Why Have Children?: The Ethical Debate

4Deontological Reasons for Having Children

4 Deontological Reasons for Having Children Whenever human beings decide to reproduce, the decision has at least two foundational and morally relevant features. First, children themselves do not choose to come into existence; by the very nature of procreation, their consent is not possible. Hence, in cases where pregnancy is the result of choice, the decision that a new human being will come into existence is inevitably made for them by others. Second, no child can be brought into existence for its own sake. What I mean is that there is no previously existing entity that is given material human existence via reproduction. Some people believe that having a child may be, in part, an expression of gratitude that one exists oneself. They say they give the “gift of life” because others gave it to them. However, J. David Velleman argues that life is not a gift at all because the gift has “no intended recipient. It is a ‘gift’ that is launched into the void, where some as-yet nonexistent person may snag it. Such untargeted benefits do not fit our usual concept of giftgiving ” (2005, 372 fn. 7). That’s not quite right, though, for “untargeted” benefits can sometimes also be gifts. Consider monetary donations to charities. These gifts have no specific intended recipients; they are “launched into the void” in the sense that one does not know and is likely never to know who are the specific people who are helped. I think what makes procreation an odd “gift” is not that it is “untargeted” but the fact that the recipient does not yet exist. In this one case, the gift creates the recipient, and there is no particular being on whom the “gift” of existence is bestowed. As David Benatar puts it, because procreation is not a matter of bringing “the benefit of life to some pitiful non-being suspended in the metaphysical void and thereby denied the joys of life,” children are never brought into being for their own sake (2006, 129–130). 58 Chapter 4 Given, then, that children never consent to coming into existence and cannot be brought into existence for their own sake, this chapter begins the inquiry into whether there nonetheless are good reasons for procreation . Israeli philosopher Saul Smilansky goes so far as to argue that “under certain conditions many people are under some moral requirement to attempt to bring children into being (in order to raise them)” (1995, 41, my emphasis). Despite the fact that women’s and men’s roles in reproduction are significantly different, he does not distinguish between what he takes women’s and men’s procreative obligations to be. He simply states a series of arguments in favor of an obligation to procreate, arguments that include the value of children, the value of loving relationships with children, the need for new persons who will “support the economy and provide all care and services in society,” the need to supply “future voters and concerned individuals,” and the importance of fulfilling others’ pronatalist expectations, preserving a cultural form of life, and perpetuating a genetic and cultural familial pool (1995, 46, 47). If the taxonomy of rights in chapter 2 is correct, and women and men have a moral right not to have children, then there is a prima facie very strong reason for believing that they are seldom or never under an obligation to have children. This claim, I show, can further be defended through a critical examination revealing the inadequacy of each of the reasons that might be put forward to support such a putative obligation, including those presented by Smilansky. Smilansky’s reasons are a mix of deontological and consequentialist approaches. In this chapter on deontological arguments for procreation and in chapter 5 on consequentialist arguments, I engage in an examination of his reasons and others. The various reasons traditionally offered for having children turn out to be surprisingly inadequate. As I stated in chapter 1, deontologists believe that certain acts or the practices and rules to which these acts are related—for example, keeping a promise—are right in themselves and that other acts—for example, murder—are wrong in themselves, independent of the consequences of the acts. Outcomes are not what make our choices morally justified; it is their conformity to certain moral rules. A deontologist regards it as important to make the “why have children?” decision on the basis of doing what is inherently right and avoiding doing what is inherently wrong...