To Breed, or Not to Breed, That Is the Question

To be fair, for most of human history this really wasn’t much of a question. Any species that didn’t evolve the drive to procreate went extinct.

And considering contraception wasn’t much of a thing for most of our existence, coupled with that deep seated evolutionary wiring to fuck like bunnies, well, you can see how procreation wasn’t much of a question.

But the times, they are a changing.

I mean, the fucky-fucky wiring is obviously still there. And so is the social pressure, from both the secular and religious camps (especially the religious, since it’s easier to grow tithes via procreation than proselytizing).

It’s fair to say that having kids is generally expected…hell, more than expected, banked on. GDP, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. Our civilization has structured many of our systems such that they absolutely require more and more humans to feed the perpetual Ponzi machine.

In fact, it’s this very machine that leads people like Musk to fearmonger about population collapse, which is frankly bullshit. There is no underpopulation crisis. But empire builders like Musk want more people in the world so there are more people to buy their shit.

Self-serving twaddle.

Despite all of that, there are a LOT of people deciding not to have kids. But many people who express a desire to not have kids are criticized, vilified, even ostracized.

And if you DO have kids and then express regret, holy fuck, prepare to be crucified by the mob…despite 5-15% of people surveyed saying they regret having kids (and due to the highly taboo nature of this question it’s very likely the true number is much, much higher than that.)

One common label slapped on those who don’t want kids, or regret having them, is selfish, but that’s really quite ironic in that, if you ask the labelers why they think you should have kids, you get a long list of selfish responses. 🤣 A few I’eve heard:

• So someone will love me

• So there will be someone to take care of me / so I won’t be alone in my old age

• To make sure my family name / genetic line lives on

• To have someone to teach and raise according to my beliefs / values

• Because “god” says to (there are even religions, like Mormonism, that connect having lots of kids to receiving greater rewards in heaven)

• To not be thought less of / to avoid ridicule from family, friends, etc.

• To appease my significant other

• To have a sense of purpose

• The desire for joy

• To save/improve a relationship

You know what everything on that list has in common? Personally derived benefits. Selfish, not selfless.

So let’s be honest: very few people, if any, are having kids for the kids’ sake, or the world’s sake, so calling one side of this coin selfish but not the other is “pot meet kettle” bullshit.

People procreate for their own reasons, or they’re doing it because they’re hardwired to do it, and fabricating reasons after the fact. Or it’s just unplanned.

And again, the number of people who regret having kids, and the VERY clear disconnect between stated and revealed preferences in this regard, strongly indicates a lot of post hoc justification.

Of course, I have heard less selfish arguments, but they tend to be stupid ones. For example, this one is making the rounds: “More people means more creativity, and more Einstein’s” (perhaps, but most people aren’t very creative, and intelligence is not equally distributed, so you get 1,000 idiots for every Einstein…that’s a lot of dead weight, and no guarantee of an Einstein.)

What I don’t think we hear enough of are the reasons to not have kids, so perhaps it’s only fair to explore that as well:

• Career setbacks (for women especially)

• Decrease in savings, leading to reduced retirement income and financial quality of life long-term (it costs on average $300,000 in 2023 US dollars to raise a kid to 18, not including college; if that were invested instead, it would be 2-3x that amount in the same timeframe)

• Significant negative health effects, both short and long-term, on a woman’s body due to pregnancy

• Increase in stress, sleep deprivation, and exposure to illness, all of which can shorten life expectancy

• You already have enough joy and purpose in life doing other things, and don’t wish to detract from that (perfectly reasonable)

• Traumatized parents very often pass that trauma on to their children

• You think you’ll be a terrible parent, for whatever reason, and don’t want to inflict that on a kid

• You’re rolling dice; sure, you could get a little angel, but you could just as easily get an extremely difficult child, and by the time you know which there’s little to be done about it (for example, parents of autistic children are 2x more likely to divorce)

• It greatly reduces both optionality and spontaneity, key ingredients in many happiness studies

• Children often cause a huge strain on marriages / relationships in multiple ways

• You simply don’t want the responsibility (totally fine, not everyone does)

• There is no one size fits all parenting manual; it’s largely a crapshoot. As such, with everyone basically winging it, many parents are pretty shitty parents. Maybe just acknowledging that you don’t think you’d be a good parent is reason enough to pass.

