Albert Einstein's father co-founded an electrical company. Had he decided to focus on his career over having children, his small-time company would likely have gone bankrupt or been bought out anyway; for the sake of that irrelevance, we would have lost one of the greatest minds of the 20th century.
We recently scanned my wife for lifeforms. Specifically this one, due to be born in about a month:
I have seen a fair number of articles in the press or online opinions about people deciding not to have children, perhaps to pursue a career instead. Our Prime Minister got a free ticket to 10 Downing Street because of such a scandal. Others argue that the world is becoming overpopulated and resources ever more strained. Particularly, the link between lower levels of economic development, lower level of education and high birth rate and relatively high infant mortality is well understood. Perhaps it is a good idea to have fewer children in the developed world to offset this effect.
To me, this argument is as if the heating fails in a block of flats, so that each one is freezing cold, setting fire to one of the flats so that the average temperature is acceptable. Having huge variations in the birth rate between countries - or between different social groups in a given country (such as based on level of education) is bound to brew trouble. It would mean, for example, a huge rate of migration (and brain drain etc) or that child-bearers are less represented in government (which has a high rate of university graduates).
What's more, we in economically developed countries should set a precedent for the rest of the world who are industrializing. As increasing GDP leads to higher living standards, countries adopt many "Western" paradigms (such as the internet where you are reading this blog). This applies for demographic trends as well. For example, as Thailand and Korea have become more industrialized, their birth rate has dropped below the rate of replenishment.
If the entire world were to reach the current Western level of socioeconomic development (which is broadly happening), and this correlates with a below-replenishment birth rate (which is also the case), then the human race would eventually die an anguished death. Anguished, because the exponential drop in numbers would leave a proportionately high ageing population needing care. Saying that "children aren't for me" is like saying "a job in farming
isn't for me" - if everyone had that opinion, we would go extinct.
In his farewell speech, Barack Obama talked about his accomplishments: ending recession, giving 20 million Americans access to healthcare, achieving marriage equality - regardless of your personal political viewpoint, things important to him - yet he cited raising his children as his proudest accomplishment.
It is worthwhile to have a large population. Whether there are 1 or 10 billion people on the planet, there will always be (for example) 2% working as farmers just to feed the rest, but the difference in the latter case is that there is a 10-times larger pool of talent to work on the space program or write music. Spending some extracurricular time to do childcare for 20 years and the associated career setback (if there even is any) is well worth the years of accomplishments from the children that result.
For a different viewpoint, here is Doug Stanhope:
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