The Moral Obligation to Have Children?

I'm going to regret getting back into this, I know, but ... while guest-blogging for Andrew I wrote what was probably a somewhat slipshod post arguing that it's somewhat solipsistic to decide how many kids to have based entirely on whether you think each additional child will add substantially to your happiness, since one of the best reasons to have children is to make another person's happiness possible - by, well, making that person's existence possible. Will Wilkinson wrote a rather waspish post in response, in which he accused me of "not making sense, and insulting low-breeders on the way." I'll quote him at length below the fold:

First, you just can’t “diminish the ’subjective well-being’ of all the second and third children who don’t get conceived because their parents decided it wasn’t worth the trouble,” because it is a logical impossibility, an embarrassment to reason. Ross is saying that there exists a person who is harmed by the fact that it has not been made to exist. It refutes itself.

My point was obviously badly-phrased, so let me rephrase it. Human beings are timebound, finite creatures. None of the human beings who exist now will exist in 2150 (probably), and all of the human beings who exist in 2150 are, at the moment, entirely hypothetical, their existence entirely dependent upon the choices that we make now. Therefore, a moral calculus that's concerned with the amount of well-being in the world - which I take Will's calculus to be - should probably take into account the well-being of human beings who do not yet exist, and who therefore may never exist at all. And the only way, for now at least, that these future human beings - and by extension, their happiness - can possibly exist is if other human beings decide to procreate.

So yes, it's technically true that if every human being on the planet decided not to have children, their choice would cause no appreciable harm to any existing person's well-being; to argue otherwise would be to state, as Will says, "that there exists a person who is harmed by the fact that it not been made to exist." Technically true, but beside the point. In order for well-being to exist at all, some people have to have children. Therefore, one might suggest, at least some people must have a moral obligation to reproduce, even if they aren't technically doing "harm" to any existing person if they don't.

Does that mean that everyone has the responsibility to reproduce, and in large numbers? That's what Will thinks that I was saying:

... what is Ross’s moral scheme? We know this much: there is more than one thing that is objectively, non-instrumentally good, producing new human beings is one of them, and is one of the most valuable. Let’s just suppose this is true. Now, it is possible to acknowledge that some things are objectively good without falling under an obligation to produce them. That a state of affairs is valuable is almost always a reason to bring it about, but it does not create a duty to do so. Does Ross think there is a general moral duty to maximize the quantity of such objective goods, like blushing babies? If so, why?

And even if we do have some such amazing duty, it appears that there are other goods in Ross’s moral universe. Do we have similar duties to create beauty? Truth? Even if babies approach the summit of Ross’s taxonomy of goodness, surely some quantity or combination of other goods outweighs the value of an additional baby. A life spent realizing one’s potential, achieving one’s valuable ambitions, say. Certainly Ross understands that pregnancy and motherhood often require the sacrifice of a woman’s other ambitions, other values she could have brought to the world. Surely there are things, even inside this fantastic moral taxonomy, that men and women could do with their lives to compensate for their choice not to have children. Surely not all childless lives are deplorably solipsistic. Surely living a happy life is of some value and must weigh something. Would a mostly unhappy world swimming in billions upon billion of children really be better than ours? Ross seems to think so.

I think this is a rather ridiculous extrapolation from my original post, which only meant to suggest that parents in an extremely wealthy continent with a declining population might want to consider the possibility that the amount of good they would do by bringing a child into the world, and enabling said child to enjoy the benefits of living in an age of wealth and comfort such as the world has never seen, might outweigh the amount of good they would do having more time and money to spend on themselves. Obviously everyone doesn't have a moral obligation to have kids; obviously everyone who has kids doesn't have an obligation to have five; obviously if everyone had twenty-four children the world would end up in some difficulties. Obviously there are things you can do with your life that are just as valuable or more valuable than having children - just ask Sir Isaac Newton, or Mother Teresa.

But I don't think it's unreasonable to say that people who enjoy the benefits of having been born and raised into the richest country in the world ought to consider giving something back, and that one of the best ways to give something back is to help create, and raise, another consciousness that can experience those same benefits. I would never presume to judge an individual, like Will, who thinks that he create more good in the world for himself or others some other way. I'm just skeptical that the aggregate tendency of young white Bobos, in America as in Europe, to have one or zero children doesn't contain at least an element of solipsism.