• People change over time…the person you are when you decide to have a kid is not the person you will remain throughout their life, and that can cut both ways

• Each child born, especially into a developed country, creates an outsized burden in terms of climate impact, and in some ways means there is less to go around

• The more humans there are in the world, the more suffering there is

• AI + robots are very likely to end up doing all the jobs (5-10 years, max), and it’s unclear how that will play out, so you don’t know what sort of world you’re bringing a kid into…could be utopia, could be dystopia. Never before have things been so uncertain and changing so fast.

• Immortality is very possibly on the horizon near-term (10-20 years out), which significantly changes priorities and reasons that underpin having kids

I’m sure there are plenty more reasons, but this is a pretty chunky list as-is. Not all reasons are equal of course, and you could certainly argue against some of them, but they are valid reasons all the same.

There are reasons to do it, and there are reasons not to. Both groupings are largely selfish, and that’s fine. It’s YOUR life after all, and should absolutely be your choice.

So…should you have kids, or not?

Let’s start with this: If you are asking yourself whether or not you should have kids, the answer should probably be NO.

I firmly believe that nobody should have a kid unless they really, really want to.

But even if you really do want to, I think you need to very carefully consider both the pros and the cons, to look carefully at WHY you want to have a kid (really dig deep, no bullshit), and try to actually game things out over time. Ask things like:

• With what I know about myself, my history, my goals, do I think having a kid or kids will genuinely be a good thing for me? For them? For the world? Does the same go for my significant other?

• What sort of personal/family issues/traumas have we not dealt with, that we shouldn’t be inflicting on kids? What’s the plan to not do that?

• Speaking of significant other, are we aligned on parenting styles? Goals?

• Can I/we afford it? How will having a kid change my/our financial needs/projections?

• Do I live in an area that is good for kids, or am I willing to move to one?

• Do I or my SO have any familial health / genetic issues, and how might that affect my child? If there’s a high likelihood of some negative health outcome, is it fair to roll those dice?

• Do I believe the world will be better off because of my decision, one way or the other? Do I care?

The reality is, just as there is no one size fits all parenting manual, there is no one size fits all answer to these questions, much less the overarching question of having kids.

Having kids can be awesome. Having kids can suck. Having kids can be both, at the same time, for you and for them.

There are all sorts of decisions in life that are easily reversible with few to no long-term consequences, but having a kid is not one of those. Having kids is a very serious, 18+ year (but really lifetime) commitment, and not being fully ready and fully invested to take that on can do a LOT of harm, to you and to them.

As such, regardless of our evolutionary wiring, I don’t think the decision to have kids should ever be taken lightly, and I think a LOT more care should be given to thinking through as many of the pros and cons as humanly possible.

And frankly, I think a lot of people just shouldn’t have kids. I also think the world would be better off with fewer people, for numerous reasons.

You can say that this is a deeply personal question, but that’s not entirely accurate either. Any child you have does not exist in isolation, but rather represent a new variable in the game of life that will interact with, for good and ill, with many times many people and systems.

We exist at a time when this question is more important than ever before. The world very likely doesn’t need more bodies to keep the system running. You very likely won’t need kids to care for you in your old age. You may have way more time and freedom to experience way more things than were ever possible in the past.

And frankly, the general population growth trendlines in developed countries reflect this. As people get richer, they have fewer kids, for many of the reasons listed above and more besides.

Thus this post.

I can’t give you the optimal answer for you, YMMV. Whichever way you choose, you very well might regret it later. Even my own answers have changed dramatically over time, in ways I wouldn’t have predicted.

Yesterday’s answer no longer fits the now.

So, whatever you do, really, REALLY think through that decision carefully. So much more is riding on it than you likely realize.