Human Nature and Having Children

[bilby]

I do find it hard to reconcile the possibility of it being mostly cultural with the fact that for billions of years living things have been instinctually propagating themselves with no need for culture, and not only that, but in many cases deliberately caring for and raising their offspring.

Just throwing out ideas, but I do think it's possible that the mental acuity of people makes it possible, but not certain, for us to rise above the need to have kids. So subsets of our population (like those at Talk Freethought) have the ability to override the instinctual drive to pro-create, whereas other subsets feel an inherent need and desire to have kids. Almost like a neurological goldilocks zone that makes one more likely to like the idea of child-rearing. This theory would be supported by the fact that women group together on the bell curve in one area, and it's usually women pushing the species forward.

So with this in mind I might argue that having kids is maybe partly cultural, but also instinctual, just something that our genetic make-up usually causes us to do for whatever reason. And it trends this way because those who psychologically do not want kids will always fall out of the population.

Living things (with only the novel exception of post-contraception humans) require no distinction between 'instinctually propagating themselves' and 'propagating themselves due to choices influenced by culture' - from an evolutionary perspective, these amount to the same thing.

Only in the last tiny blink of an eye - at most a few hundred years, and more realistically a few decades - has the question of culture arisen; and then only in humans. Evolutionary history is therefore irrelevant to the question, because culture coupled with the ability to make it a significant influence on actual reproductive rates is a new trait that has simply not had time to be strongly selected for or against.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean here.

I'd argue that culture isn't a relatively new thing, by a long shot. The difference between modern times and pre-modern times are primarily a) knowledge and b) reproductive technologies. Culture has been a big and highly variable part of propagation for all of recorded (human) history, and probably human pre-history too. However, for the species to propagate people must a) have SEX kids and b) successfully raise their kids.

So my argument is basically that reproduction has a significant genetic component, because that's intrinsic to propagation. Consider someone that genetically cannot raise their kids to adulthood, they'll fall out of the population. Only those that want to and can propagate do so, and so only their genes are passed on. This means that irrespective of cultural changes, culture will always be oriented toward propagation, and so will genetics.

Long story short this throws us back to an inherent psychological orientation toward wanting to have SEX and raise kids, it's quite literally in our DNA. I want to understand the nature of that DNA.

What's changed in modern times is only our ability to control how many kids we have. So people who don't want them can have sex and not pro-create, and people who only want one or two can do that too.

FTFY

The desire to have sex leads to genetically similar offspring. The desire to nurture children leads to a robust new generation - but nurturing children doesn't necessarily imply nurturing carriers of your own genetic information, because parenthood is uncertain (for men), and because one thing that is certain (in the absence of massive inbreeding) is that children are at best only carrying about half of your genes.

Sex is the important thing; Culture is relatively unimportant, until and unless the technical means exist to elevate culture - by allowing people to choose whether sex leads to children or not.

To be genetically successful in the absence of reliable and effective contraception, requires only a strong sex drive, and sufficient interest in looking after children to ensure that they mostly don't die before adulthood. A culture in which children are barely tolerated is perfectly OK from an evolutionary perspective - there is (until the advent of contraception) simply no evolutionary pressure to do more than the bare minimum for one's children - particularly when half of the parents are unsure that they are really theirs, and even the half who are sure only contributed half of the genes per child.

Parenting as it is understood in the developed world today would be unrecognizable to anyone from a century or more ago; or to many people in the developing world today. Culture evolves FAR faster than genes, and genes simply don't have time to adapt to the cultural background before it is whisked away and replaced with something totally different.

 

[beero1000]

For most of history, people had kids because they didn't have a choice due to lack of birth control. Even if birth control had been available, they would still have had no choice but to have children because they needed the extra hands just to survive. Children were put to work as soon as they were physically able in order to help support their family. It's only been very recently that people have had the option to make it a real choice at all.

It seems to me that the desire to have kids that I see in the modern world is mostly cultural. Personally, I don't really get it.

I do find it hard to reconcile the possibility of it being mostly cultural with the fact that for billions of years living things have been instinctually propagating themselves with no need for culture, and not only that, but in many cases deliberately caring for and raising their offspring.

Just throwing out ideas, but I do think it's possible that the mental acuity of people makes it possible, but not certain, for us to rise above the need to have kids. So subsets of our population (like those at Talk Freethought) have the ability to override the instinctual drive to pro-create, whereas other subsets feel an inherent need and desire to have kids. Almost like a neurological goldilocks zone that makes one more likely to like the idea of child-rearing. This theory would be supported by the fact that women group together on the bell curve in one area, and it's usually women pushing the species forward.

So with this in mind I might argue that having kids is maybe partly cultural, but also instinctual, just something that our genetic make-up usually causes us to do for whatever reason. And it trends this way because those who psychologically do not want kids will always fall out of the population.

Wanting to have sex, and then caring for offspring that result, is indeed instinctual but it's only been a blink of an eye (in evolutionary time) that any connection between sex and reproduction was made at all. An abstract desire to have those offspring is something else entirely - at best, we're talking about an instinctual desire to have something to care for (which could be from unfulfilled maternal/paternal instincts), and people fill in the blanks with what they know. That's what I meant about it being cultural.

There are plenty of examples of this going a different way, of organisms directing those instincts to other things: the cat-lady spinster, the catholic priest, animals mothering others of a completely different species, etc. You could very easily imagine a (transient) extreme society where everyone was religiously and fanatically celibate, or one where people had pets instead of children. We wouldn't say that a dog has an instinct to care for a goat - the dog had a maternal instinct and the goat was there...

 

[Toni]

I always knew I wanted to have children, long before I even really thought of sex and even longer before I had sex. There were many things I wanted to do with my life--still are--but all of them included children even if I wasn't so sure how to manage children plus the adventures I wanted.

