I've heard this kind of commentary a lot, but I still believe it's much more of a case of "people not wanting to have kids and then giving climate change as the reason" than climate change actually being the deciding factor in not having kids. I think in most cases it's more akin to virtue signaling.

The modern world, especially in the US, is quite unfriendly to having kids. Both parents have lots of other opportunities that having children may conflict with, and having children can be horrendously expensive depending on your child rearing style. Given that, if you're subconsciously thinking "I don't want to have kids, it's just too hard", it comes across as "more virtuous" if, instead of giving the reason as you want to be more selfish with your time and money, that you want to protect a potential child from having to go through a future hellish environment.

A whole article about people grappling with whether to make little copies of themselves when there are tons of kids that need adopted. The whole idea of having a kid just seems like a weird selfish ego trip. I know there’s underlying primal instincts at play - years of evolution driving you to breed, but we have the brains to take a step back and say is this the best choice I can make if I’d like to love and raise a human? Could I provide a better life for an already existing human? Or am I just on some ego trip to make a little replica of myself.

These types of movements never really go anywhere, in large part because their proponents remove themselves from the genepool.

It's the same reason that people having been saying for generations that religion is going to disappear, but it never actually does. Non-religious cultures tend to have below-replacement rate births while religious ones have higher birthrates.

The main thing that not having children does is ensure a future that is full of people with very different values from yourself. That could be a bad thing or a a good thing depending on how you see yourself.

Personal anecdote: My wife and I got married assuming that we would eventually want kids. We were pretty young, and that's what people do, right? We kept checking in with each other and kept not wanting to have kids. 5 years into our marriage, we were certain enough that I chose to have a vasectomy. We were so certain that my biggest fear was NOT that we'd change our minds later, but that my vasectomy would be one of the 0.1% that failed.

Our reasons were mostly personal, and it ultimately wasn't a responsibility we felt equipped to take on. There's some personal traumas that we experienced as kids and didn't want to pass along. There were some "selfish" reasons and things that we gave a higher priority in life than raising children. We had enough executive dysfunction between the two of us that we didn't think we'd be able to give kids enough attention while also juggling our other priorities. There is also nothing so special about our genes that compelled us to procreate--we could have adopted if parenthood called to us later in life. The usual reason we give is "we can barely take care of our pets, we're not bringing kids into this." That's the most concise way I can put it without opening up an argument.

A couple of years after the vasectomy, my wife ended up getting diagnosed with multiple chronic (but not terminal) illnesses, so that became a contributing factor after we had already made our decision. Economic concerns have also always been a factor--not something that I viewed as completely unsolvable, but it obviously requires a huge sacrifice to raise kids today. Climate change and overpopulation eventually became extra reasons to be thankful that we're not bringing kids into this mess, but if we ever felt a strong drive to have kids in the first place, I don't think that alone would be enough to deter us.

The article frames the whole discussion around climate change and current events, and I suppose my personal outlook for humanity has become darker over the years, but the decision to have (or not to have) kids is largely driven by personal circumstances. Some of our closest friends are fabulous loving parents, and the world needs more parents like them. Some of us, IMO, made the right choice by opting out. People love to make value judgements about this decision, as if there should be a default choice, but one thing we don't need more of is parents who don't want to be parents.

The strong anti-natalism doesn't surprise me. There's a lot of millennials and younger on HN. I wonder how much of that is just a cover for their pessimism about being as economically successful as their parents? There are structural disadvantages facing the youth today and not having children is a way of avoiding a rigged game. There's also the guilt about raising children at a lower socioeconomic status than they had. Just a thought...

have kids and raise them to be awesome enough to solve modern world problems

I personally don’t like to have kids because the thought of responsibilities that comes with having kids scares the hell out of me

I already have enough responsibilities in my life, with my work etc and I don’t want to worry further by having kids

Even before having kids you have to take care of your pregnant wife, after delivering you have to take care of the kids, when they are old you have to worry about their education marriage and so on

It’s just too much. I don’t have any kids at the moment but the thought just makes me feel like I’m better off getting a divorce

My reason for not having kids is simply the golden rule. Do unto potential others as I would have had my parents do unto me. Now, you might say that I can't know whether my potential kids would have been annoying optimists who could say that they love life, without sarcasm. To which I say, they would have my genes, and me for a father, and in my view that's enough to tip the scales.

The major problems the human race is facing all have a single solution: fewer humans. It's like fasting for individual health: simple, and solves so much. So maybe this is just nature running its course.

Only very rich and very poor people in this world can afford to have kids.

I thought this was going to address the burden of finding affordable childcare, rigors of child development, family insurance, and maybe even a stark anecdote about a toddler or teenager. Then I hear a story about climate change and feel super frustrated that’s where this conversation is starting.

I see the anxiety, but I just didn’t anticipate this from the title.

It's the economic insecurity that does it for me. Everytime I see "we're a team not a family" or the like, I realize how dispensible I am. It's not the content of the message, it's the fact you have to say it. It's a gentle nudge that, hey, remember you don't mean shit to us, ok?

Isn't it strange that the people who claim they don't want to have children for fear of economic hardship or climate change never take the time to criticize their parents for not doing the same?

As far as I know - there’s no lack of adoptions for babies. The lack of adoption is for people past toddler age. Which makes sense - at that age they’re never gonna be just the product of your nature. They’ll always be a product of whatever came before them.

People like to start with a fresh slate. If they didn’t - they’d run a foster care.

I wanted a baby like my wife, and my wife wanted a baby like me. We both like each other so that makes sense. We ended up needing to do IVF. If that hadn’t panned out I don’t think we would have adopted, though I’ve always thought fostering would be rewarding.

it's not ego. It's the drive of your genes to get into the future. Helping someone else's genes (that have some overlap with yours) is also adaptive, but not as much as people more closely related to you.

I can assure you that you will not make a little replica of yourself. It will be a new and different person that inherits some of your traits, but by no means all of them. That you're thinking of a child in that way suggests that you are right to not have one, at least until your thinking on the subject matures.

I don't see any point in arguing with the child-free types, I just see it as evolution at work in the modern world. The future is going to be dominated by those with the desires-to-reproduce phenotype. That's just a scientific fact and no argument will change it.

I find that argument flawed since it's the ultimate form of "think of the children". It implies successful parenting is a zero sum game, and that by having a child you're taking love away from another.

> years of evolution driving you to breed

The more I think about it the more sense this makes to me: there is no innate urge to breed, only to mate. It's what tricks you into breeding.

>The main thing that not having children does is ensure a future that is full of people with very different values from yourself.

The first thing you need to accept if you want to have kids, is that they will NOT live the life you want them to live, nor will they accept your values at all, unless you can convince them that your values have merit.

How well have you been able to convince your friends of something? Yeah, you'll have slightly better odds with kids, because in the beginning you have full control over their environment, until school starts.

At what rate do the children of Traditionalist Catholics remain Traditionalist? At what rate do the children of haredi Jewish parents remain haredi? What about grandchildren?

I'd be curious to see some of the demography here. My intuition is that in the U.S., these subgroups are growing their share of religiously identified persons (e.g. a larger fraction of Catholics are traditionalists today than in 1970) but they are not growing as a share of the general population.

This is absurd. The "gene pool" has nothing to do with people's sense of ethics around having kids or not.

We don't have a "don't have kids" gene that can get outcompeted.

> The main thing that not having children does is ensure a future that is full of people with very different values from yourself.

Who cares? I'll be dead!