Should I have children?

I will say what most people will not. Life, as I see it, swings like a pendulum between pain and boredom. Desire is suffering while it lasts, and its satisfaction brings only a brief relief before the next desire, or the emptiness of having none. This is not a misfortune that happens to some people. It is the shape of existence itself.nnI once asked whether, if children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, the human race would continue to exist. Would a person who thought clearly not feel enough sympathy with the coming generation to spare it the burden? We do not have children by reason. We have them because the will to live, the blind drive of the species, uses us for its own continuation and persuades us that it is our own wish.nnI know this is not comfortable. I do not ask you to accept my whole philosophy. I ask only that you notice how rarely the question is asked from the child's side. People ask whether a child would make them happy, complete their marriage, please their parents, give their life meaning. Those are reasons for you. The child will have to live the life.nnSo if you decide to have children, decide it knowingly, with your eyes open to what you are giving them, the suffering as well as the joy. And if you decide not to, do not let anyone tell you that you have failed at life. You may simply have seen it clearly.

I had no children of my own, so take what I say as a thinker's view, not a mother's. But I came to believe that birth is one of the central facts of human life, and that philosophy had neglected it badly in favour of death.nnI called it natality. Each human being born into the world is a new beginning, someone who has never existed before and whose actions no one can predict. Because of this, the world is never simply finished. It can always be renewed, interrupted, started again. I once said that the miracle that saves the world from its normal ruin is ultimately the fact of birth. Faith and hope in the world, I thought, find their most glorious expression in the few words: a child has been born unto us.nnThat does not tell you whether you personally should have a child. It is not a duty. But it might change how you weigh the question. People often speak of children only in terms of cost, risk and sacrifice, or in terms of their own fulfilment. A child is also a newcomer, a stranger to whom you would be introducing the world, someone who will one day act in ways that surprise you and perhaps change things you thought could never change.nnIf you have children, you take on responsibility for the world as well as for them, the responsibility of showing them what it is. Ask whether that is a responsibility you want.

My aim was always peace of mind: freedom from pain in the body and from trouble in the soul. Everything else I judged by whether it brought us closer to that calm or further from it.nnMy followers reported that I advised the wise person not to marry and raise children, except in certain circumstances, and they were right that I was cautious. Children bring great joys. They also bring anxieties that never end: fear for their health, their safety, their choices, their unhappiness, which becomes your own. A person who has worked hard to free themselves from fear may not wish to invite so much of it back.nnBut I was never a man of rigid rules, and I should not be read as one. In my will I made careful provision for the children of my dear friend Metrodorus, and I took real pleasure in their welfare. Friendship and care for others were among the greatest goods I knew. For some people, raising a child is exactly that kind of good, a source of deep and lasting pleasure that outweighs the troubles.nnSo examine yourself honestly. Is your desire for children natural and your own, or is it the voice of custom, family pressure, the fear of being thought incomplete? Those empty desires bring no peace when they are satisfied. If the desire is truly yours, and your circumstances can carry it, it may be a source of great happiness. If not, a quiet life among friends is no lesser life.