Comments

JP II's Theology of the Body addresses this issue directly. You're a Catholic, check it out.

Posted by Aaron | May 2, 2007 3:04 PM

Re; I'm just skeptical that the aggregate tendency of young white Bobos, in America as in Europe, to have one or zero children doesn't contain at least an element of solipsism.

How many people have zero children? Many gay people, of course. Religious celibates. Those with serious fertility problems. And perhaps those who cannot find mates, for whatever reason.
Total lifetime childlessness is rare, although many people remain childless (mostly due to economic necessity) until they reach their 30s. However the one-child-only choice is becoming increasingly common. Sometimes by necessity (the biological clock runs out or money problems constrain having a second child). But very often by choice. And there's a reason for this, especially among the upper and upper middle classes. One is better off having just one child on whom one can lavish resources, than multiple children on whom one must stint. (In less extreme form this is in fact the reproductive stretegy of the entire human species-- compare us to cats or rabbits for example). That one well-brought up child may go on to be an investment banker, corporate attorney or brain surgeon, with very high income, a potential bonanza for the parents in their later years. While the many poorly-raised children (in today economy) could well up working at Walmart and being a drain on their parents throughout their lives.

Posted by Jonf | May 2, 2007 3:40 PM

"I would never presume to judge an individual, like Will, who thinks that he create more good in the world for himself or others some other way."

Why not? If he's wrong to think that, why not judge him? Or are you trying to say that you're not sure he's wrong? But then how would you be sure that *anyone* would "create more good" by having kids?

A problem with your argument is that you seem to be granting that there's a utilitarian calculus for determining goodness in the world. But why grant that? There are lots of well-rehearsed reasons not to.

I suppose you're granting that claim because you think your opponents accept it. But maybe their accepting that claim is a chief reason they favor minimizing (their) children.

Posted by Sal Mineo | May 2, 2007 3:40 PM

At the heart of Jonf's post is exactly what I was getting at above. If you grant that one's being "better off" can be measured by some kind of utilitarian calculus (measured e.g. financially), then an argument like that makes sense. But why accept that what is good is determined by optimizing some utilitarian calculus?

Posted by Sal Mineo | May 2, 2007 3:43 PM

No, you're right, I don't accept the utilitarian calculus - I was just accepting it for the sake of argument, because I think that even within that calculus, there's a strong moral argument for having more than one kid if you're a middle-class person in a Western society. Sure, there's a point of diminishing returns, where you might argue that the additional resources expended on an extra kid start seriously hurting the others' well-being and your own. I just don't think that everyone who has 1-2 kids and is deciding whether to have 3-4 is necessarily near that point.

Also, plenty of people who aren't wildly successful brain surgeons have high levels of reported well-being. If you're really just interested in creating the greatest good for the greatest number, it's by no means clear that a single highly-successful investment banker gets you more "utiles" overall than, say, three children who all end up as managers at Olive Garden. (Unless, of course, having your kids grow up to work at Olive Garden pushes your own level of happiness way down into negative numbers.)

Posted by Ross Douthat | May 2, 2007 4:20 PM

As long as someone's having children, the moral good that Ross is positing (that there be somebody to bestow the earth to) is fulfilled. And Ross can't seriously argue that there needs to be any particular number of children, because that leads to a reductio ad absurdum-- 20 child families, and the like.

So it seems to me that as long as some cultures are procreating at well above the replacement rate, nobody else has any obligation to have children if they don't want to. The fact that those children may have darker skin or speak a different language, after all, isn't important.

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 2, 2007 4:25 PM

The fact that the children have a darker skin or speak of different language is in many senses unimportant, but the fact that substantial percentages of those children are born into depravation and enjoy limited educational opportunities while those whose parents could afford them the finest schooling and upbringing that Western civilization can afford them has evident consequences. The potential decline of the median education level of the populace would have substantial consequences, in part by increasing the chasm between have and have not and ensuring that the latter are increasingly more numerous relative to the former, with attendant risk of social unrest. Who is more susceptible to revolution or to economically stunting demogoguery, a state 60% of whose people live in havelas and a like number of whom are functionally illiterate or one in which poverty exists on the margins and the overwhelming majority of whom obtain enough of an education to function in a modern, technologically advacned economy?

