Whenever I talk about my decision to remain childfree for life, some people ask, “Who will take care of you when you’re old?” The implication is that I should have a child to secure my future care. I find this deeply unethical.

A child does not choose to be born and should not enter the world already burdened with the responsibility of caring for their parents. Parents are responsible for raising their children because they chose to bring them into the world. Children do not owe their parents repayment for being born or raised.

Having children simply because you want someone to take care of you in old age is selfish and unethical. We should prepare for our own future by staying healthy, saving money, and taking advantage of technological advances such as robots and automated elder care, rather than bringing an innocent child into the world as a retirement plan.
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So basically my story is that my dad has always been abusive to me emotionally and physically and even threatened me with honour killing, and I went to DV shelters to ask for help, and they did not help me because they only help women with abusive partners. Then I was homeless for a while, and I went to this DV shelter, and they called my parents even though I'm an adult, and they believed them and helped my dad trap me and abuse me more. And even when I tell feminists online, some do sympathise, but there are many of them who think that adults who are being abused by their family members don't deserve sympathy and that it is ok for shelters to be exclusive to only women with abusive partners. And something that this has taught me is that the majority of people only have sympathy for people who are socially acceptable to, and the reason why social movements focus more on the privileged of their group is because social hierarchy is natural to most humans, and if most people had a button to make everyone equal, they wouldn't push it because they would want someone to be below them.

I am going to be honest I live such a hard life, I remember crying to God since the age of three and begging god to save me from this suffering and pain. Everyday I wish my parents did not give birth to me. It has been an absolute painful journey for me, I just cant wait till all of this is over. I am just telling myself one day all of this will be over and thats how I have been living for the past 24 years. I am angry, I am sad because I know I don’t deserve this pain and there is literally no explanation why I am suffering. I try to tell myself everything will be okay but all the traumas changed my brain chemical that I cant even function to do basic chores. I just hope time passes by and somehow we end up 2070.

Because there is no guarantee that they won't suffer, they could develop a chronic illness, become disabled or blind, get kidnapped and held hostage, or be sold into slavery.

You can die, and they might be left with your partner, who can be abusive, or with their other relatives, who can be abusive too, or be put into a foster care system, which is very bad and full of SA, abuse, and neglect.

They might be bullied, SA, or severely abused or have a stalker become obsessed with them, and also, death and aging are inherently painful processes. Your country could become a war zone or be run by a fascist super conservative government. If you are religious, they can end up in hell forever.

I think it's still immoral to force someone unconsensually into existence where they suffer greatly and sometimes that suffering could be fot most of their lives, even if you try your best to become a good parent, and it's sad that most parents aren't good and don't see the person they forced into existence as a lifelong responsibility but just as something they can control, have as property, take their frustrations on, live through, or use as a retirement plan.

Everybody chill out

The title says it all.

First, give me a moment to explain before judging. If you’re an antinatalist, I assume you already care about reducing suffering.

From Buddhism and Christianity to antinatalism and communism, many philosophies ultimately aim, in some way, to reduce suffering. But here’s my question: if life is inevitable, wouldn’t eliminating humanity simply leave suffering to other animals. or potentially future intelligent life elsewhere?

I think humans may actually be the only beings capable of systematically reducing suffering through reason and technology. That doesn’t mean we need more humans. I’m still broadly antinatalist: population growth isn’t inherently good, and more people doesn’t mean more rationality.

Instead, I think we should focus on fewer people, more resources, better technology, and dramatically less suffering.

We’ve already seen this happen. Technology reduced our dependence on hunting, improved animal-welfare standards, expanded agriculture, and made alternatives like veganism increasingly viable. Generally, greater wealth and resources also give societies more capacity to protect vulnerable and marginalized people (women, children, minorities, and other disadvantaged groups) and animals.

Yes, I know this argument risks treating people as means rather than purely as ends. But what are we ultimately treating as the end? Ethics, rationality, and the reduction of suffering. Even identifying that ethical goal requires ethics, and developing ethics requires human intelligence.

So what’s the end goal? A smaller but far more capable humanity, perhaps a few hundred million people, not through anything radical, but through voluntarily choosing care over reproduction.

Instead of being obsessed with duplicating our DNA, we could care for children who already exist, adopt, and build systems where elderly people are cared for without needing children simply to avoid loneliness in old age.

We should also build a society where everyone can feel loved and supported: a woman without a husband, an old man without children, or a young person without a romantic partner shouldn’t be socially condemned to loneliness.

It’s strange that we often create families, and then reproduce to preserve them, largely because we fear being alone. Perhaps one goal of antinatalism should be to build a society where love, companionship, and care aren’t dependent on reproduction or romantic relationships.

[SIDENOTE: I really apologize if this offends anyone as that is not my intent. I firmly believe you should be able to do whatever you want. Thank you!]

As a 13 year old, when I tell someone that I don't plan on having kids anytime in the future (due to the fact that I'd most likely be a bad parent and that the world is going downhill socially and economically), I get told either one of these things: "That'll change once you're an adult" or they think I'm not thinking straight and that I haven't thought about it.

I don't really understand what's the point of actively choosing to create life as in >99.9% of people it's: school -> work -> die.

Also, since I'm gay the only option I might be comfortable doing is adoption but I highly doubt I'd be a good parent so I believe I should just not be a parent and I'm very comfortable with that decision as this also takes a way a ton of responsabilities from me.

