A Future Worth Entering
written on July 16, 2026
There are many reasons not to have children. Simply not wanting them is enough. But there is a framing I struggle with: that choosing not to have children is an act of mercy, sparing those hypothetical children from suffering in the world we are creating.
I reject that framing because it turns pessimism into moral virtue by inventing a beneficiary. A hypothetical child is not waiting in nonexistence, relieved to have been “spared”. There is nobody there to benefit. Unless the life that child would have lived was likely to be worse than no life at all, non-creation is not rescue. It prevents every joy, relationship, achievement and experience just as completely as it prevents suffering.
Treating today’s threats and worries as proof of a bleak future simply assumes a negative conclusion that is not a given. I am glad to live this life. The idea that my parents could have decided that the Cold War and the possibility of nuclear annihilation were reasons not to have me saddens me greatly.
One must not get moral credit for “saving” someone whose existence one prevented, particularly after simply presuming on their behalf that their life would not have been worth living.
“Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.”
— Rabindranath Tagore