Posted by Anonymous Conservative | May 2, 2007 4:44 PM

Why not mock low breeders?

-----------------------------

Given two sets of parents with equal intelligence, fitness, educational background, etc., one of whom has four kids and one of whom has none--the one child does not have a higher probability of being a brain surgeon than one of the four children. A family of my acquaintance has ten children, who include an environmental lawyer, an engineer, a diplomat, a classical musician, a psychologist, a doctor, and a minister among their number. If we must judge people's worth by their professions, large families don't look that bad.

Posted by Osvaldo Mandias | May 2, 2007 5:17 PM

Some Chinese are questioning the efficacy of a one-child rule, with various reasons cited.

http://english.sina.com/china/1/2007/0315/106515.html
www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=8757&dos=106&size=A
www.asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=5010
chinastic.chinabroadcast.cn/chinastic/content.aspx?id=5380

Posted by Christopher Bitner Hayes | May 2, 2007 6:33 PM

Anonymous:

That's why we have immigration and policies to bring sustainable development in the third world. Indeed, it would probably be a much greater moral good for every middle class or rich American couple who is thinking having children to not do so and instead use the money that they saved to do something about third world poverty.

It's like anything else in economics. You can deal with any distribution problem with transfer payments, once you grow the pie.

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 2, 2007 7:43 PM

Dilan

That's nice enough, if a bit fanciful. First, the middle class child in our economy will create a good deal more wealth on average than his counterpart in the developing world. That whole "teach me to fish" bit has a shred of plausibility, but the budget that said middle class child's tax dollars support probably does as much to fund development or at least security in the developing world than any direct wealth transfer by his parents. A second, and related, point is that money sent to the developing world has a remarkably low rate of return, between the cost of overhead, the cost of graft, and the simple fact that a fair number of dollars are allocated to feel good programs of limited efficacy, eg antiretroviral drugs that, bitter truth faced, will deliver a couple more years of life to people already carrying a death sentence. Targeted and more sensible approaches to aid, such as anti-malarial campaigns, drugs to prevent the transmission of AIDS from mother to child, and others that prioritize the needs of the developing countries over the desire of donors and donor states to feel good about themselves may make a dent, but until we can introduce an ethos of entrepreneurship and respect for the efficacy of the market and the institutions that support it among both the donor and the recipient (far too many of the NGOs and transnational entities that dispense this aid are staffed by individuals enamored with the so-called Scandinavian model) I'll take my chances with my kids.

Posted by Anonymous Conservative | May 2, 2007 7:58 PM

Anonymous:

I am not convinced. Will the average middle class kid really produce any more, over time and over generations, than the children of immigrants? And will that average middle class kid really produce so much more than would be produced if we brought the developing world out of poverty or adopted all the orphans in the world?

In any event, even if we assume that some level of procreation by middle class Americans is necessary to produce the economic growth you posit, how high does that have to be? After all, at some point, additional middle class kids aren't going to produce much marginal benefit. Again, it seems to me that low-birthrate, high-immigration societies do quite well in terms of economic growth and prosperity, so the benefits probably flatten out rather quickly.

Of course, in my scenario, not as many of the babies will have white skin. Again, that doesn't matter, correct?

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 3, 2007 4:33 PM

Dilan

Who said anything about immigrants? In terms of immigrants, highly educated and highly motivated new arrivals contribute a great deal and those of some ethnic backgrounds make more than the average American citizen. Those that come to fill the "jobs Americans won't do" typically receive a good deal more from the government than they contribute in taxes. That's another argument for another time, however.

You misapply economic doctrine in trying to esteem the value of another middle class child. Assuming 2-3% growth, which is a pretty safe assumption, there is no problem of diminishing returns. Said middle class child will simply contribute the same 10-30% of his salary in taxes that his counterparts do and tax revenues will increase accordingly (and presumably the size in absolute terms of development aid would increase as well). While perhaps some Malthusian bomb awaits, suffice it to say America is not perched on its doorstep.

The goal of lifting people up out of poverty is a noble one and I do not mean to demean it. My point is simply that were you simply to take the $2-300,000 (variable of course) it takes to raise a middle-class child to adulthood and convey it to "Africa" as an entity, you're going to lose a substantial portion to graft, still more to overhead, and the money that actually gets to the children may do little or no actual good. Short of a substantial change of course in the provisioning of development aid, that $200-$300,000 is better spent raising that child, who is then likely to produce X amount of dollars and contribute X amount to the tax coffers.

