Is It Moral To Have Children?

The question is strange but not crazy: Should we have children? Are there cases when we shouldn’t?

Judaism and common sense agree that generally we should and sometimes we shouldn’t.

But there are bigger issues involved. In her book The Risk of a Lifetime: How, When, and Why Procreation May Be Permissible, philosopher Rivka Weinberg seems to over-think all of them.

The essence of her argument is that life can be pretty darned awful, and we should not impose that risk on an unsuspecting would-be child without sufficient moral justification. Two things can justify it:

* Correct motivation: You should have “the desire to engage in the parent-child relationship as a parent.” She argues that you can’t do it to benefit the child because the child doesn’t yet exist; and you may not do it to benefit society because that treats the child as a means to something else.

* Reasonable risk: Having children “is permissible when the risk you impose [on the child] would not be irrational for you to accept as a condition of your own birth.” This is a fancy re-statement of Rabbi Hillel’s advice: “If you wouldn’t want it done to you, then don’t do it to anybody else.” Philosopher John Rawls made a similar but more general argument in his influential book A Theory of Justice.

I don’t mean to make light of Weinberg’s arguments. They’re totally legitimate from a philosophical point of view. Anything we do should be justifiable in principle, even if we rarely get challenged to justify it. However, it would not occur to most people that activities in which humans have engaged since the dawn of the species require justification, unless some obvious harm is involved.

The big-picture answer to Weinberg’s concern involves trees, forests, and what it means to believe in God, if you do.

Which is real, the trees or the forest? Most people today unconsciously think that only the trees are real. The forest is just something we made up. Likewise, contemporary attitudes enshrine the individual person’s desires and welfare above all else, even above biological reality. As a result, the idea of having children to benefit nation, society, or family seems vaguely suspect, perhaps even fascist.

But in fact forests do exist, albeit not in the same way as individual trees. So do nations, societies, peoples, and families have an existence beyond that of their individual members. It’s just as reasonable to consider the welfare of society or the Jewish people as to consider the welfare of an individual not-yet-conceived child who might have a pleasant life or a difficult one. And valuing the welfare of the child as an individual is entirely consistent with also valuing the contributions he or she might make to society.

But what about God? Where does He come into the equation?

Well, if you’re an Orthodox believer, it’s pretty straightforward: “To sire children is to fulfill a mitzvah, the Biblical commandment ‘Be fertile and increase.’ … to avoid having children is to negate a Divine commandment.” (To Be a Jew: A Guide to Jewish Observance in Contemporary Life)

If you’re not an Orthodox believer, it’s a little more complicated but not impossibly so. What does it mean to say that you believe in God, if God is a Being utterly transcendent and incomprehensible?

Believing in the existence of dogs or houses is easy: You can see them and understand them. If you say “I believe in the existence of houses,” it’s perfectly clear what you mean. But believing in God isn’t like that. You can’t see God and you can’t understand Him. If believing in God means anything, it means that you believe the universe is moral and that good is more powerful than evil.

A moral universe means that the chance of a child’s life being good or bad is not 50-50: It’s more likely to be good (in some way) than to be bad. Under normal circumstances, not having children more likely deprives them of goodness than subjects them to evil.

Of course, circumstances aren’t always normal: Even the Bible has God warning Jeremiah not to have children because of the dire fate they would suffer (Jeremiah 16:1-4). If you’re in a war zone or would pass on a hereditary disorder, you have to think seriously about the risks for your child.