Fortunately, I met and fell in love with a man who wanted children as much as I did and who loved me back. And fortunately, we were able to have children pretty easily, with everyone arriving with all fingers and toes and important organs present. Uncomplicated pregnancies; delivery by c-section, every one of them. Not one arrived at a convenient time, when we had actually planned on having a child but fortunately, we were able to accommodate them anyway and they put up with us and our amateur parenting pretty well. Pretty healthy bunch growing up. All independent adults now.

Here's the thing that I didn't expect and don't think I can adequately explain: When we first began to have sex together, having a baby was pretty far from my mind. Oh, I was certain I wanted children, hoped to have my own but also thought I might adopt. There was a lot of sex, and most of our thoughts about babies were about how to prevent having one (for a while). I was pretty sure I didn't want to get married and while I loved my then boyfriend/now husband, I wasn't so sure it would actually work out long term. I was more than a bit of a mess, and we were young and broke and all of that. It wasn't logical. Didn't make a lick of sense. But then it did.
But somewhere between the first and second child, I swear I could feel my body longing for a child to grow inside it. It was actually a craving. I didn't just want to hold a baby in my arms, I wanted to feel it growing inside of me. I know this will seem insane to you men and probably a lot of the women--it did to me, too. But it was real. I could feel my brain go all soft and mushy at the idea. Kind of like falling in love. My arms almost ached. Part of me really wanted to settle into a rocking chair and rock a sweet baby. We didn't have much money but kids are cheap to raise, depending on how you do it and we were flexible about a lot of things--and didn't feel we needed a lot of things beyond the shelter, food, health care and semi-reliable transportation we had. It wasn't a rational thing--it was...primal. Sure, we wanted a sibling for the first and like I said, we enjoy kids. But my longing for a child had nothing to do with creating a sibling for the older kid. It was a real, physical longing. And an emotional one. And like I said: primal. I think it was a genuine biological urge and that the urge was tied up with hormones released during and after sex. There was a lot of sex. Which is how none of our kids ended up arriving at the 'planned' time. Or year.

I don't know how many of you know a lot of younger women who post on Facebook. But all those young women posting endless pictures of puppies and kittens and otter babies and other baby animals, while declaring that they don't want kids?

I think they want kids. Maybe not the conscious, rational part of their brains, but part of them does. Even if they don't think it is a good idea or will fit into their lives well.

 

[fromderinside]

'Lust' (insofar as it is not synonymous with 'sex drive') is fictional - it's a subset of the (equally fictional) concept of 'sin'; Both require a supreme moral law-giver as a fundamental assumption, and it is logically impossible for any such lawgiver to exist, as shown by the Euthyphro dilemma.

Lust can be used to describe a felling brought on by natural reactions when one is around a member of the opposite sex. Explaining lust is on what you perseverate.

Pleasure is a mechanism by which evolution encourages behaviours that lead to reproductive success in a population; it's counterpart, pain, is the mechanism by which evolution discourages behaviours likely to be inimical to reproductive success. As such, the concept of pleasure and pain is inherent in reproduction - sex is pleasurable, and physical trauma to the gonads is painful, both for much the same reasons. A person who is not inclined to avoid blows to the testicles, or a person who is not inclined to engage in sexual intercourse, significantly reduces his personal chances of reproduction, and (under the conditions extant in the ecological niche in which humans evolved), that is likely to be detrimental to the reproductive success of the population of which he is a part.

Damn you mean that the waggle dance of beta splendens during mating is actually related to their aggressive display and coloration. Whoda thunk.

As for blows and preferences your wild assertions are as good as any other folk psychology prescription. IOW not worth writing.

Your explanation rates right up there with one chaining a female rat in heat outside the cage of an adult male rat and using results to show availability of sex is, like providing Hoyes pellets, in inducer of motive. No. Whatever you wrote isn't reasonable analysis..

 

[fromderinside]

I just love my editing success. Don't you. Try replacing felling with feeling and see if the sentence makes any more sense.

 

[rousseau]

For most of history, people had kids because they didn't have a choice due to lack of birth control. Even if birth control had been available, they would still have had no choice but to have children because they needed the extra hands just to survive. Children were put to work as soon as they were physically able in order to help support their family. It's only been very recently that people have had the option to make it a real choice at all.

It seems to me that the desire to have kids that I see in the modern world is mostly cultural. Personally, I don't really get it.

I do find it hard to reconcile the possibility of it being mostly cultural with the fact that for billions of years living things have been instinctually propagating themselves with no need for culture, and not only that, but in many cases deliberately caring for and raising their offspring.

Just throwing out ideas, but I do think it's possible that the mental acuity of people makes it possible, but not certain, for us to rise above the need to have kids. So subsets of our population (like those at Talk Freethought) have the ability to override the instinctual drive to pro-create, whereas other subsets feel an inherent need and desire to have kids. Almost like a neurological goldilocks zone that makes one more likely to like the idea of child-rearing. This theory would be supported by the fact that women group together on the bell curve in one area, and it's usually women pushing the species forward.

So with this in mind I might argue that having kids is maybe partly cultural, but also instinctual, just something that our genetic make-up usually causes us to do for whatever reason. And it trends this way because those who psychologically do not want kids will always fall out of the population.

Wanting to have sex, and then caring for offspring that result, is indeed instinctual but it's only been a blink of an eye (in evolutionary time) that any connection between sex and reproduction was made at all. An abstract desire to have those offspring is something else entirely - at best, we're talking about an instinctual desire to have something to care for (which could be from unfulfilled maternal/paternal instincts), and people fill in the blanks with what they know. That's what I meant about it being cultural.

