Does parental responsibility eclipse parenthood?

[Trillo]

Have you ever thought about whether to have a child? If so, what factors entered into your decision? Was it whether having children would be good for you, your partner and others close to the possible child, such as children you may already have, or perhaps your parents? For most people contemplating reproduction, those are the dominant questions. Some may also think about the desirability of adding to the strain that the nearly seven billion people already here are putting on our planet’s environment. But very few ask whether coming into existence is a good thing for the child itself. Most of those who consider that question probably do so because they have some reason to fear that the child’s life would be especially difficult — for example, if they have a family history of a devastating illness, physical or mental, that cannot yet be detected prenatally.

All this suggests that we think it is wrong to bring into the world a child whose prospects for a happy, healthy life are poor, but we don’t usually think the fact that a child is likely to have a happy, healthy life is a reason for bringing the child into existence. This has come to be known among philosophers as “the asymmetry” and it is not easy to justify. But rather than go into the explanations usually proffered — and why they fail — I want to raise a related problem. How good does life have to be, to make it reasonable to bring a child into the world? Is the standard of life experienced by most people in developed nations today good enough to make this decision unproblematic, in the absence of specific knowledge that the child will have a severe genetic disease or other problem?
...
Schopenhauer’s pessimism has had few defenders over the past two centuries, but one has recently emerged, in the South African philosopher David Benatar, author of a fine book with an arresting title: “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.” One of Benatar’s arguments trades on something like the asymmetry noted earlier. To bring into existence someone who will suffer is, Benatar argues, to harm that person, but to bring into existence someone who will have a good life is not to benefit him or her. Few of us would think it right to inflict severe suffering on an innocent child, even if that were the only way in which we could bring many other children into the world. Yet everyone will suffer to some extent, and if our species continues to reproduce, we can be sure that some future children will suffer severely. Hence continued reproduction will harm some children severely, and benefit none.

Benatar also argues that human lives are, in general, much less good than we think they are. We spend most of our lives with unfulfilled desires, and the occasional satisfactions that are all most of us can achieve are insufficient to outweigh these prolonged negative states. If we think that this is a tolerable state of affairs it is because we are, in Benatar’s view, victims of the illusion of pollyannaism. This illusion may have evolved because it helped our ancestors survive, but it is an illusion nonetheless. If we could see our lives objectively, we would see that they are not something we should inflict on anyone.

more@ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/should-this-be-the-last-generation/

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submitted without further comment

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Interesting musings.

[zipplewrath]

2. Get that man some prosac

"Benatar also argues that human lives are, in general, much less good than we think they are. We spend most of our lives with unfulfilled desires, and the occasional satisfactions that are all most of us can achieve are insufficient to outweigh these prolonged negative states. "


Dunno about ole Benatar, but on balance my life ain't that crappy. I'm all for putting more serious thought into whether one should choose to procreate. But dude, life ain't THAT bad.

[notesdev]

3. Yeah

maybe if he turned off his TV a while he would be happier.

[Warpy]

4. By the time we could afford to think about having a kid

my ex had already crawled into a bottle and passed on a disease that destroyed my fertility.

I have always been grateful we didn't have any kids. It would have been pure hell for them enduring an alcoholic family system followed by divorce.

Not everyone is equipped to be a parent and I think I'm likely one of those. People who are equipped to be parents generally don't worry about affording it or being completely stable, they just go ahead and do it. After all, nobody gets a guarantee about what life will be like and life has a way of throwing monkey wrenches into the machinery of the most carefully thought out life plans.

It's just one of those things that people want to do and just do. Or they don't.

[Igel]

5. It's Singer.

Posting the actual opinion piece was unnecessary.

It would be one thing if he struck controversial, extreme, over-the-top intellectual positions for the sake of argument, just to see where would lead, to provoke debate and to provoke thought. He doesn't.

He actually believes what he says.

It's the ultimate in "there's nothing at all exceptional about humans, except maybe that they're less necessary or more harmful than other species." Personally, when I think about Singer I conclude that he might be right. I see little difference in intellectual capacity, morality, or actual importance between him and the toad that I should be out catching June bug's for.

I've often wondered--if a flock of rats were to set upon him and start chewing him to death, would he merely think, "Gee, I have no more right to survive than any one of them, and they could benefit from my death. They're easily my intellectual equals, so I can't hurt them. I will attempt to bore them to death by talking--and, presumably, by screaming--but to take one of their lives would be wrong. To the extent that, of course, there can be independent, objective, non-human-based views of wrong." If so, I might be willing to chip in for some rats.