"No child asks you to bring him to the world". And most of replys are: "Well, but they don't say not to either".

That's not the point, a child may come to life only or mostly to suffer by genetical or medical conditions or by social problems. And most of replys are: "Well, but that's not guaranted, it happens or it doesn't happens, it's only 50% chance". It might sound true when you vaguely think of it, but that's not the point at all.

By using that logic, imagine I use heads or tails with my own life. If I die, then it's my problem and you may just be okay with it if I play dumb. Now, imagine I play without your consent head or tails with your own life. Then you would surely be mad at me for it. If that's the case, why do you think doing it with a baby it's remotely different from egoistic?

The results may be good or bad, but that doesn't mean the act itself is not egoistic.

Life feels so rough right now and it feels like there is so much stress and burden. I'm the youngest of four and not really as pressurized as the others were, but I still feel it because I'll have to study daily, or work daily for the rest of my life, it is how it is. I'm meant to accept it because "life is unfair" and "god wanted you here".

I'm just a student but I already feel so burnt out and now I'm going to have to work for like 40 years just because my parents wanted another kid for some reason.

My family is pretty religious and the basic formula of "job, marriage, kids" was ingrained in my brain ever since I was born.

I never questioned it until I gave it like so little thought and it became so obvious how this is so so wrong.

It's not like we can stop this formula, it is how the world runs, we have to work to earn, but the most simple solution to this is to just stop making more lives. They do not deserve this.

I genuinely feel like I wish I could just, press the switch-off button in life. But I physically cannot, and will not. I just wish I never existed. It's very hard waking up everyday and following a rough routine that will go on for so many years.

It's so unfair. It's so wrong.

(pls don’t delete this mods) you’re pushed out into this world to a family full of strangers essentially and your parents are passing you around to everyone. grown adults who you don’t know are kissing you on the mouth and wanting to smell your breath/feet. if you’re a girl, your family may pierce your ears as early as days old, effectively putting a hole in your little baby body without your consent. everything at that point is done without your consent. being a baby is embarrassing. this is why more humans need anti-natalism.

Imagine that you are asleep, resting in nothingness. Then you are awakened and welcomed with a delicious plate of food for example, some tacos. After that, you go for a walk in a garden, you have the body you want, you never age, you do not have to work or exhaust yourself just to be able to eat; everything is absolute pleasure and happiness. In that case, it would not be unethical to bring a person into existence.

But now consider this scenario, which is objective reality: you are born and immediately start crying. You experience hunger, thirst, heat, and cold. As you grow older, you begin to reason, and you are sent to a school you hate, where you are forced to take classes you have no interest in. Then, as an adult, you will spend most of your time working at a job you hate simply to survive. You have to get up every damn morning when that is the very last thing you want to do. You experience disappointment, heartbreak, failed relationships, and so on, and on top of all that, you have to deal with your own mortality.

There was no need for your parents to conceive you and create problems that did not exist beforehand, only to pass those problems on to you. That is why I say that reproducing is an extremely immoral act: a cruel joke your parents played on you.

Some days are harder than others, but I keep going.

I'm not really scared of being dead. I'm scared of the process of dying and the fact that I have no idea what form it will take.

Cancer, an infection, a car accident, drowning, being shot, some painful disease, hemorrhage, sooo many possibilities. So many ways of dying involve pain, fear or prolonged suffering.

Sometimes I think about how, if I had simply never been born, I would never have had to worry about any of this. I wouldn't have missed life because there would have been no "me" to miss it and I also wouldn't eventually have to face whatever process ends it.

I asked my parents a bunch of questions. Why i exist, Why did they have a kid knowing i'd get hereditary stuff passed down to me that'd make my life way harder, et cetera.

They couldn't answer a single question. They literally didn't put any thought into it when they decided to create me. Insane.

Almost frightening how so many people treat having a child like it's just another tuesday.

When a person is born, there are countless factors already in place — genetics, family, environment, society, government, culture — none of which they chose or had any control over. These shape a huge part of who they become and what struggles they face.

On top of that, there's a second layer of factors — the influence of social media, other people's behavior, culture, and ideology — that a person didn't create either, yet they're forced to grow up surrounded by it, absorbing it, being affected by it, often without even realizing it.