There are plenty of examples of this going a different way, of organisms directing those instincts to other things: the cat-lady spinster, the catholic priest, animals mothering others of a completely different species, etc. You could very easily imagine a (transient) extreme society where everyone was religiously and fanatically celibate, or one where people had pets instead of children. We wouldn't say that a dog has an instinct to care for a goat - the dog had a maternal instinct and the goat was there...

After churning this through the ringer for a while, it sounds like you hit on an important aspect of it.

Maybe it's not so much 'I want kids', but rather 'I want to raise kids', and all that entails. It's the process of doing with social feedback that's the main driver.

 

[steve_bank]

It is genetic. Unlike some species us humans are in heat 24/7 from puberty to death. We are a bit like rabbits, we love to eat and procreate.

The idea of a family for life and a sense of immortality through offspring I'd say in large part is cultural.

 

[rousseau]

It is genetic. Unlike some species us humans are in heat 24/7 from puberty to death. We are a bit like rabbits, we love to eat and procreate.

The idea of a family for life and a sense of immortality through offspring I'd say in large part is cultural.

So a few themes that have come out of this thread, sex, maternal/paternal instincts.

To be a little more explicit about it, neurologically the brain is primed to want to do things. I'd have to do a bit of searching to recall the specific component of the brain, but to my understanding every person needs a certain hum of stimulation to be adequately aroused and enjoy their life. It's why sitting in a room doing nothing permanently wouldn't work.

When we're young the world is inherently exciting because it's all novel, until it's not enough. Eventually we'll be driven to have sex and start a relationship because it's exciting and enjoyable. And if we have the capacity to have kids that offers another avenue for doing.

I see pyramidhead's point from a purely rational point of view, that it seems immoral to just you know.. start a life for an arbitrary reason. And yet something just seems wrong with calling child-rearing immoral. The idea is hard to express, but to me it just seems built into, and part and parcel to what we are, and that the view that life isn't worth living is untenable. Maybe sometimes, and for some people it is, but I think, at least in all probability, most people love their lives. That's just biology.

That is unless you inject material arguments into it, and we're talking bringing kids into the world in a warzone, or during a famine, or something. In that case I think you'd have to face the fact that people are immoral.

 

[PyramidHead]

I'm curious, though. Under what circumstances would you consider it justified for a person to have children?

None. Basically, the decision to procreate involves 3 people: two parents and their offspring. The person who will bear the majority of the effects is the offspring, and cannot vouch for himself for obvious reasons. All we know is that he will be subject to the rules of the world, which will block him from getting what he wants in life and can only be partially compensated for with lots of time and effort. I won't elaborate on that point unless it's in dispute. To me, that's reason enough to feel morally uncertain about placing him into this world, especially since the reasons for doing so are entirely for the benefit of the other 2 people involved in the decision.

This all assumes a world with the same physical laws as our own, containing some non-trivial amount of harm for any sentient being. As long as that remains the case, procreation is at least problematic. If we're getting into speculative territory, it would be less problematic if there were less harm, but the harm is not just a matter of bad things happening to someone, it's very much integrated into the world itself and our relationship to it, and that goes back to physics (entropy, competition for limited resources, structural stuff like that). I don't know of any conceivable scenario where it would be completely justifiable.

I see pyramidhead's point from a purely rational point of view, that it seems immoral to just you know.. start a life for an arbitrary reason. And yet something just seems wrong with calling child-rearing immoral. The idea is hard to express, but to me it just seems built into, and part and parcel to what we are, and that the view that life isn't worth living is untenable. Maybe sometimes, and for some people it is, but I think, at least in all probability, most people love their lives. That's just biology.

I agree that it does seem wrong, but the fact that this seeming is so strong suggests something emotional, limbic, pre-cognitive is driving it, and that should give you reason to pause. All of what you say is true: it is totally built into us on a deep, primal level to behave in ways that cause more of us to come into existence. Start from there, without assuming it must be right because it's natural, and think of what that entails about us as conscious beings--think of the scale of the predicament we have been caught in all these millennia thanks to the gut feeling you accurately describe.

Also, saying that life isn't worth starting is different from saying it's not worth living once started. Each person has to decide for themselves whether it's worth continuing their life. Their evaluation will be completely colored by that part-and-parcel aspect of our biology (does it make us love life, or fear death so much that we love anything that postpones it?), and I stress that this shouldn't end the conversation, it should provoke thought about whether this biologically engineered cycle isn't some kind of rigged game.

And don't forget about adaptive preferences. People who are locked in a basement for decades by some crazy person will, almost without fail, grow to tolerate their situation and may even grow to love their kidnapper.

 

[Malintent]

This might sound like a bit of an odd question but I'm curious what kind of answers will come from it.

It seems intuitive that having and wanting children is, for the most part, an intrinsic part of our nature, but I wonder what makes it so. What exactly is it about our psychological make-up that causes people to want kids, even though they bear a huge energy cost in having them?

Selection has favoured, over the past four billion years or so, organisms that reproduce themselves. This has resulted in the evolution of behaviours that tend to lead to reproduction.

Peez

Sure, that's a given, but doesn't answer the question. The question is which specific qualities evolved in us that cause the behavior?

Altruism

The quality that the good of society is more important than the good for the individual.

 

[PyramidHead]

Sure, that's a given, but doesn't answer the question. The question is which specific qualities evolved in us that cause the behavior?

Altruism

The quality that the good of society is more important than the good for the individual.

I'm sorry, but that's kind of hilarious. How many people do you know that reproduce primarily for the good of society? Reproduction is almost always done to benefit the parents first, with the secondary caveat that their offspring shouldn't be particularly worse off than the average person, and depending on the culture it may be seen as some kind of civic duty. If altruism were the motivator, nobody would reproduce.

