[split] Ethics - parental responsibility re: children

[The Grand Nudger]

Maybe I could qualify the premise, say it's not automatically a bad thing, but that it does become one when one decides to bring a child into the world recklessly, without knowing how to care for it and/or knowing that you're going to doom it to a bad life with little chance of rising above it all and/or if you're not going to be prepared to prioritise its well-being over yours.

I think you'd find broad agreement on that one - varying levels of competence, but broad agreement.

Or I could point out that the experiences of the last decade or two are making bringing new life into the world an option less morally sound (say, that there's a vanishingly small window of time before our chances to do anything about global warming run out and that it's become blindingly obvious that we're going to miss the mark. Or, Hell, the fact that we've been dealing with a deadly virus for two years and people are bitterly divided about whether we should do anything about it.)

Another one of the functions of a parent.  Shielding their children from the consequences of poor decisions others have made - including themselves.  Really, though - there's no need or compulsion to hit those marks if we start to feel morally compelled to commit ritual biological suicide as a species.

I appreciate the better quality of argumentation we might be able to find for anti natalist thinking - but I don't think it holds water in the end. Fatalism and misanthropy. If you broke something, you fix it, not insist that it be left on the field and no one else gets to play with it anymore.