Why would that be? The act of having a baby produces a new human being, and thus a whole new set of possibilities for joy, achievement, and fulfillment. The act of adopting removes a child from the foster care system and puts him or her in a stable home. While adoption certainly improves the lot of the adoptee in most cases, it seems obvious to me that the net gain for the human species is greater from a birth. It’s not as if every child in the foster care system is doomed to a life of misery and woe.
Here’s where we differ in philosophy. Derek Parfit, in Reasons and Persons, outlines different views of morality and population. Two of which I’ll write about here:
There’s the Impersonal Total View “If other things are equal, the best outcome is the one in which there would be the greatest quantity of whatever makes life worth living.”
Then there’s the Impersonal Average View: “If other things are equal, the best outcome is the one in which people’s lives go, on average, best.”
Parfit then gives us two different worlds to look at. World A has a small population, but the population is very happy. World Z has a very large population of people whose lives are much less happy, but whose lives are still worth living.
I think Scenerio A is much preferable to Scenario Z. Choosing to forgo procreation and adopting a child would be much closer to a Scenerio A type world because I believe the average amount of happiness would be (ever so slightly higher). Every child I choose to create and nurture is one less existing needy child that doesn’t get nurtured instead and thus I believe it would drive the average amount of happiness in the world down and not up.
Expanding upon this some more…
The environmental impact of creating a person also cannot be ignored. It is true that the impact of any one individual is neglible, but in the aggregate creating enough lives will eventually cause a serious amount of suffering for everyone. We may disagree on what would be “too many” people, but I think it’s obvious that there is a certain point where there could be too many people.
Parfit’s argument, if I’m understanding it correctly, rests on the assumption that the standard of living is irrevocably tied to the total number of people. When the total number of people goes up, then the average standard of living must go down.
Well, I don’t see any reason why it needs to be that way, and I see reasons why it would be the opposite way. In the Chesterton essay that I already linked to, he argues for why the presence of babies in society is necessary for everyone’s happiness. The book and movie Children of Men imagine a world without children, and it looks like a rather depressing place.
I am also not willing to write off children in the foster care system if they don’t get adopted. I would agree, on the whole, that it’s better for a kid to have a stable, adopted home than to be in foster care. But that does not mean that their life is ruined if they don’t get adopted. For a foster care kid, there’s still plenty of possibilities. A whole world of possibilities, in fact.
I also don’t see any reason why people should take environmental impact into account when choosing whether to have kids. The state of the environment will be determined by the choices people make, not by the number of people there are. Humans can live in harmony with the environment. Some already do, and it could be done on a massive scale. On the flipside, if people make the wrong decisions, they will wreck massive damage even in small numbers.