 

[rousseau]

I'm curious, though. Under what circumstances would you consider it justified for a person to have children?

None. Basically, the decision to procreate involves 3 people: two parents and their offspring. The person who will bear the majority of the effects is the offspring, and cannot vouch for himself for obvious reasons. All we know is that he will be subject to the rules of the world, which will block him from getting what he wants in life and can only be partially compensated for with lots of time and effort. I won't elaborate on that point unless it's in dispute. To me, that's reason enough to feel morally uncertain about placing him into this world, especially since the reasons for doing so are entirely for the benefit of the other 2 people involved in the decision.

This all assumes a world with the same physical laws as our own, containing some non-trivial amount of harm for any sentient being. As long as that remains the case, procreation is at least problematic. If we're getting into speculative territory, it would be less problematic if there were less harm, but the harm is not just a matter of bad things happening to someone, it's very much integrated into the world itself and our relationship to it, and that goes back to physics (entropy, competition for limited resources, structural stuff like that). I don't know of any conceivable scenario where it would be completely justifiable.

I see pyramidhead's point from a purely rational point of view, that it seems immoral to just you know.. start a life for an arbitrary reason. And yet something just seems wrong with calling child-rearing immoral. The idea is hard to express, but to me it just seems built into, and part and parcel to what we are, and that the view that life isn't worth living is untenable. Maybe sometimes, and for some people it is, but I think, at least in all probability, most people love their lives. That's just biology.

I agree that it does seem wrong, but the fact that this seeming is so strong suggests something emotional, limbic, pre-cognitive is driving it, and that should give you reason to pause. All of what you say is true: it is totally built into us on a deep, primal level to behave in ways that cause more of us to come into existence. Start from there, without assuming it must be right because it's natural, and think of what that entails about us as conscious beings--think of the scale of the predicament we have been caught in all these millennia thanks to the gut feeling you accurately describe.

Also, saying that life isn't worth starting is different from saying it's not worth living once started. Each person has to decide for themselves whether it's worth continuing their life. Their evaluation will be completely colored by that part-and-parcel aspect of our biology (does it make us love life, or fear death so much that we love anything that postpones it?), and I stress that this shouldn't end the conversation, it should provoke thought about whether this biologically engineered cycle isn't some kind of rigged game.

And don't forget about adaptive preferences. People who are locked in a basement for decades by some crazy person will, almost without fail, grow to tolerate their situation and may even grow to love their kidnapper.

It's hard to express this properly, but I think of the mindset that you, yourself are holding here, and when I state that it's not indicative of people who do procreate that seems obvious to you. But take it further and put yourself in the mind of someone who loves having and raising children. To them, what seems so logical to you, is completely irrational, because they're coming at it from a totally different framework. To these people having and raising children is intuitive and normal, and there is no reason why they shouldn't have kids. To them, that's just how life works. Further than that, it is very probable that most people who are born into the world via these people are of the same mindset. The perspective that you're expressing here is entirely foreign to these people's experience. They are not thinking about the morality surrounding child-birth, it's just something that they do.

Now if you tried really hard you might be able to convince a few people that they shouldn't have children, but mostly you're working against the very nature of what it means to be human. It's like in past times when people started believing in Marxism. Great in theory, but it flew in the face of actual human nature.

So the only real conclusion here is that child-birth and child-rearing is not really a thing you can subject reason, logic, and philosophy on. Telling people they shouldn't have kids is no different from telling a cat it shouldn't have kittens. Yea maybe there are a few people that, by chance, feel that way, or who will be convinced, but they are outliers, not the norm, and quickly leave the gene pool.

Put another way, the immorality you suggest is subjective to you, and not universal to all people. Many, if not most, people probably feel the complete opposite. Who is to judge who is correct besides the subjects themselves?

 

[PyramidHead]

None. Basically, the decision to procreate involves 3 people: two parents and their offspring. The person who will bear the majority of the effects is the offspring, and cannot vouch for himself for obvious reasons. All we know is that he will be subject to the rules of the world, which will block him from getting what he wants in life and can only be partially compensated for with lots of time and effort. I won't elaborate on that point unless it's in dispute. To me, that's reason enough to feel morally uncertain about placing him into this world, especially since the reasons for doing so are entirely for the benefit of the other 2 people involved in the decision.

This all assumes a world with the same physical laws as our own, containing some non-trivial amount of harm for any sentient being. As long as that remains the case, procreation is at least problematic. If we're getting into speculative territory, it would be less problematic if there were less harm, but the harm is not just a matter of bad things happening to someone, it's very much integrated into the world itself and our relationship to it, and that goes back to physics (entropy, competition for limited resources, structural stuff like that). I don't know of any conceivable scenario where it would be completely justifiable.



I agree that it does seem wrong, but the fact that this seeming is so strong suggests something emotional, limbic, pre-cognitive is driving it, and that should give you reason to pause. All of what you say is true: it is totally built into us on a deep, primal level to behave in ways that cause more of us to come into existence. Start from there, without assuming it must be right because it's natural, and think of what that entails about us as conscious beings--think of the scale of the predicament we have been caught in all these millennia thanks to the gut feeling you accurately describe.

Also, saying that life isn't worth starting is different from saying it's not worth living once started. Each person has to decide for themselves whether it's worth continuing their life. Their evaluation will be completely colored by that part-and-parcel aspect of our biology (does it make us love life, or fear death so much that we love anything that postpones it?), and I stress that this shouldn't end the conversation, it should provoke thought about whether this biologically engineered cycle isn't some kind of rigged game.

And don't forget about adaptive preferences. People who are locked in a basement for decades by some crazy person will, almost without fail, grow to tolerate their situation and may even grow to love their kidnapper.

