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The Immorality of Having Children

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Abstract

This paper defends the Famine Relief Argument against Having Children, which goes as follows: conceiving and raising a child costs hundreds of thousands of dollars; that money would be far better spent on famine relief; therefore, conceiving and raising children is immoral. It is named after Peter Singer’s Famine Relief Argument because it might be a special case of Singer’s argument and because it exposes the main practical implication of Singer’s argument—namely, that we should not become parents. I answer five objections: that disaster would ensue if nobody had children; that having children cannot be wrong because it is so natural for human beings; that the argument demands too much of us; that my child might be a great benefactor to the world; and that we should raise our children frugally and give them the right values rather than not have them. Previous arguments against procreation have appealed either to a pessimism about human life, or to the environmental impact of overpopulation, or to the fact that we cannot obtain the consent of the non-existent. The argument proposed here appeals to the severe opportunity costs of parenting.

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Notes

  1. The exact estimate is $25,631, according to the May, 2012, Harper’s Index (source: The Wedding Report [Tucson]).

  2. See, for example, P. A. Murtaugh and M. G. Schlax 2009.

  3. See Table 1 in S. K. Henshaw 1998.

  4. The Holy Bible 2001, Genesis 1:28

  5. See M. Lino 2011. Also see the U.S Department of Agriculture’s press release, “A Child Born in 2010 Will Cost $226,920 to Raise, According to USDA Report,” Washington, June 9, 2011. The $226,920 figure is in today’s dollars; given projections about inflation, one is likely to actually pay $286,860.

  6. At the end of 2011, 29 % of American adults aged 25 to 34 lived at home (see K. Parker 2012).

  7. See R. F. Schoeni and K. E. Ross 2005. The authors were writing before the financial crisis that began in December 2007. That crisis probably increased the amount of money that parents spend on their adult children because, in a bad economy, more adult children are unemployed and more live at home with their parents.

  8. Moreover, my analysis has ignored the economic opportunity costs of having children, which make parenthood more expensive still. Many women, for example, have lower salaries because at some point in their careers they “took time out” to take care of their children.

  9. Givewell.org, which assesses charities, estimates that a life is saved for every $205 spent on expanding immunization coverage for children in Sub-Saharan Africa—apparently one of the most cost-effective projects. See L. Brenzel et al. 2006, p. 401. For a more pessimistic view of the value of charity, see K. Horton 2011.

  10. And I have argued that it does increase the world’s value: see S. Rachels 1998.

  11. See P. Singer 1972.

  12. Singer himself was not using ‘luxury’ in this sense, because it would have turned his conclusion into the claim that “we should forgo what we should forego and give our money to famine relief.” Instead, Singer was understanding ‘luxury’ in the ordinary way.

  13. See P. Singer 1972, p. 235.

  14. See R. Thornhill and C. T. Palmer 2000.

  15. The Famine Relief Argument against Having Children does require people to give around $227,000 to charity, and that requirement might be considered too demanding. However, this is the kind of objection that I won’t discuss because it also applies to Singer’s Famine Relief Argument.

  16. See, for example, J. M. Twenge, W. K. Campbell and C. A. Foster 2003, and see the National Marriage Project’s 2011 “State of Our Unions” report.

  17. D. Gilbert 2006, p. 243.

  18. Robin Simon, quoted in L. Ali 2008.

  19. Andrew Oswald, quoted in J. Senior 2010.

  20. Quoted in J. Senior 2010.

  21. D. Gilbert 2006, pp. 244–245.

  22. D. Gilbert 2006, p. 245.

  23. The last two quotes come from J. Senior 2010.

  24. K. Park 2005, p. 374.

  25. See the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website on Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs): http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html, based on the CDC’s “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR)” for March 30, 2012.

  26. This ambiguity in the word “child” was exploited for comic purposes on the TV show, Saturday Night Live. Jack Handey, one of the show’s writers, said, “I believe in making the world safe for our children, but not our children’s children, because I don’t think children should be having sex.”

  27. I. Parker 2004, p. 60. Incidentally, Kravinsky donated one of his kidneys to a stranger—but he didn’t tell his wife, out of fear that she would object. (p. 54)

  28. This argument is rarely given by philosophers, but see D. Benatar 2006.

  29. See S. Shiffrin 1993 and S. Shiffrin 1999 (Section III). For a related (but different) argument, see D. Benatar 2010.

  30. See, for example, T. Young 2001 as well as P. Murtaugh and M. Schlax 2009.

  31. In 1986, I discussed this argument with some high school classmates as well as with my father.

  32. For example, the argument is not given anywhere in D. Archard and D. Benatar 2010, nor is it mentioned in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s informative entry on “Parenthood and Procreation” (accessed in August of 2013). However, I did mention it in S. Rachels 2005, p. 132.

  33. See, for example, T. S. Petersen 2002.

  34. Professor Kai Draper told me this. As to whether parenthood might be considered morally equivalent to mass murder because potential parents should instead devote their resources to saving lives, see P. Singer 2011, pp. 194–199, on whether failing to save the lives of distant strangers is equivalent to murder.

  35. I used to volunteer at a day care facility for homeless children, and one day a five-year-old girl named Latesha was playing with a doll, pretending that it was her baby. When she began putting fake make-up on herself in preparation for going out—just play, of course—another volunteer told her sharply, “Are you going out with your friends tonight? Okay, but first you gotta pay the babysitter!” Latesha looked annoyed as she doled out play money to the volunteer. But her compliance as well as her irritation suggested to me that she might have learned something valuable.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, 35487-0218, USA

    Stuart Rachels

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Rachels, S. The Immorality of Having Children. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 17, 567–582 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-013-9458-8

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