Just what exactly about having kids is not ethical? If ethics is a human construct-and you are contributing to having no more humans around…I don’t know, it just seems like a strange way of framing it.
As for the burden of having kids, I think it’s way too simplistic to say it was a burden NOT to have them in the past. There were different cultural dynamics, for sure, but kids have always been a mixed blessing—both difficult and extremely rewarding. Having kids has historically forced adults to face their own shortcomings. Not an easy thing to do in any era.
The burden it places on yourself, your child, and the incremental burden it places on everyone else living on the planet?
If the ethical thing to do is increase the total happiness (or perhaps contentedness, or satisfaction) of all humans...well it's just not really clear that adding a statistically average human is the way to increase human prosperity / reduce human suffering.
To your other point, now that I'm a parent, it's easy to see that becoming a parent made me into a better person, but there was no way I could have known that that would happen before becoming one.
Increasing human prosperity/reducing human suffering is largely a function of technological advancement, wealth distribution and avoiding wars. All of these require a large population of educated humans to drive forward and since yours will likely be educated, probably net positive.
> well it's just not really clear that adding a statistically average human is the way to increase human prosperity / reduce human suffering.
All of history has been an steady march forward of more prosperity and less suffering accomplished by an entire population of, on average, average people.
You couldn't observe that around you growing up? It's was clear to me growing up that big families and children with siblings were mostly happier. It didn't matter if the family was rich or barely getting by.
Sure, but if you were to poll everyone on if they were happy to be born, it'd be overwhelmingly yes. Your odds are pretty good of having a kid that was happy that you doinked.
But if, as hotpotamus suggests, "consent" is a useful way to look at this, then that's not good enough. You can't randomly do surgery on people just because you believe there's a 90% chance they'll be happy with the results.
There'd be a lot fewer people, otherwise. From a pragmatic point of view, we've likely evolved to answer yes to that question, otherwise we would've been outcompeted by another species with a thirst to live and reproduce.
Not necessarily, there are a lot of species that are functional no-ops, such as the Luna moths that grow up to be unable to eat anything as they have no mouths. They can only procreate, continuing the cycle. They are no-ops because there is nothing they can do besides procreate, they cannot even obtain sustenance. So, they might say that it was not worth being born, had they been able to be polled.
If you polled me, the answer would be no. I'm not exactly unhappy about it either, but I'm conflicted enough about it that it's not something I will do to another.
Applying the ethics of consent to this topic is probably just shallow reasoning. There are much better frameworks, but if all you have is a hammer I understand the temptation:)
I’m a big advocate of reducing Zoom/screen fatigue by doing manual labor after the work day. Do a home maintenance project, throw a ball with the kids in the backyard, etc.
When it’s not blisteringly hot out we actually will take a 30-45 minute walk around midday. Helps a ton and has a side effect of allowing my subconscious to solve the problems I’ve been stuck on.
Oh man the struggle in the real. I quit zoom at exactly 5pm and run downstairs and out the door for daycare. I’m at daycare around 5:20 and to pick up the little one to come home, cook, eat, bath and bed time.
The lack of time to decompress after the day (like commutes used to help with before I went fully remote) can be gruelling at times
I'm 100% in favor of children working starting with chores at home and continuing through the rest of childhood, to some degree. But I'd rather see it be things like lawn mowing, babysitting, and what I would call "ordinary" childhood expectations and responsibilities. Keeping kids focused on these domains mostly removes the problem of defining what counts as child labor and what counts as excessive. One problem I have with allowing kids to work in typically adult workplaces, is that I hate working in those places myself and have worked hard my whole life to avoid them, as much as possible.
Yes. This is a better wording of the point I was making in a comment below—which somehow everyone is criticizing as “males need to share in the responsibility”. Putting that aside as a separate debate, I am worried about unintended consequences as well as the generally small effect size when the price of all birth control is so cheap these days.
Meh. Maybe this would have been a bigger deal when birth control was difficult to acquire, but the price has dropped so drastically it’s practically free these days. Also, I thought the narrative was that High Schoolers were having less sex than ever anyway.
Relying on birth control pills and other primarily woman-oriented techniques leaves 100% of the downsides to the woman (from health risks to emotional challenges and beyond). Comparatively, a condom has barely any downside for anyone involved.
70% is a bit dramatic. The pills do not protect against STDs. Also, when I was a teen, I did the math. Having 70% "worse" sex was actually 100% better than having 0% sex.
In a magical universe where everyone's parents are health-literate and willing to take their 16 year old daughter to the doctor's office to get birth control, maybe this line of reasoning might make sense. But in reality, you have a lot of teenagers who are going to have sex but live in a situation where getting birth control is not feasible. This goes a long way toward making sure they stay safe.
You must have missed the news that a certain group in the USA enjoys attempts at specifically controlling (genetically) female sexual activity, and people who want to do normal human things are sometimes legally forced to put as many compensating controls on the (genetically) male part of the population. And then there's the collection of non-pregnancy related issues that are mitigated when using a condom, so perhaps birth control is both more relevant and less relevant than you might think.
It's at least $1 per condom (if buying last minute, at a convenience store) and requires going out of the way to get them. As another comment noted, if having a condom wasn't a signal of intention then I think it would help with usage.
Purely anecdotally, I think the problem is less about the financial burden and more about high-school students being socially awkward and afraid to admit they might have sex, especially to adults at the cash register.
Of course we could also install vending machines, but it's unclear if putting a vending machine in every school, in multiple discrete places where students wouldn't be embarrassed to access it, would recoup the cost.
Are you a manager whose new hire just sent a reply to your AI generated welcome email? Don’t have time to read it? Workspace auto-hides the text and just shows you a simple three-word summary.
The best ones know when to put in effort to show they care for another human being, and know when to automate a task where that doesn't matter. Welcoming somebody to a new job is the former.
So, we will be interacting with the computer just like in Star Trek sooner than I thought. I used to laugh off the scenes when some random bridge crew member would ask, “Computer, run a <fancy-term> analysis on <some-system> with the following parameters…” to solve some problem. Seems more likely than ever.
I don't believe this is a strawman...at least from an outsider's perspective. As someone who has only ever written software independently, the very idea of agile and sprints (at least reading about them here and talking to friends) has kept me from ever wanting to work for a company that uses them. It seems like it would suck all the fun out of writing software.
As for the burden of having kids, I think it’s way too simplistic to say it was a burden NOT to have them in the past. There were different cultural dynamics, for sure, but kids have always been a mixed blessing—both difficult and extremely rewarding. Having kids has historically forced adults to face their own shortcomings. Not an easy thing to do in any era.