I'm surprised no one's mentioned the climate factor, both in terms of actual climate and "living climate" (as in, the world we live in and the conditions we get to live in).
A concern I see typically come up when discussing having kids with friends is the strong belief that the world will certainly be significantly worse off for them, if not having water wars maybe even during our lifetime.
Most people agree they'd rather not have children than bring them into the world to live through the nine circles of hell.
Of course, it's also possible this never materializes, but the fact that it is in people's mind alone is enough.
> Most people agree they'd rather not have children than bring them into the world to live through the nine circles of hell.
This was one of our motives to not have children. My wife and I agreed on not having children three decades ago, since even then the alarms of overpopulation, pollution, and global warming were being sound, and the world had only 5 billion people then.
I can't understand why governments push for more births, our civilization is clearly overpopulated. Let it slowly scale down, plan for it instead. Humanity needs less humans living healthier, both in mind and body.
This is myopic. 100,000 years ago, humans didn't understand the basic rules of how things worked. They would have no idea if and when the next ice age would happen. We've learned a lot as a species and as such, our biological need to reproduce is balanced by the logical realization of the impact we have on the planet and the impact the planet can have on us. We have higher-level thinking and more information to leverage second-order thinking. So no, that's not a joke.
How is caring about the environment(and therefore every living creature) a selfish, lazy materialist act?
Going without children against a ton of social pressure takes a lot of fortitude.
Modern consumer society is dead set on using every last scrap of natural repossible possible while telling you it's not only okay but your right because you have $$$. Bucking that trend and minimizing ones impact is selfish, lazy, and materialistic how?
A concern I see typically come up when discussing having kids with friends is the strong belief that the world will certainly be significantly worse off for them, if not having water wars maybe even during our lifetime.
Most people agree they'd rather not have children than bring them into the world to live through the nine circles of hell.
Of course, it's also possible this never materializes, but the fact that it is in people's mind alone is enough.