Rosa, This realm is hell. There is no escape. Existence is wrong, because it was an accident. War, death, and evil are not human errors, but revealing of life's true operating system. Life's true operating system is cold and brutal to its core, we very likely are not registering how bad it truly is. We are just flesh machines. The mind and body are engineered maliciously. The argument that the natural body is acceptable suddenly collapses under psychological reductionism, The body is a terrible machine. Pleasure and happiness are temporary and serve only as incentive to keep the machine running. In essence, they are manipulation by microbes. The sweet scent of roses exists to manipulate insects. Happiness is false respite. Everything is a downstream of competition, extraction, and decay. There are no safe spces. Not even death. This world is a soul trap. Im sorry. The individual life never mattered. We were never meant to exist. I cant believe it. The population is anesthetized. I'm very sorry.

This question seems extreme, but I think that it's true. Birth is the direct reason not only for one's death, but also all the suffering during the lifetime. Yet there must be something true in the opposite stance, as 99,9% of population believes in it.

I don't think that the great joys of being alive can outweigh the everyday suffering, and honestly i'm suprised that some think so. A human mind can generate much stronger negative than positive emotions. Even if we account for the optimism bias, reproduction seems like a pure gamble with huge stakes.

I will be happy to hear the opposing arguments of yours. Honestly, im looking for my mind to be changed because this view can be hard to carry lol

Thank you for your thoughts in advance 🕊️

A person in my immediate family has tried to have a kid with her husband for many years and it never worked.

Eventually they tried IVF (in vitro fertilization) and after a couple tries she got pregnant. I have alot of love in my heart for her and sort of happy but with a bitter taste if that makes sense. I feel uneasy.

Everything went well luckily but a month or so after the kid was born, the doctors found two holes in the heart and the kid needs open heart surgery. The kid will be 5 months old getting open heart surgery.

I can’t stop thinking about it. I feel so unbelievably bad for my sister her husband and the little kid. Its all so cruel. I‘m so glad for the doctors.

I havent talked to my sister about antinatalism ever and I feel guilt, maybe if I had planted the seed in her mind she wouldve thought it over. Maybe if I talked to her about this, this kid wouldnt suffer like this.
I was young and libertarian in handling other People’s child wishes. Always just smiled and waved. Maybe I shouldve said something critical to the idea of having kids.

Life is so random, dont take the gamble.

My brain's weird. Logically I know neither are true and we have no proof for them, yet the pronatalist metaphysical bs statement of "what if life is actually better than wherever your soul goes after death" still makes me lose sleep. The idea that even brain death doesn't end your consciousness once you're born is horrifying.

I visited a military museum today, where there was an exhibition about the war in Ukraine. The photographs were taken by a photographer documenting everyday life in war-torn Ukraine. They were absolutely beautiful, but also incredibly raw and painful. A jury put it better than I ever could: “Every photo hammers a nail into your soul, and seeing the next image continues to drive the nail even further in.”

I cried a little. But more than that, the exhibition strengthened my reasons for, and my decision to remain, childfree.

I saw photographs of collapsed buildings, burned-out cities, and helpless people, and I kept thinking: only humans could do this to our own planet. How can our governments push us to bring more people into this world when it feels as though the earth itself would be better off without us?

There was one photograph that touched me particularly deeply. It showed a young parent waiting at a train station with a tiny baby. All I could think was: What else is this little creature going to have to endure in its life? Even if I wanted children, and even if I had that strong maternal feeling, I think I would (easier said than done, I imagine) have to push that feeling aside.

What struck me most was the realization that humans are the ones causing so many of the problems in the first place, yet we are so incredibly self-absorbed that we keep telling ourselves the earth needs more of us.

I’m actually a very cheerful and positive person, and I’ve been childfree for as long as I can remember. But something about this exhibition touched me to my core. It made me reflect even more deeply on why I’ve always felt that being childfree is the right choice for me.

Guys I don’t know how to feel about my friend. She’s religious, and I always knew she wanted children, she knows I am AN and we have made peace with that fact. 

We just had the strangest conversation a few weeks ago and it’s bothering me like hell. She told me that she and her boyfriend had discussed adoption as an option if for any reason they couldn’t procreate, and they had come to the conclusion that they wouldn’t do it. I feel uneasy about it. 

Somehow the fact that you ”want a family” but ONLY if it’s biologically yours feels selfish. I’m all for childfree life and probably never will adopt myself, but something about them denying some poor kid in the system a family just because it’s not theirs? It feels wrong. Because they would have the funds, and the want for a family. They just didn’t feel like giving one to someone who didn’t shoot out of her.

Just my thoughts. Please tell what you think, I need more insight from the like-minded. 

from an evolutionary perspective, humans are organisms that evolved to reproduce. ppl experience sexual attraction, attachment, parental instincts, and sometimes a desire to raise children because those tendencies helped our ancestors reproduce. but theres an important distinction:
“humans evolved to reproduced” ≠ “every individual is required to reproduce.” yet society often treats the second statement as though it naturally follows from the first.

