Should you have children? Part 2: Refutations of arguments against

by Vesa Hautala.

In the previous post, I laid out arguments against having children that seem especially relevant to EA and Christians involved in the movement. The primary argument is the opportunity cost argument: having children costs a lot of resources that could be used for effectively helping others. In this post, I will discuss possible reasons to dismiss this argument. This is a complex topic with a lot of nuance, and I can examine each argument only briefly. Discussion of a particular line of argumentation should not be read as an endorsement or lack of it unless otherwise noted.

Lack of precedent

Neither the EA community nor the Christian church have adopted a norm against having children. This fact by itself provides some evidence against the anti-procreation arguments; think of Chesterton’s fence. In the history of Christianity, many people reached radical ethical conclusions based on Christian principles, like John Wesley advocating for earning to give. Despite this, I am not aware of Christians who would have historically used the opportunity cost argument against having children, not even in the case of rich people who presumably would have spent a significant amount of resources on their children. There are many examples of Christians choosing celibacy for ascetic reasons, but this is different from voluntary childlessness for reasons of altruistic impact. For Christians who have a high view of the authority of the church, the fact that the church has not adopted a norm against procreation can be decisive. 

Some Bible passages could be invoked to support the opportunity cost argument (Matthew 19:29 and parallel, 1 Corinthians 7, 1 Timothy 5). While the epistolary passages contain the idea of choosing celibacy to serve the Lord and the church, extending the logic to having children would assume the cases are similar enough, which is not obvious; the verses contain no hints of this.

In Matthew 19:29, most translations speak of “leaving” family members. In 19:27, Peter uses the same Greek word ἀφίημι (aphiemi) while telling Jesus that the disciples have quite literally left behind / given up everything to follow him. The verb seems to mainly point to leaving something that exists rather than giving up something in the future, even though this aspect cannot be ruled out entirely. In the early church context, people converting to Christianity could face exclusion from their family communities, which might lead to separation from their children (sadly, this also happens today). Ostracism and literally leaving one’s family behind to embark on a spiritual mission seem to me like the closest matches to the words of Jesus.

Duties and the vocation of marriage

There is a principle deeply held (theologically, if not always in practice) by many Christian groups across denominational lines that children are an important part of marriage.1  Parenthood is a very valuable calling and something good and “part of the course” for people who are married. This theological stance is documented in classical and authoritative theological documents of various denominations and seems to correspond to the lived theology of wide swaths of contemporary Christians. From this perspective, choosing childlessness looks like neglecting an essential element of the vocation of marriage. Choosing to forgo procreation in marriage for impact reasons would be similar to other ways of neglecting a vocation for more impact, such as purposefully performing poorly in your job to run more impactful activities on the side. 

Parenthood as an important part of marriage can be argued for in different ways. One is that when God instituted marriage, he intended it to produce children. Intentionally frustrating this would be a transgression against God’s intent for marriage. Another is procreation in marriage as a direct commandment of God. Some take “be fruitful and multiply” in Genesis 1:28 as such, and other passages have also been invoked as presenting the same duty indirectly. (Gen. 2:24, Ps. 127:3–5)

However, the existence of a duty doesn’t necessarily settle the case. Duties sometimes need to be weighed against each other (Alex Rattee has previously touched on this in a different context here), and a strong duty to help those in need exists (for a Biblical basis, see for example 1 John 3:17–18). But inviolable duties might also exist. God’s omniscience could guarantee that following a certain commandment absolutely will lead to the best result even if limited human analysis seems to disagree. Or if we break away from consequentialist justifications, God could issue absolute commandments that are binding by his authority alone. Unfortunately, investigating whether there is an inviolable procreation duty or what could be legitimate reasons to go against a strong but not inviolable duty would require a more involved discussion than is possible here.

Drawing the line

The opportunity cost argument assumes that having children and helping your neighbour are mutually interchangeable, or fungible. There are practical reasons not to think this way. Some Christians (and secular EAs) may divide their lives into separate spheres that are relatively independent of each other. Family life and the pursuit of impact could be treated as such, so that impact maximisation would not be allowed to encroach upon family life. This can be defended as preserving psychological health or on more metaphysical grounds. 

The case against having children could be logically extended into an even further-reaching case for abstaining from most human relationships since they cost time and effort that could be spent on impactful altruistic endeavours. Most people draw the line way before this point. The church has not demanded voluntary poverty from everyone, even though throughout the ages some have chosen it. There have also been those who renounced marriage for ascetic spiritual development or ministry, but it has never become a universal demand.2

There is also a counterargument based on impact maximisation. Many people deeply desire to have kids. Giving this up would make them very unhappy. Because of this, the argument goes, it’s likely better for them to have children so that they don’t lose their motivation to do good in the long run. EA is already very demanding and people do burn out. It makes sense that having to deny a deep desire for children could tend to make people disengage in the long run. A standard that you should not have children to be “a good EA” would also look very bad, create reputational damage, and filter out many potentially highly impactful people.3

Conclusions

Multiple lines of argumentation point towards rejecting the opportunity cost argument, but I was not able to fully address possible rejoinders to these. In any case, I think we can conclude that adopting a community norm against having children is unwise on practical grounds.

What if you still find the opportunity cost argument convincing and think it might be the right choice for you not to have children for impact reasons? Personally, as an Orthodox Christian, I would respond with what is almost an Orthodox cliché: “Talk about it with your spiritual father.” It’s a near-cliché for a reason. Many ethical conundrums are best addressed in the context of personal guidance with a discerning and trusted mentor rather than theoretical argumentation. This advice does depend on Orthodox theology, but people in other churches may find it applicable as well. In any case, acting based mainly on guilt and an abstract sense of obligation seems like a bad idea to me.

In the next part, I will look more into possible reasons to dismiss the antinatalist arguments that conclude procreation is in itself harmful either for the one being born or for others, and explore the value of life and positive reasons to have children, especially from a Christian perspective.

1I am limiting the discussion to having children within a marriage in this post. Dealing with the ethics of having children in other situations would introduce additional questions that I could not adequately address here.

2In mainstream Christianity. Some Gnostic groups apparently did forbid procreation. It is perhaps not that surprising they are not around anymore.

3An EA forum poster writes: “[I]t could significantly detract from the general soft power or cultural influence of EA if we became known as ‘the people who think they are too important/busy to have children’”. They also point out the other side of the coin: “[T]he contrapositive is similarly powerful: If EAs were known for having high-functioning, responsible families, this may have the benefit of growing the community. It seems to be a key way that religions (Mormonism is an obvious example) attract members.”