Should we have children? Philosophers give 3 main answers: giving life is good, better never to have been and neither duty nor fault. AskPhilosophy presents 7 arguments, from Mencius to David Benatar, reconstructed step by step, logic-checked and verified word for word against their original texts.
The 3 possible answers
Each column is one way of answering the question: what it holds and the philosophers who defend it. Click a column to see only its arguments.
Bringing people into existence, and continuing humanity, is a good or a duty.
Mencius, Hans Jonas
Coming into existence is always a harm: we should not have children.
Schopenhauer, David Benatar, Peter Wessel Zapffe
Having a child is a personal choice that needs good reasons, but not an obligation.
Beauvoir, Christine Overall
The arguments
Click an argument to see it step by step, with the objections and replies.
Giving life is good
Bringing people into existence, and continuing humanity, is a good or a duty.
2 argumentsHaving no descendants is the greatest failure of filial piety
The family is a chain between ancestors and descendants: having no children breaks it.
The first obligation is that there be a humanity
Technology can destroy the conditions of human life, so the first obligation is that people exist in the future.
Better never to have been
Coming into existence is always a harm: we should not have children.
3 argumentsIf children were made by pure reason
Only pain is real, well-being being merely its absence: the sum of suffering makes life regrettable.
The asymmetry: never existing is better than existing
The absence of pain is good even if no one exists, but the absence of pleasure is bad only for someone deprived of it.
The last Messiah: an excess of consciousness
Our consciousness shows us death and suffering, and we only mask it without curing the cause.
Neither duty nor fault
Having a child is a personal choice that needs good reasons, but not an obligation.
2 argumentsMotherhood is not a destiny: it must be a free choice
No instinct destines a woman to be a mother; what commits a whole life without being a natural destiny must be a free choice.
Why have children? It is that decision which needs justifying
Having a child creates a person and affects many people: it is this choice, not childlessness, that needs to be justified.
Other philosophers' positions arrive as profiles are completed. No position is presented as the winner.