atheism and children

[Dystopia]

Wait, what is morally problematic? Having kids, or choosing not to abort them?

(sorry, just making sure I understand)

I meant the decision to have children.  I made no comment on the morality of abortion.

When you decide to have a child, presumably, you are hoping that the child's life will be more good than bad, right?  But, of course, you cannot know in advance that that will be the case.  Maybe it will be, maybe it won't.  The thing is, you are taking a chance not with your life, but with someone else's life (your child's life).  It might be that it works out okay, but you are gambling with someone else's future when you make your decision.  That gambling with someone else's future is morally problematic.

To make the idea more clear to you, suppose I were to do something that potentially affected your future happiness, such that you could be very happy, or very unhappy, or anything in between.  And imagine I do this without your consent.  Would you regard my action as morally okay?  

The thing is, that is EXACTLY what one is doing when one decides to have a child.  One is gambling with the future of someone else, without their consent.

Can't it be simply because people have reproductive instincts regardless of how happy they want their future children to be? Since a fetus is not a life, it's pretty much irrational to talk about this. I'll say this though - It is possible, considering where you live and your income, etc, to know if your children will have a good life or not. It's not certain, but reasonably predictable. Of course you can't know anything for sure, but you can always rely on reasonable available evidence to decide how many kids to have.

As I said before, my country has a lack of newborns since 30 years ago because back in the day people used to have about 7-15 kids per couple which created an excess of elderly people who are not a burden on the economy (it is incorrect to say this but it is the truth) because there aren't enough youngsters working. Considering this, it is actually moral to have kids and my government has been trying (poorly) to implement pro-birth policies.