A research article in the journal Think enumerates the reasons it’s better not to have children.
Most people assume that having children is a rewarding exercise, even a necessary ingredient of a complete and happy life. But a cold hard look at the facts suggests otherwise.
Children rarely make a net contribution to a parent’s (self-assessed) levels of happiness (and remember, people tend to overestimate their happiness levels). In anonymous surveys, most parents report regretting having children. Seventy percent of people would not have had children if they knew what it would be like …. Only five percent of men and a third of women said having children improved their happiness levels ….
Studies have shown that while people’s happiness goes up when they are expecting a baby it sharply declines once the child is born. And the evidence is, the more children you have the more unhappy you are likely to be …. Happiness levels only start going back up after the last child leaves home ….
Some might think that after a lifetime of offspring-induced unhappiness you can at least look forward to an old age where your children care for you. But in the West the number who care full-time for their elderly parents is comparatively small. Not having children is probably a much better pension plan. When they reach old age ‘[t]he childless are more financially secure and in better health [than parents]’ ….
None of this makes child creation and rearing sound like a recipe for flourishing. It sounds like a major obstacle to a happy life, at least in the majority of cases.
That’s the reason it’s bad for you. Other reasons explored: It’s bad for others, bad for the species, and bad for the child.
Update 5/2/11
No life is good (tpm – the philosophers’ magazine)
South African philosopher David Benatar also concludes against having children, after arguing that our lives more bad than they are good.
[T]here is excellent empirical evidence for the conclusion that people’s judgements cannot be trusted as a reliable indicator of how good their lives really are. … If we were to trust self-assessments, we would have to conclude that there are very few bad people and evil actions, which is patently false. … [W]hatever view one might have about what makes a life good or bad, human lives fall short on the good things but abound in the bad. … A life in which benefit came quickly and effortlessly, and harm came only slowly and with effort, would be a fantastically better life. …
[W]e spend a very short period of time in our prime. Most of a person’s life, for those who live to old age, is spent in steady decline. Those who think that longer lives are better, all things being equal, must recognise that a lifespan of about eighty years, including periods of frailty, is terrible in comparison with a life of youthful vigour that lasts several hundred or thousand years. Our lives are much worse relative to that standard than are the lives of those who die young relative to the current standard of human longevity. …
What does follow, I think, from the conclusion that life is not good, is that we should not create more of it. When we bring new people into existence we start more lives that are not good – and we necessarily do this without the permission of those who will live those lives. We have no duty to create new people and failing to create people can do no harm to those we fail to create. Not having children might make our own lives less good, but starting lives that are not good, merely for our own gratification, is unduly selfish.
Related posts:
Are married people happier? Are parents?
The unavoidable and burdensome responsibility to be happy
The duty to be happy
The enduring benefits of saving children
My Daddy’s name is donor
The death of a child
Children as puppets
Resources:
Image: Temptations & Ambitions
Gerald Harrison and Julia Tanner, Better Not to Have Children, Think, December 21, 2010
Children should not be blamed for our financial instability. We should learn how to budget, not give our kids all the materialistic things that they want and save for our future. As for me, I am still looking forward that my kid will take good care of me in the future. But, that is just an added bonus. I am saving for my retirement so that in the future I will not be an burden to him too. And I pray to the Lord that he will have a loving wife who will be open to the idea of having old people like me and my wife around in the future.
Dr. Joe – The authors of this article are extremely serious, but I didn’t really expect anyone would agree with it. We have children for emotional reasons, not logical ones.
Wishing you a wonderful future with your son and grandchildren.
I agree with their article. You say that we have children for emotional reasons. That may be the case but we are not victims of our emotions – we can decide whether to act on them or not, and so we can subject our emotions (and the actions they might prompt us to) to moral scrutiny. One cannot simply appeal to emotions as a way-out.
Thanks for your comment, Jay. You make an excellent point. I am also very sympathetic to the argument expressed in the article. That’s why I like to follow this subject.
I say that I didn’t expect people to agree with it because choosing to remain childless is a minority position in society. Although, as you say, not everyone is a victim of their emotions, I still suspect that the decision to have children is more emotional than rational. And that the decision not to have children is more rational than emotional. I suspect that the type of moral scrutiny the article describes – not just how children impact their parents, but how they impact other people, the species, and the children themselves – is not a thought process most people engage in before they consciously or unconsciously decide to have children.