As for myself, I wouldn’t say “erase”. Outweigh would be more appropriate.
Your average life will probably have about as many instants of blissful contentment as of soul-crushing despair, and if you’re lucky you’ll have about as many periods of feeling good as periods that just suck. However there’ll long bouts of tedious boredom, stressful worry and simple weltschmerz in between either extremes. And then there’re the times when you feel absolutely nothing - no good, no bad, just nothing ; which is no better than not living at all and therefore also somewhat counts against the positive aspects of being alive.
You can also do the math on a daily basis : you’ll be sleeping around 8 hours a day and working 8 more. Working is always a drag, and sleeping doesn’t count. Which leaves 8 hours of free time which will be spent either having fun, having suck, or humdrum day-to-day tedium. Even if those 8 hours are pure enjoyment, every day of every week (and what a spectacularly happy life that would be), it’d still barely cover the work part.
Yes, I remember that. I think this is the one we’re thinking of: Having children is immoral (antinatalism). (It was started by marshmallow, who has already posted in this thread.)
Bottom line: I’d say the premise is wrong. Life is worth living, at least for some people.
And whether the good outweighs the bad in a particular person’s life depends to a large extent (though certainly not completely) in their early years on how their parents treat them, and in their later years on the person him/herself and the choices he/she has made.
Gonna have to say that the bolded statement is not even close to accurate. What you never had any happiness when you were a child? You never had even one jot of positive emotion until you became a parent? You don’t argue against overreaching arguments by overreaching yourself.
I think the jist was supposed to be that not having kids eliminates any chance of happiness for the prospective kids, not for the people who didn’t have them.
Not having kids brings suffering and misery to humanity. We are made to love each other and have children that we love. Alone the way the genders divided and became much independent, instead of interdependent, functioning as individuals instead of family. But family is the basic unit of humanity, and we were never meant to operate outside that family unit, family includes children.
Things like scaring people from their hearts desire, to have family/children is scaring people from experiencing Love and closeness and intimacy that we all need. Scaring people from having children is a great evil, especially because there is a limited time for women to have them and they might live way beyond that point having the longing to be a mother but it would be too late.
When people overcome something BAD, they generally feel pretty GOOD about it.
And to the OP, are you suggesting that aborting an unwanted pregnancy (early) to spare the child from a horrible life is a good thing? I would say it IS.
“To impose life on someone else and force that suffering upon them is unethical.”
Nonexistant entities having feelings and opinions notwithstanding, I contend that to deny life to someone else and prevent them from dealing with suffering – (as Buddha tells us, “Life is Suffering”) – is more unethical.
Both my parents are Holocaust survivors. Once, my dad was telling me his story. He was a teenager at the time. Every day, he told me, this thoughts were of how to survive that day, how to live one more day. Even in one of the worst situations imaginable, the thought of giving up was unthinkable.
Much as I love kids, and am glad that I had them, I recognize that people are diverse that that people can be as happy not having kids as I am having them. And trying to intimidate people into having kids they don’t really want is as bad as trying to scare people who do want kids into not having them - and much more prevalent in our society.
In answer to the original question, it woould depend on the motivation for having children.
If you have children because you wish to be a parent, can afford to raise them in a good environment, and are willing to make the huge sacrifices neccesary over the course of the child’s life, then it’s completely ethical.
If, on the other hand, you are one of those people who has children for welfare or even tax breaks, and have no intention of making the effort required for guiding the child into becoming a productive member of society, then I’d say, no, it’s not ethical.
There’s a reason attempting to scare people into not having kids is not prevelant in our society - namely, that to most people “antinatalism” would be considered laughably silly. The vast majority of people do not consider being alive a bad thing!
