There is this pervasive narrative — but maybe I am just on Reddit too much — that there is no rational reason for anyone to have children, and all the quantifiable downsides of having children, may it be the financial burden or concerns for the environment or the future state of the world, far outweigh the only reason anyone wants to have children, which is just this irrational biological urge to reproduce. In this narrative, having children is just another personal choice that involves the exchange of money and/or labor for happiness, not unlike adopting a dog or having a hobby.
I think that’s too reductive, and to the point that it is wrong. And maybe I am precisely the kind of person who won’t have any children unless there is a rational justification for it, I’ve thought up plenty of reasons for a rational person to want to have children — long before I actually wanted children myself.
(Also, viewing children as a resource drain is a slippery slope toward other narratives that put the capitalistic goal of society above its humanity, such as arguments against funding education and general welfare, or how stay-at-home parents are not valuable to society, which I abhor. That is the tail wagging the dog.)
As the cliché goes, you can’t put a price on love — which is true — but that doesn’t mean love is not quantifiable or not tangible. You certainly love some people more than others, and you can certainly feel and touch that love through tangible acts, may that be a hug or a gift. I’d also argue that familial love is often the most potent form of love, for even the form of love that is the most lauded — romantic love — seek to transform itself into familial love, into marriage and family.
But this familial love loses its value over time — not because your love for family dies as you grow older, but because your family dies as you grow older, one by one. Without having children, the total amount of accessible familial love would decrease over time. When I was born, I had a greatgrandfather, all of my grandparents, my mom and dad, and my sister. Today, only my mom and my sister are still around.
While friends and romantic relationships can help satiate the want of love — unless you are Leonardo DiCaprio, your friends and lovers too will grow old with you. You can of course adopt a child, which is the same as having a child in this context. Although I do think that the ethics of adopting children is more complex and not as clean-cut as popular culture makes it out to be, that’s off-topic here.
What about the expense of time and money? Sure, not everyone can afford to have children. I’m not saying that money and time shouldn’t be part of the concern. I am only saying that there are very rational reasons to spend the money and time to have children. It is, for lack of a better word within a language whose logic has been plagued by tradeoffs and deals in the marketplace, a worthy investment. For money and time are only currencies and are only useful when exchanged for food and happiness and adventures and experiences — and love. You can still visit Paris and buy a Playstation even if you have children, although you may have to miss out some experiences here and there, but, without children, your portfolio of happiness will forever be missing the unique item of familial love.
What about the ecological argument against overpopulation? This concern is very real, but I don’t see it as clear-cut as an argument against having children. It is just another spin on the same, but perhaps more general, question of: Do you think you can raise a child who can bring a net good to the world?
In other words, can you confidently say that you can raise a child who will bring enough “good” to offset their carbon emission, the food they eat, the people they wrong, the products they consume, etc.?
Good and bad are not easily quantifiable parameters like planting trees for plane tickets or saying Hail Marys for sins. but it is worth noting that this tradeoff exists, and the sole purpose of existence is not only to minimize what one takes but also to maximize what one gives. Otherwise, the only logical decision for any living thing would be to commit suicide.
And this burden or opportunity to care for a future beyond your lifespan frees you from being tethered to your own time, to have a connection to the next generation of humankind, to have a stake in the future of the world and its political systems and whatnot, to not only care about only your legacy as a lone individual, and to provide an albeit imperfect but intimate safeguard against the kind of cynicism often induced by old age, to extend the most potent form of love — the love for your child — to the future and a world that you may otherwise struggle to care because of selfish tendencies.