It's hard to express this properly, but I think of the mindset that you, yourself are holding here, and when I state that it's not indicative of people who do procreate that seems obvious to you. But take it further and put yourself in the mind of someone who loves having and raising children. To them, what seems so logical to you, is completely irrational, because they're coming at it from a totally different framework. To these people having and raising children is intuitive and normal, and there is no reason why they shouldn't have kids. To them, that's just how life works. Further than that, it is very probable that most people who are born into the world via these people are of the same mindset. The perspective that you're expressing here is entirely foreign to these people's experience. They are not thinking about the morality surrounding child-birth, it's just something that they do.

Now if you tried really hard you might be able to convince a few people that they shouldn't have children, but mostly you're working against the very nature of what it means to be human. It's like in past times when people started believing in Marxism. Great in theory, but it flew in the face of actual human nature.

So the only real conclusion here is that child-birth and child-rearing is not really a thing you can subject reason, logic, and philosophy on. Telling people they shouldn't have kids is no different from telling a cat it shouldn't have kittens. Yea maybe there are a few people that, by chance, feel that way, or who will be convinced, but they are outliers, not the norm, and quickly leave the gene pool.

Put another way, the immorality you suggest is subjective to you, and not universal to all people. Many, if not most, people probably feel the complete opposite. Who is to judge who is correct besides the subjects themselves?

All of these things could have been said about any moral or social issue that has undergone a change in acceptance over time. Many if not most people probably felt completely opposed to the first people who said we shouldn't keep slaves, we shouldn't treat women as property, we shouldn't treat homosexuals as sick, and more recently, we shouldn't believe in God without good evidence. Yet, today these are common opinions, and atheism especially is enjoying a public visibility that nobody 30 years ago would have imagined. The fact that many people hold a view so strongly that is not supported rationally is a strong signal that those of us who can look at the matter critically have an obligation to do so.

 

[ronburgundy]

Sure, that's a given, but doesn't answer the question. The question is which specific qualities evolved in us that cause the behavior?

Horniness is the main driver of reproduction. We evolved to like our genitals stimulated and so that mutual stimulation will often lead to pregnancy. Besides that, we have a paternal instinct. We get rewarded with various pleasure causing neurochemicals for intimate contact, which includes with parent-child bonding. We also have innate protective instincts. There is research suggesting that pair-bonding between adults (i.e., love) is something that piggy-backed onto the mechanisms for parent-child bonding (essentially all animals with adult pair bonding show parent-child bonding but not the reverse). There is a strong correlation between long-term adult pair bonding and offspring that require lots of resources and protection for extended development. (IOW, we love our mate because that keeps us around to take care of the kid).

We also have an innate desire to conform and tendency to mimic other's behavior, so if most people have kids then even those in whom the direct desire is less strong will desire to have them as a product of desiring social acceptance.

In addition, I do think much of the current human desire for kids is do to cultural reinforcements (and social punishments for those who don't have them).

 

[rousseau]

None. Basically, the decision to procreate involves 3 people: two parents and their offspring. The person who will bear the majority of the effects is the offspring, and cannot vouch for himself for obvious reasons. All we know is that he will be subject to the rules of the world, which will block him from getting what he wants in life and can only be partially compensated for with lots of time and effort. I won't elaborate on that point unless it's in dispute. To me, that's reason enough to feel morally uncertain about placing him into this world, especially since the reasons for doing so are entirely for the benefit of the other 2 people involved in the decision.

This all assumes a world with the same physical laws as our own, containing some non-trivial amount of harm for any sentient being. As long as that remains the case, procreation is at least problematic. If we're getting into speculative territory, it would be less problematic if there were less harm, but the harm is not just a matter of bad things happening to someone, it's very much integrated into the world itself and our relationship to it, and that goes back to physics (entropy, competition for limited resources, structural stuff like that). I don't know of any conceivable scenario where it would be completely justifiable.



I agree that it does seem wrong, but the fact that this seeming is so strong suggests something emotional, limbic, pre-cognitive is driving it, and that should give you reason to pause. All of what you say is true: it is totally built into us on a deep, primal level to behave in ways that cause more of us to come into existence. Start from there, without assuming it must be right because it's natural, and think of what that entails about us as conscious beings--think of the scale of the predicament we have been caught in all these millennia thanks to the gut feeling you accurately describe.

Also, saying that life isn't worth starting is different from saying it's not worth living once started. Each person has to decide for themselves whether it's worth continuing their life. Their evaluation will be completely colored by that part-and-parcel aspect of our biology (does it make us love life, or fear death so much that we love anything that postpones it?), and I stress that this shouldn't end the conversation, it should provoke thought about whether this biologically engineered cycle isn't some kind of rigged game.

And don't forget about adaptive preferences. People who are locked in a basement for decades by some crazy person will, almost without fail, grow to tolerate their situation and may even grow to love their kidnapper.

It's hard to express this properly, but I think of the mindset that you, yourself are holding here, and when I state that it's not indicative of people who do procreate that seems obvious to you. But take it further and put yourself in the mind of someone who loves having and raising children. To them, what seems so logical to you, is completely irrational, because they're coming at it from a totally different framework. To these people having and raising children is intuitive and normal, and there is no reason why they shouldn't have kids. To them, that's just how life works. Further than that, it is very probable that most people who are born into the world via these people are of the same mindset. The perspective that you're expressing here is entirely foreign to these people's experience. They are not thinking about the morality surrounding child-birth, it's just something that they do.

Now if you tried really hard you might be able to convince a few people that they shouldn't have children, but mostly you're working against the very nature of what it means to be human. It's like in past times when people started believing in Marxism. Great in theory, but it flew in the face of actual human nature.

