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Jan 24, 2019 at 03:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarknessIsMyFriend

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It almost seems like to me many people are guided mostly by their primal instincts and lack the intellectual capacity to question why they "need" children.

I'm going on 28, yet I don't have any children and I don't want children. For one, I don't want to mess up a child like my mother messed me up. More importantly, I am too interested in my hobbies and passions and being forced to take care of a child would take time away from doing things that I want to do, which is a compromise I am unwilling to make. ...

I know I'm unfit to be a parent so I don't plan on having children. I don't see how hard it can be for other people to think the same way.

The bolded text are very good points, and they are related. There is a philosophy called anti-natalism. Unlike the second reason you mentioned, where you don't want to have children because you need your time and freedom to pursue your goals (reasons that concern you), this philosophy is more related to your first reason, where your concern is the child and not you. However, it goes beyond it to say that all humans have the obligation to stop procreating altogether and go extinct by choice, because no matter what life you have, it's full of suffering. In other words Better to Never Have Been. However, I think for most humans the instinct of life and procreating are stronger than the desire to end suffering. In a sense, we are imprisoned in life; I think we procreate to ease our own suffering, but in the process, we create new lives to go through the same suffering and process again. There is no escape from its suffering but by extinction by an external force, like an asteroid.