness is that her child died of a disease that could have been prevented by giving to a charity.

These arguments can be constructed either as arguing for an obligation not to have children, or more mildly as discouraging having children or presenting reasons to have fewer children. In a Christian context, the less stringent reading would seem more likely to stand.

The arguments apply in situations where a significant enough amount of good could be done with the resources spent on children in those situations. This seems true for many or most people with a middle class or higher income in rich countries and for people pursuing impactful careers. How much resources having children counterfactually consumes differs between countries and personal situations, but if we go with the $300k figure, donating this amount to AMF would statistically save between 50–100 lives using the current cost-effectiveness estimates from GiveWell.

Antinatalist arguments

Antinatalist arguments assert that human procreation causes harm by itself, not just because of opportunity cost. The ones harmed could be either the ones who are born, other humans or animals, or the environment.

Argument 1: Overpopulation

The most well-known antinatalist arguments are probably arguments from overpopulation. They are based on a claim that there will be or already are too many humans. One basis for this claim can be fear of resource depletion. Classic Malthusian versions of the overpopulation concern can be considered debunked since birth rates are falling in most of the world and global population is currently projected to stabilise around 11 billion instead of growing (and collapsing) indefinitely. Environmental harm, however, remains a concern. For example, this Founder's Pledge lifestyle report illustrates a naïve case that having fewer children leads to less greenhouse gas emissions.

Argument 2: Suffering to animals

Humans also cause suffering to animals, especially via factory farming and fishing (assuming mammals, birds, and fish are capable of suffering—if crustaceans and insects are included, the amount is even larger). You could raise your child vegan or vegetarian, but there's no guarantee they will remain so for the rest of their lives. Plant-based food production also causes suffering to animals by for example crushing rodents and birds during harvest.

But there’s a twist. Some EAs concerned about wild animal suffering think there is an unacceptable amount of suffering going on in natural environments because of animals killing each other, suffering from parasites, hunger and thirst, living in fear, etc. Increasing the number of humans could decrease the total number of wild animal individuals. If this were the case, having more humans around would actually reduce total animal suffering. This is highly uncertain, though, even if we accept the premise that nature is horrible. These kinds of views on wild animal suffering remain a controversial position even within EA.

Argument 3: Life being net negative

There are also arguments that being born is bad not (only) for others but also to the one who is born. David Benatar’s Asymmetry argument supposes that the absence of pleasure is bad only if there is somebody who is deprived of that pleasure, but that the absence of pain is good even if there’s nobody to experience it. In other words, it is not bad to not make more happy people, but it is bad to make more suffering people. According to the argument, it is better never to exist because:

If X exists, there is both the presence of pain (bad) and the presence of pleasure (good).

If X never exists, there is an absence of pain (good) and an absence of pleasure (not bad).

(Benatar 2006: 30, 38)

Ecclesiastes also 4:2–3 declares happy those who were never born:

And I declared that the dead,
    who had already died,
are happier than the living,
    who are still alive.
But better than both
    is the one who has never been born,
who has not seen the evil
    that is done under the sun.

However, the interpretation of the book of Ecclesiastes is fraught with difficulties because of its pessimistic outlook, so it’s hard to say how exactly this passage should inform Christian views.

Benatar’s argument might appeal especially to people with strong suffering-focused morality since they would likely think the absence of suffering is better than the presence of pleasure. The conclusion depends on whether the pleasures of life are enough to outweigh the pains, and opinions on this vary. Life after death will also have a great influence here since it could make being born worth it even if the time in this life were net negative.

Some people who believe an existential catastrophe is very likely to occur in the near future might think it is better not to be born than to be born and very likely die young. Those who think s-risks are significant for humanity might think it’s better not to create more people exposed to them. This brings to mind the apocalyptic words of Jesus, “Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days!” (Matthew 24:19, NKJV), but these words appear to be more about the hardship the mothers will suffer because Jesus is lamenting their situation rather than speaking directly about the children.

In the coming parts, I will present some counterarguments to the maximising consequentialist and antinatalist arguments and lay out the case for having (more) children.

1. This figure is originally from this 2012 essay by Brian Tomasik. It seems to apply in the US, though Tomasik doesn’t specify this. It also seems to me that this is less likely to appeal to people outside expensive metropolitan areas and lower earning potentials. From a continental Western European perspective, or at least a Nordic one, the number seems very high. In Finland where I live, education is paid for by taxes up to and including university level. Tax money is also used to pay child benefits, etc. This makes the personal financial cost of having children significantly less than in the US since you are paying the taxes in any case. The opportunity cost of time seems to remain similar, though.