So the only real conclusion here is that child-birth and child-rearing is not really a thing you can subject reason, logic, and philosophy on. Telling people they shouldn't have kids is no different from telling a cat it shouldn't have kittens. Yea maybe there are a few people that, by chance, feel that way, or who will be convinced, but they are outliers, not the norm, and quickly leave the gene pool.

Put another way, the immorality you suggest is subjective to you, and not universal to all people. Many, if not most, people probably feel the complete opposite. Who is to judge who is correct besides the subjects themselves?

All of these things could have been said about any moral or social issue that has undergone a change in acceptance over time. Many if not most people probably felt completely opposed to the first people who said we shouldn't keep slaves, we shouldn't treat women as property, we shouldn't treat homosexuals as sick, and more recently, we shouldn't believe in God without good evidence. Yet, today these are common opinions, and atheism especially is enjoying a public visibility that nobody 30 years ago would have imagined. The fact that many people hold a view so strongly that is not supported rationally is a strong signal that those of us who can look at the matter critically have an obligation to do so.

I fear you've missed my point which is probably indicative of how difficult it is to express.

A desire to have and raise children isn't a transient social issue, it's biological, and is literally intrinsic to what it means to be alive. It's not about people accidentally producing babies because they forgot to be moral, it's about people's experience as a human being. Producing offspring is what living things to do, this can't be compared to slavery or homophobia. That you disagree means that you are on the extreme of the bell curve and won't pass on your genes. It puts you and your moral beliefs as a genetic outlier. Your philosophy is not how the majority of humans experience the world.

Even if, in theory, you convinced 95% of people to act against their own nature, the remaining 5% who did reproduce would make up the next generation, and the trend would continue.

In other words, your beliefs are only justified to you, and not the majority of people living today, and this will always be the case.

 

[PyramidHead]

All of these things could have been said about any moral or social issue that has undergone a change in acceptance over time. Many if not most people probably felt completely opposed to the first people who said we shouldn't keep slaves, we shouldn't treat women as property, we shouldn't treat homosexuals as sick, and more recently, we shouldn't believe in God without good evidence. Yet, today these are common opinions, and atheism especially is enjoying a public visibility that nobody 30 years ago would have imagined. The fact that many people hold a view so strongly that is not supported rationally is a strong signal that those of us who can look at the matter critically have an obligation to do so.

I fear you've missed my point which is probably indicative of how difficult it is to express.

A desire to have and raise children isn't a transient social issue, it's biological, and is literally intrinsic to what it means to be alive. It's not about people accidentally producing babies because they forgot to be moral, it's about people's experience as a human being. Producing offspring is what living things to do, this can't be compared to slavery or homophobia. That you disagree means that you are on the extreme of the bell curve and won't pass on your genes. It puts you and your moral beliefs as a genetic outlier. Your philosophy is not how the majority of humans experience the world.

I hear this a lot, and it's a strange objection to deal with. For one thing, beliefs aren't inherited genetically. Your comment implies that I have some sort of DNA abnormality that has caused me to think this way, and that natural selection will simply weed it out. I wasn't born opposing childbirth! There is this thing called the internet that preserves ideas and spreads them across the world. There is absolutely no reason to think that once the current generation of antinatalists die out, nobody else in history will ever be swayed by this reasoning again because they won't have the right (or wrong) phenotype for it. It's nonsense; people have been thinking about stuff like this since Buddha and before.

Secondly, I question your statement that there is a biological impulse specifically to have genetic offspring. There is an instinct for personal survival, an instinct for sex, and an instinct to protect the vulnerable. But a LOT of people don't want kids and never have, and most of them were probably born of parents who hold the opposite view. Give people more credit; they aren't robots.

Even if, in theory, you convinced 95% of people to act against their own nature, the remaining 5% who did reproduce would make up the next generation, and the trend would continue.

Correct. Not a reason to be part of the 5 and the 95, though.

In other words, your beliefs are only justified to you, and not the majority of people living today, and this will always be the case.

Incorrect. Justification is not subjective; something is either true or not, either supported by logic or not, either a valid means to a given end or not. There is no "justified to me" in any sense other than psychological comfort. You should know this, man! It's just the kind of thing that was lobbed at atheism for years. If we start from shared premises and use logic to reach a conclusion that is antithetical to the perpetuation of life, the next step is not to say "well, it's a good thing that nothing can be true while also being antithetical to the perpetuation of life, our work is done here." The next step should be to ask, why think that? Why assume there can be no anti-vital truths, why be locked into the affirmative mindset that holds everything to the standard of more beings, more life, endlessly into the future, without critically examining the foundations and consequences of that feeling? An uncompromising, skeptical approach is not something that can only be applied to certain topics, and not something restricted to bearers of some genetic abnormality.

Let me ask you this: do you see any flaws in my reasoning? Do you consider yourself someone who is a slave to emotions and can't accept a conclusion if it's uncomfortable?

 

[rousseau]

I hear this a lot, and it's a strange objection to deal with. For one thing, beliefs aren't inherited genetically. Your comment implies that I have some sort of DNA abnormality that has caused me to think this way, and that natural selection will simply weed it out. I wasn't born opposing childbirth! There is this thing called the internet that preserves ideas and spreads them across the world. There is absolutely no reason to think that once the current generation of antinatalists die out, nobody else in history will ever be swayed by this reasoning again because they won't have the right (or wrong) phenotype for it. It's nonsense; people have been thinking about stuff like this since Buddha and before.

Secondly, I question your statement that there is a biological impulse specifically to have genetic offspring. There is an instinct for personal survival, an instinct for sex, and an instinct to protect the vulnerable. But a LOT of people don't want kids and never have, and most of them were probably born of parents who hold the opposite view. Give people more credit; they aren't robots.

Even if, in theory, you convinced 95% of people to act against their own nature, the remaining 5% who did reproduce would make up the next generation, and the trend would continue.