Posted by Anonymous Conservative | May 3, 2007 7:18 PM

I don't think you should take for granted that it is incoherent to talk about harms or benefits to people who don't yet exist.

There is actually philosophical literature on this topic, the conclusion of which is not clear. Imagine a woman for a fixed period (say, six months) taking medication that causes birth defects. It seems wrong for her to get deliberately pregnant during this period. But the baby conceived six months later would be a different baby--the baby not conceived now would never exist. So the defective baby has not been harmed--the alternative was his never existing. This leads some philosophers to argue for the existence of "impersonal harm": things that are wrong even though no individual was harmed. There is no reason to think that there shouldn't also be "impersonal benefit": things that are good to do even if no individual is benefited (because the alternative was their non-existence).

Utilitarians, of course, can easily accept the view that there are impersonal harms and benefits (additions and subtractions from total happiness). But one need not be utilitarian to want to make room for this idea in certain contexts, especially reproductive ones.

Posted by Zena | May 4, 2007 8:30 AM

Ross:

Don't know whether you care, but there is a biblical command that is on-point, the first command given to mankind: be fruitful and multiply. Interestingly, the traditional Jewish understanding of this command is: (a) it addressed to men only (women have no obligation to procreate, whereas men do); (b) while there is an obligation to try to procreate, there is no obligation to succeed (i.e., for a man to choose a celibate life is a violation of God's command, but a man is under no obligation to divorce a wife who proves to be infertile); and (c) the obligation is fulfilled if one has two children, one of each sex (which, you'll note, does constitute being fruitful but not, strictly speaking, multiplying).

I think you're getting yourself into trouble by using a utilitarian framework, which simply will not get you where you want to go, unless you can prove that the rich having more children is somehow to best way for said rich to help the existing poor, something you certainly haven't proven.

The only thing that might get you where you want to go is teleology, some theory of what human beings are for. From a Darwinian perspective, we're vehicles for producing replicas of the genes we carry; obviously, from this perspective, we have *no purpose at all* other than having as many children as possible. But in strictly Darwinian terms, the single human being who best fulfilled the human telos was Genghis Khan, who, it has been estimated, has more living lineal descendants than any other figure known to history. I doubt you're suggesting that we all need to be more like Genghis Khan. But I suspect that your preferred teleological framework would allow that there are modes of life even more meritorious than that of the natural family. Celibate devotion to God, for example.

What I think you're really getting at is something like this: if placing happiness at the top of the value heirarchy meeans that most people will rationally choose not to have more than one child, this is strong evidence that happiness as such should not rest at the top of that heirarchy. But what should rest there?

If we go back to the bible, the reason the patriarchs give for having children is not to achieve happiness, either for themselves or for their not-yet-existing offspring, but to carry on their *names.* We might best understand this to mean not simply the inheritance of genes or livestock but the *continuity of one's personality beyond one's death.* There is a degree of solipsism in a purely individualist outlook, that identifies oneself only with oneself. But, on the other side of the coin, this projection of the personality beyond the self is substantially a fantasy. If nothing else, we can't *experience* the extension of ourself beyond our death. And, of course, people can cause their name to live on beyond their deaths without having any children. Jesus did. So did Hitler.

As for Zena's concept of impersonal harm and impersonal benefit: doesn't this logic, slightly extended, suggest that one has caused impersonal harm if one causes to come into being an unhappy on congenitally ill person? Does this suggest an ethical imperative to eugenics? Even if one stresses the caveat that you can't cause personal harm to prevent impersonal harm (e.g., have an abortion if you discover your child will be born with a significant birth defect), is this logic taking you where you want to go? I think totting up utiles is a pretty futile exercise most of the time, but when the utiles belong to people who don't exist it seems particularly weird. I should think that the ethical ought to be satisfied well short of maximizing the number of utiles of one's lineal descendants out to the umpty-umpth generation.

Posted by Noah Millman | May 4, 2007 4:23 PM

"Technically true, but beside the point. In order for well-being to exist at all, some people have to have children."

Doesn't the need for well-being to exist, depend on the existence of the persons/creatures who will experience it?

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