My own experience in life makes it reek a lot like mental health issues in those who are antinatalists.

I mean, is that not a good enough reason not to have kids?

Assertions I’d like to make, in no specific order:

• Yes, my retirement might not even happen because of falling birthrates.
• We live in a world of finite resources and an imperfect method of distributing them.
• It’s only going to get worse, especially with climate change.
• If we don’t have a population contraction voluntarily now, eventually we’re going to have one involuntarily later, as people turn to force.
• Wars over constrained resources are an end in and of themselves. It doesn’t even matter if you gain control of other resources; if you win, you get more resources to buy your people a little more time. If you lose, you got rid of a lot of people who need and want things.

These problems are all solvable. These problems are also not plausibly going to be solved, as those who have will do their level best to turn away from those who have not. We have literal centuries of evidence neatly showcasing just how selfish our systems are, and how resilient to change they are.

You can absolutely have as many kids as you want. I personally think it’s myopic, as you’re forcing someone else to deal with these problems and you didn’t even give them an option - and by the time they’re old enough to understand the magnitude of the problem, they’re in too deep to get out. It just screams of selfishness and duplicity to me. But, I mean, I’m still friends with omnivores - hell, I’m one myself - being selfish and inconsistent is kinda fundamentally what humans are, so it’s not like my shit doesn’t stink too.

Edit: I should also note that the one reason I allow myself to eat animal products is because I’ve said “well, I’m not having kids, so I’m just a temporary problem, not an ongoing one”

As someone not wanting kids and getting a vasectomy at 27, I personally have multiple reasons why I don’t want them. And I know more people like me with many different, personal reasons.

My brother on the other hand has four children, and we have had conversations about this. Although we both want the opposite in life, we came to the agreement that having more than two children is bad for the environment because of overpopulation. He just accepts doing something “wrong”, because it makes him happy. And in the end it evens out: some people have multiple children, others have none. All good, if you ask me.

It’s a personal philosophy. There are pros and cons to having kids. I can understand why more people are leaning this way given that it is difficult to believe that things will improve in the future. I don’t think it’s a stupid philosophy but I don’t specifically identify with it.

I think a lot of it is depression and loss of hope and think “why would you bring a kid into this mess?”. I feel there’s a lot of personal aversion to children that might feed into this too where someone generalizes their dislike of children into the idea that having babies is bad.

Anyone can have as many children as they want, if they can support, provide and care for them, otherwise they become other people’s problem.

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@sexy_peach I still don’t know if I’m going to have kids, since I’m single and almost reaching the 30s haha (and by that time I don’t think I’ll get a choice of having kids or not - I’ll either be with someone already having a kid or decided on not having kids already).

Out of all things not working in my country, I feel that the medical and educational systems work the worst, so they’ll weigh a lot in my decision, I guess, but I have to say the arguments these people bring are dumb as hell. No one ever asked life to happen, life just happens, whether we like it or not. Stuff sometimes happens regardless of your decisions or preferences, and we have to put up with it, and adapt ourselves accordingly.

I think it’s a flawed premise based on my limited understanding of what I have read

Life entails inevitable suffering.
Death is inevitable.
Humans (and all forms of life) are born without their consent, no one chooses whether or not they come into existence.
Although some people may turn out to be happy, this is not guaranteed, so to procreate is to gamble with another person’s suffering without their consent.
Therefore it is immoral to create life.

The problem that I have with this is it also is making the choice for the potential life. If you ask anybody at end of life if they were glad they existed or the life they had, and if given the choice to have existed or existing again under the same conditions of their current life, they would choose to have existed/exist the same. Therefore, I think it is just as immoral to take the potential away.

Existence is also a choice. If at any point you no longer consent to existing, there exists a mechanism for accomplishing that. It is not accepted by society (we are making progress in some areas such as assisted suicide for terminal illness) but it doesn’t mean you are bound to abide by those ‘rules’.

It may strike you as unusual, but I maintain beliefs in both reincarnation and anti-natalism. While it might seem contradictory at the outset, I prefer to see it as a distaste for reincarnation, while still acknowledging it as the most probable outcome, irrespective of the absence of past life memories. Anti-natalism generally revolves around a moral philosophy that questions the ethics of bringing a new life into a world marked by considerable suffering and difficulties, regardless of how unfair these challenges may seem to the child.

Adherents of anti-natalism contend that it’s ethically problematic to bring a child into the world without the ability to ensure a life chiefly or entirely filled with happiness. Consequently, some choose a lifestyle of abstention. It’s important to understand that these individuals are not necessarily foolish, as they often show astute and pragmatic consideration for the potential conditions a child might encounter if brought into this world. Considering our current economic, political, and environmental climate, it’s not unreasonable to suggest population contraction as a potential remedy for resource constraints. One could argue that anti-natalism is a rather selfless philosophy - while its followers personally choose not to procreate, they refrain from imposing this ideology on others, leaving them free to make their own choices.

As with all aspects of life, people make decisions and draw conclusions based on their unique circumstances and experiences. It’s essential to appreciate that these choices may differ from our own. I offer my viewpoint in the hope that it provides a perspective you might not have previously considered.