Correct. Not a reason to be part of the 5 and the 95, though.

In other words, your beliefs are only justified to you, and not the majority of people living today, and this will always be the case.

Incorrect. Justification is not subjective; something is either true or not, either supported by logic or not, either a valid means to a given end or not. There is no "justified to me" in any sense other than psychological comfort. You should know this, man! It's just the kind of thing that was lobbed at atheism for years. If we start from shared premises and use logic to reach a conclusion that is antithetical to the perpetuation of life, the next step is not to say "well, it's a good thing that nothing can be true while also being antithetical to the perpetuation of life, our work is done here." The next step should be to ask, why think that? Why assume there can be no anti-vital truths, why be locked into the affirmative mindset that holds everything to the standard of more beings, more life, endlessly into the future, without critically examining the foundations and consequences of that feeling? An uncompromising, skeptical approach is not something that can only be applied to certain topics, and not something restricted to bearers of some genetic abnormality.

Let me ask you this: do you see any flaws in my reasoning? Do you consider yourself someone who is a slave to emotions and can't accept a conclusion if it's uncomfortable?

The bolded seems to be where we disagree. Morality is subjective, not objective. It can never be objective, and is always arbitrary and at the whims of people and their passions.

Just because you can come up with a rationalization that child-rearing is immoral, does not mean your rationalization is objectively correct for all subjects, because their axioms are different. You may be able to convince some of them, and you are free to hold your beliefs, but others are also free to completely disagree with you and hold the opposite view. What is rational to you is not rational to others.

Further, I agree that if all human beings were rational actors who only cared about minimizing pain, it is feasible child-rearing could be minimized, but the inherent problem in this, is that it's not how people are built. People are not rational, moral actors.

The only analogy I can come up with is with marxism. Taking this great and supreme moral theory and solving intrinsic problems in the world. Until you actually try to apply it and realize.. wait, that's not how people work.

 

[PyramidHead]

I hear this a lot, and it's a strange objection to deal with. For one thing, beliefs aren't inherited genetically. Your comment implies that I have some sort of DNA abnormality that has caused me to think this way, and that natural selection will simply weed it out. I wasn't born opposing childbirth! There is this thing called the internet that preserves ideas and spreads them across the world. There is absolutely no reason to think that once the current generation of antinatalists die out, nobody else in history will ever be swayed by this reasoning again because they won't have the right (or wrong) phenotype for it. It's nonsense; people have been thinking about stuff like this since Buddha and before.

Secondly, I question your statement that there is a biological impulse specifically to have genetic offspring. There is an instinct for personal survival, an instinct for sex, and an instinct to protect the vulnerable. But a LOT of people don't want kids and never have, and most of them were probably born of parents who hold the opposite view. Give people more credit; they aren't robots.



Correct. Not a reason to be part of the 5 and the 95, though.



Incorrect. Justification is not subjective; something is either true or not, either supported by logic or not, either a valid means to a given end or not. There is no "justified to me" in any sense other than psychological comfort. You should know this, man! It's just the kind of thing that was lobbed at atheism for years. If we start from shared premises and use logic to reach a conclusion that is antithetical to the perpetuation of life, the next step is not to say "well, it's a good thing that nothing can be true while also being antithetical to the perpetuation of life, our work is done here." The next step should be to ask, why think that? Why assume there can be no anti-vital truths, why be locked into the affirmative mindset that holds everything to the standard of more beings, more life, endlessly into the future, without critically examining the foundations and consequences of that feeling? An uncompromising, skeptical approach is not something that can only be applied to certain topics, and not something restricted to bearers of some genetic abnormality.

Let me ask you this: do you see any flaws in my reasoning? Do you consider yourself someone who is a slave to emotions and can't accept a conclusion if it's uncomfortable?

The bolded seems to be where we disagree. Morality is subjective, not objective. It can never be objective, and is always arbitrary and at the whims of people and their passions.

Just because you can come up with a rationalization that child-rearing is immoral, does not mean your rationalization is objectively correct for all subjects, because their axioms are different. You may be able to convince some of them, and you are free to hold your beliefs, but others are also free to completely disagree with you and hold the opposite view. What is rational to you is not rational to others.

Further, I agree that if all human beings were rational actors who only cared about minimizing pain, it is feasible child-rearing could be minimized, but the inherent problem in this, is that it's not how people are built. People are not rational, moral actors.

The only analogy I can come up with is with marxism. Taking this great and supreme moral theory and solving intrinsic problems in the world. Until you actually try to apply it and realize.. wait, that's not how people work.

I agree with everything you say here, but it deflates your objection from something about my specific position to something about any moral position whatsoever. Morality can only approach objectivity when everybody has the same starting principles, as you say; however, I am not asking any people to adopt new starting principles. The point is that current, uncontroversial starting principles (don't cause avoidable harm, don't use people as means to an end, don't put someone in potential danger without their consent, don't create a need where none existed before) lead to an unexpected conclusion. For some people, that means we must discard some of the starting principles, and I have no quarrel with them if they are being consistent. As you rightly say, those disagreements are axiomatic and can't be resolved. But it seems like other people want to avoid the conclusions they don't like while clinging to the same moral intuitions that entail them. That's where it's legitimate to call foul, I think.

For this particular philosophical position, I would say the vast majority of objections fall into this category, including yours unless you have a counterargument I haven't heard. That's fine, but be up-front about it. Not everybody can be moral all the time, I get that. In my case, I see no flaws in the argument for ethical veganism but I am not a vegan. The intellectual knowledge that I am causing harm to sentient beings by my choice of food is less motivating to me than my desire for the particular food I prefer to eat, for reasons of convenience or whatever. Maybe that will change one day, and I wish I had more strength of character to make that happen, but I don't. But I would never tell a vegan that their reasoning doesn't apply to me, because it absolutely does--I have the same moral axioms as they do and the reasoning is simple enough. I just acknowledge that in this particular area I am doing something immoral by continuing to eat animal products, knowing that my personal failing does not affect the soundness of the argument itself.