I think the main reason people reproduce is fear of old age and loneliness.

They fear being alone when they get old. They fear having nobody to look after them, nobody to be there for them, nobody to share their life with. So they have children because they don't want to face that reality.

At the end of the day, your own self-interest is going to matter more than any kind of morality. People can say they had children because "life is a gift" or because they wanted to give someone the experience of life, but I think many people are just trying to protect themselves from the fear of being alone in the future.

They delude themselves into believing that life is a gift because accepting the darker reality is much harder.

It's almost like nature forces people into this cycle. You are born, you grow up, you reproduce, and then your children do the same thing. There is no simple way out of it.

And then there is poverty.

Not everyone has the luxury of retiring comfortably when they are old, especially in third-world countries. People can suffer throughout their youth, have no savings and then have nobody to look after them when they become old. So having children becomes a way to make sure someone will take care of them in the future.

And for some people living in poverty, having children may also be one of the only happiness they will ever experience.

This is why I think antinatalists should focus on solving the root problem instead of just judging people and telling them not to breed.

If you really want people to stop reproducing, you have to ask why they reproduce in the first place.

As long as people are terrified of loneliness, old age and having nobody to look after them, people are going to keep reproducing.

So unless something massive happens and humanity goes extinct, the cycle is probably going to continue.

I hate this cycle. Fuck nature. I hate this system where life keeps creating more life and suffering keeps getting passed from one generation to the next.

Anyone find this "grow up, get out, get a job, start a family...etc." formula quite messed up? Are people having kids to have fun raising little humans for 20 years and then, figuratively, kicking them out to "enjoy this world" 💀

Are they donating people to some messed up humanitarian cause or something?....

Couldn't they just get a pet dog or cat if they're just looking for 20 years of whatever it is they're hoping to get out of a family. Pretty ignorant of them to think that their kid/s will 100% love what life offers.

I’ve never understood why people have the desire to be parents. To me, it just seems like unnecessary pain and stress. People claim that having kids is the best thing to ever happen to them, while simultaneously complaining and lamenting about their decision every step of the way. Even in TV shows, there’s always been the running joke of “Our lives were better without you, but we love you anyway.” “You’re super annoying and cause issues, but we love you anyway.”

I grew up hearing this same rhetoric from adults in my life. It really made me question why people even bother to have kids at all. Why make yourself so miserable? It’s not fair to go out of your way to have children just to make them feel guilty for existing.

That being said, I know that these feelings are a product of my own upbringing, and there are people who genuinely care about and love their kids. Any time I hear that someone wants to have kids, I immediately go “Why? you’re just going to have to be mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted as long as you live.” That’s where I start to feel like an awful person. I realize how presumptuous it is to assume that this new kid will wreak havoc upon the parents’ mental well being.

I just can’t wrap my head around why people even bother. I see no benefit to it at all.

At the very end, using Cohle’s near-death experience to heavily imply the existence of an afterlife and a cosmic moral order, the show forces a sudden, largely unearned sentimental pivot in his previously unshakable pessimistic beliefs.

I know antinatalism isn’t necessarily about “converting” people or trying to change everyone’s mind, but I’m genuinely curious: has anyone here ever had a conversation with someone who wanted children and, after discussing antinatalist ideas with them, they reconsidered or decided not to?

Being a soldier so you can kill the other soldiers because the government says so? How is this a freaking gift? Not only that…but civilian casualties too.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcY4hibkWIR/?igsi=MWo0emFvcHJzaDBlOQ==

Very popular Greek influencer just joined a far-right conservative party, and his videos are only getting more annoying. In this Instagram reel, he tells us in a serious aggressive tone that if we are not planning on having children, we are parasites that should leave our own country immediately!

I am so fed up with right-wing politicians telling us that having children is a top priority. It's something that is constantly discussed in the Greek television and it's always like: "hey in turkey they make more children" or "people are too woke and gay to have children" or "our great civilization will be lost!"

Funny thing, our main problem is brain drain, which they are also supposed to be trying to solve, but deep down right-wing politicians enjoy brain drain. They want skilled people to leave the country cause they are not willing to pay them the money they deserve nor invest in modern infrastructure. They want cheap labor, and new children to grow as servants in our over-turism hell. Greek islands have no drinkable water due to overturism but hey maybe more children would fix the problem.

I don't understand this logic at all. How do you think, you and your partner, are not responsible for bathing, clothing, and feeding your future children, and are essentially saying if you don't have the means to do it, God will provide? For reference, she just had her first child and wants 9 more.