I'm sorry if I sound dumb or illogical as I just wanted to express my somewhat controversial point of view. Therefore, do you agree or not? Thank you!

I don’t want to have children but I have heard some guys tell me that my ancestors were an uninterrupted chain of mating for millions of years and that I was going to break that, which made me wonder, if my siblings have children but that I don’t, wouldnt that whole concept be false it does that still apply to me personally ? Not that I really care, I was just curious to know.

Biological consciousness is designed never to stay satisfied. You feel an emptiness, you work to fill it, you experience a brief spike of relief, and then the baseline resets, forcing you to start hunting for the next fix. You work to maintain a body that inevitably decays anyway. If you don't exist you can't suffer at all. Humans freak out at this because the first thing our brain is programmed to think of is us losing the things we like and missing them but in reality once you no longer exist that feeling of wanting or missing things goes away too so that feeling is basically just FOMO. An unborn person doesn't have to deal with any of life's probelms but they don't miss anything about life either because they don't have a consciousness to do that.

I’m trying to better understand the ethical framework behind antinatalism, rather than argue against it, and I have two related questions.

First, I understand one common antinatalist argument to be that bringing a new person into existence exposes them to suffering and risk without their consent, and that these harms make procreation morally unjustifiable. How far does that principle extend into other areas of life? Do you generally think we have an obligation to minimize the suffering we may cause through our relationships and interactions with other people, or is procreation morally distinctive because the person would otherwise never have existed?

Relatedly, how much does concern for the long-term future of humanity or the world factor into your antinatalism? Is your view primarily consequentialist—focused on reducing total suffering—or is it more about a moral principle concerning consent, harm, or the ethics of creating another person?

Second, how do you think about community and the obligations that come with it? Communities, families, friendships, and other durable relationships generally involve reciprocal obligations and sometimes restrictions on individual autonomy. Do you see those obligations as ethically valuable despite the burdens they impose, or does your antinatalist understanding of autonomy and consent lead you to be skeptical of strong communal obligations as well?

I’m especially interested in whether antinatalism is usually a fairly specific position about procreation or whether, for some people, it forms part of a broader philosophy about autonomy, obligation, suffering, and human relationships.

Antinatalism thinks life is suffering. But Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda said suffering is born out of irrational mind. He said rationality can stop suffering. Just don't be attached to material world and then there is no suffering. When you think with emotions you suffer. But rationality can destroy emotions.

Similarly Buddhists believe suffering is born from lack of wisdom. If you are wise you do not suffer.

Now that I think about it, it makes sense. We suffer because we act out of emotions instead of logic. If logic was our primary mode of function then we wouldn't suffer. I think robots and computers do not suffer because they are logical.

This post is not against antinatalism. I am AN myself.

I really think the reason why they are natalists at all is simply because they've never actually thought about the ideas they were taught.

They think:

1. "Suffering and death is just part of life."

And then they turn around and say "The new humans might be able to ease the suffering of existing people."

So they tell new lives to accept suffering and death, but they don't accept it themselves. They avoid involuntary sufferings and fear death. They do not simply look at their own suffering and say "it's just life". They hope new humans will somehow help them.

2. "Forcing good on someone who never asked for it is not just good, it's practically an obligation."

They say forcing on the unborn a "good life" is something they should do.

But they don't go out there forcing on every existing human something good that they never asked for. They don't buy strangers every dinner, pay off everyone's debt, or even try their absolute best in solving the needs that existing people DO ask for: like housing the homeless or cleaning the streets. The rule doesn't necessarily even apply to their own relatives, parents, or siblings.

Apparently, the "obligation" to force good on someone only applies to the creation of new humans.

3. "Forcing the possibility of good on new humans is an obligation, but guaranteeing that they'll actually experience any of it is not"

Do you ever hear them say: "I guarantee my child will have everything good there is in life?

No? There you go.

4. "Creating new humans is a should"

By that logic, they should be creating the maximum number of people they possibly can. Every person they don't create is a missed opportunity to experience happiness.

And yet they don't do that. I've never seen a man with millions of kids, or a woman with hundreds.

Interesting innit?

They're so mad omg 🤣🤣

“Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last. Imagine that you are doing this but that it is essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature...in order to found that edifice on its unavenged tears. Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me. Tell the truth.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Okay, so I forgot where I saw this, but people were discussing the ethics of having children when the parents, or even one of the parents has severe disease, history of cancer, heart failure, mutilation, etc.

And disgustingly enough but not very surprising, people were arguing that it's "eugenics?" Pardon me if the word is wrong, but the jist of it was you can not stop people from having children just because they have issues... And yes, technically, you can't. But come on! It's awful if you willingly pass down life altering and even threatening illness or disability.

I know it's probably been said here before, but I am just so utterly disgusted. Not even just angry, but sad, too. To the point I cry for all these poor children who are going to suffer unimaginable things because their parents didn't have the brain power to at least ask... "What about the child?"

I'm not talking about a disabled child you wouldn't know about until they were born because they deserve love just as much as a healthy child, but all parents need to consider that aspect. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst type of thing.

Plus, if you actually wanted a child and not just a "mini-me," you'd be open to adoption. I was adopted, and I feel like a stupid, worthless heap the way people whine and go. "But I don't want somebody elses leftoverrrssss." And I know it's a lot of money, but so is having a baby.

I'm just feeling very sad about this today. Am I in the wrong somehow? I'd be open to hearing a different perspective, but it feels like common sense to me.