 

[ronburgundy]

I hear this a lot, and it's a strange objection to deal with. For one thing, beliefs aren't inherited genetically. Your comment implies that I have some sort of DNA abnormality that has caused me to think this way, and that natural selection will simply weed it out. I wasn't born opposing childbirth! There is this thing called the internet that preserves ideas and spreads them across the world. There is absolutely no reason to think that once the current generation of antinatalists die out, nobody else in history will ever be swayed by this reasoning again because they won't have the right (or wrong) phenotype for it. It's nonsense; people have been thinking about stuff like this since Buddha and before.

Secondly, I question your statement that there is a biological impulse specifically to have genetic offspring. There is an instinct for personal survival, an instinct for sex, and an instinct to protect the vulnerable. But a LOT of people don't want kids and never have, and most of them were probably born of parents who hold the opposite view. Give people more credit; they aren't robots.



Correct. Not a reason to be part of the 5 and the 95, though.



Incorrect. Justification is not subjective; something is either true or not, either supported by logic or not, either a valid means to a given end or not. There is no "justified to me" in any sense other than psychological comfort. You should know this, man! It's just the kind of thing that was lobbed at atheism for years. If we start from shared premises and use logic to reach a conclusion that is antithetical to the perpetuation of life, the next step is not to say "well, it's a good thing that nothing can be true while also being antithetical to the perpetuation of life, our work is done here." The next step should be to ask, why think that? Why assume there can be no anti-vital truths, why be locked into the affirmative mindset that holds everything to the standard of more beings, more life, endlessly into the future, without critically examining the foundations and consequences of that feeling? An uncompromising, skeptical approach is not something that can only be applied to certain topics, and not something restricted to bearers of some genetic abnormality.

Let me ask you this: do you see any flaws in my reasoning? Do you consider yourself someone who is a slave to emotions and can't accept a conclusion if it's uncomfortable?

The bolded seems to be where we disagree. Morality is subjective, not objective. It can never be objective, and is always arbitrary and at the whims of people and their passions.

Just because you can come up with a rationalization that child-rearing is immoral, does not mean your rationalization is objectively correct for all subjects, because their axioms are different. You may be able to convince some of them, and you are free to hold your beliefs, but others are also free to completely disagree with you and hold the opposite view. What is rational to you is not rational to others.

Further, I agree that if all human beings were rational actors who only cared about minimizing pain, it is feasible child-rearing could be minimized, but the inherent problem in this, is that it's not how people are built. People are not rational, moral actors.

The only analogy I can come up with is with marxism. Taking this great and supreme moral theory and solving intrinsic problems in the world. Until you actually try to apply it and realize.. wait, that's not how people work.

Seems you two are talking at somewhat cross-purposes. There is the OP question of what gives rise to the strong and extremely pervasive desire to have kids, and the completely separate question of is it either a good idea and/or moral to give into that desire.

Biologically we would all be far more violent (including "abusive" to our kids by modern standards), if not for the acquisition of information and formulation of social principles that we strive to adhere to and override our natural impulses.
We also have natural impulses toward tribalism and factors that make us prone toward racism and sexism. These went unchecked for most of human history, yet massive cultural change in the last couple centuries have led us to a point where the dominant belief in most Western nations is that these impulses are unethical and should not be acted upon, and people should strive to suppress them within themselves.

Our morals on how we should act, do not erase the natural impulses to act a particular way, but they can allow people to override those impulses. Of course, since every person has the impulses and doesn't need to learn them, but only some will learn to override them, those impulses will always win out in a segment of the population.

Getting back to procreation specifically, there clearly has been a massive shift in procreating behavior, with most people have much fewer kids than they used to and many more choosing to have none or to adopt than used to be the case. Yet, it is unlikely that our biological impulses have changed much at all. However, it will never gain the view as "immoral" that things like slavery, violence, and abuse have. That's part because the "harm" to others is so much more indirect and abstract, and that harm is only in the modern context of resources and environmental impact. For most of human history, it not only wasn't thought immoral, but was not objectively harmful to anyone, and even today some amount of procreation is neccessary and it would be harmful for no one to have kids.

 

[PyramidHead]

Getting back to procreation specifically, there clearly has been a massive shift in procreating behavior, with most people have much fewer kids than they used to and many more choosing to have none or to adopt than used to be the case. Yet, it is unlikely that our biological impulses have changed much at all. However, it will never gain the view as "immoral" that things like slavery, violence, and abuse have. That's part because the "harm" to others is so much more indirect and abstract, and that harm is only in the modern context of resources and environmental impact.

The bolded part is not true. The argument that having offspring is immoral, at least the version I have presented, has nothing at all to do with environmental impact. It has everything to do with the harm that is caused to the person who is born, which would not be experienced if the person was not brought into existence to experience it. All of the harm that befalls someone can be traced to their birth. By this reasoning, procreation has always been harmful to everyone, and would continue to be harmful even if there were ample resources and no environmental impact.

For most of human history, it not only wasn't thought immoral, but was not objectively harmful to anyone, and even today some amount of procreation is neccessary and it would be harmful for no one to have kids.

It would only be harmful to universally abstain from procreation for the people who would effectively constitute the final generation of humans, as they would not have younger people to care for them as they age; yet, since this harm will be experienced by some future generation of humans anyway when humans go extinct, the argument can be made that it is better to experience it voluntarily and "on our terms" than as the result of an epidemic or planetary catastrophe.