Is Procreation Inherently Immoral?
Posted: Wednesday, March 25, 2009
by Philip Yaffe
I have never had children. I have raised a child, a boy from my wife's first marriage; however, I have never created one of my own. It's not that I don't like children. It's just that I have never felt the need to project my genes down the corridors of time.
People sometimes ask me if I regret never having had any children of my own, and the answer is still "no". However, a related question has been niggling at me for some time: Is there any moral justification for having children in the first place? In other words, is procreation inherently immoral?
But no one seemed prepared to grapple with the fundamental question itself. Is there any moral justification for having children, whatever the circumstances?
I am certain that other people must have thought about this; however, they seem to be keeping their opinions to themselves. Or perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps the presumption of having children is so ingrained in the human psyche that asking such a question really hasn't occurred to anyone else. If this is the case, stand by to make history because here come my thoughts on the matter.
There are two fundamental ways of approaching the question, from the religious point of view of religion and the non-religious point of view.
Religious Aspects of Procreation
Not being a religious scholar, I am going to limit this part of the discussion mainly to the Judeo-Christian concepts of religion.
People brought up in the Judeo-Christian traditional all know about God's biblical injunction to "be fruitful and multiply". And we certainly have been doing so.
Human population growth over the past hundred years has been truly phenomenal. The world's population, which stood at only 2.5 billion in 1950, had doubled to 5 billion by 1990, and passed 6 billion just before the end of the century. As of March 2009, the estimated world population had already reached 6.8 billion. In other words, we have already added another 800 million souls in less than ten years.
People raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition are also aware of the biblical assertion that we are all born into sin and that this sin must be expiated. If we are successful in doing so, we ascend to eternal bliss in heaven. If not, we descend to eternal torment in hell.
Most Christians are convinced that their children will of course ascend to heaven. However, this is by no means certain; every soul that comes into the world must inexorably face the prospect of cast down into hell.
I know that Jesus is supposed to have died for our sins. I also know that unless we believe this and accept Him as our personal savior, we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Clearly, not everyone believes this, which means that each day thousands of babies come into the world for whom heaven will be eternally barred and hell will be eternally open.
While most loving parents shudder at the thought of exposing their children any kind of physical danger, they seem perfectly willing to expose them to the greatest danger imaginable, eternal damnation.
Can this possibly be moral?
Non-religious Aspects of Procreation
Suppose you don't believe the stories of heaven and hell. What then? Even if you don't take responsibility for a child's eternal well-being, you must still take responsibility for his temporal well-being. Once again, the prospects are disconcerting.
Even before he is born, a child faces the possibility of physical malformation, mental retardation, or congenital disease. In some parts of the world, the risk is very low; however, there is always a risk. Any loving parent would surely prevent a child from eating a piece of candy picked up off the ground for fear that it might make him ill. Yet the self-same loving parent perfectly willing to risk a lifetime of illness for the child by virtue of forcing him to be born.
As the child grows, he must constantly face the prospect of violence, war, poverty, oppression, drought, famine, pestilence, and the hundreds of other ills man is heir to. Even if he is lucky enough to escape all of these, he still must confront the aches, pains, feebleness of mind and body, and other distasteful attributes of old age, unless of course he is fortunate enough to die young.
In short, whether you are religious or not, the decision to procreate would seem to be an act of high insensitivity, if not actually immorality.
To repeat, I have never created a child of my own. Given the foregoing considerations, I am not fully certain of what I feel about people who have created a child or children of their own; however, I am strongly leaning towards disapproval.
Because I am now in my seventh decade, the thought of procreating, while still technically feasible, would seem highly unadvisable. Instead, I am ineluctably thinking more and more about what I might wish to have inscribed on my tombstone. I haven't yet made up my mind, but I am leaning towards the following:
Dear God, if God there be,
Know this to be my legacy,
My sins were many,
Yet blame I shun,
For I have never inflicted life on anyone.
Philip Yaffe is a former writer with The Wall Street Journal and international marketing communication consultant. He now teaches courses in persuasive communication in Brussels , Belgium . Because his clients use English as a second or third language, his approach to writing and public speaking is somewhat different from other communication coaches. He is the author of In the "I" of the Storm: the Simple Secrets of Writing & Speaking (Almost) like a Professional, available from the publisher (storypublishers.be) and Amazon (amazon.com). Contact: phil.yaffe@yahoo.com, phil.yaffe@gmail.com
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Top-level comments on this article: (5 total)Phillip, I have no dispute with your question but one has to start with ones belief system to answer that. So once again, what is relative? What is moral to me may not be to you? Is black really black or is it something else? Yes and intellectual nightmare. I just wrote to it recently. No, not in any mainstream newspaper, too deep for them and reality, just here on searchwarp. Best wishes,
Hello, Philip..Just read your article and, being a religious person who also does have children, I am left wondering at why you feel that life is something one "inflicts" on another. Life is beautiful and sacred (a bit cliche', but true, nonetheless). The point you raise about so many souls being condemned to hell and why do that to your own child...my response is simple...you are giving a soul a chance at heaven by having a child...you give a gift and hope that he/she takes good care of it...although I don't agree with you, your article made me pause and think about it, so "thumbs up".
I found your article to be very stimulating. I hope I don't offend you but I must ask ifyou believe that your Mom forced you into life and if so do you regret it?
There is nothing immoral about choosing to have a child, as long as you have a reasonable expectation that they will have a "fair go" at life.Deliberately having a child that you expect will have an unpleasant life in which its suffering will likely outweigh its joy would be immoral by most standards.The view that life is a necessarily a punishment seems overly cynical to me.We are the lucky few who get to open our eyes in the universe, be part of its beauty and see its magnificence, even if it is only for a short time. The vast majority of potential people never emerge from the long sleep we woke from when we were born and will return to when we die.
Philip, thank you for your humility & sacrifice. People like you are the unsung heroes of this civilization. If God there be, so loved you are.
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