nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Child Item

Is it unethical to have more than 2 children?

Wilmol

Considering that 2 is the replacement rate. You're contributing to the overpopulation by having more.

Every human needs massive resources. These include land taken away from other living beings and in terms of raw materials such as heating fuel and anything else you can think of, oh you bought a new house? Now you need furniture and where does it all come from? That's right forests cut down. It's so ridiculous at this point that countries like England and Netherlands literally need to import food from less densely populated countries in order not to starve.

Another thing that would absolutely help with climate change is lower population. Less demand for produced goods = less manufacting and growth to meet demands such as massive land clearances.

Someone would say that it doesn't make a big difference but on a large scale, it makes a massive difference and people that have more than 2 children are selfish, interested in meeting their own needs and **** everyone else.

Find more posts tagged with

Quick Links

Comments

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117699434#Comment_117699434

You can keep your mental gymnastics thanks - as you are the only one using any. And your making stuff up too which you have been doing since the thread started. Making stuff up does not help anyone or anything here.

I do not know anyone with a wife or a mistress. I certainly have no such thing. We are a complete family / relationship all living together in one house here. We decided from early on in the relationship that we were going to aim for 4 children - they wanted 2 children each - and that is what we have done.

And I am not seeing any arguments on the thread against the ethics of this. Just a few misunderstandings of mathematics - a couple of fallacies - along with stuff simply being made up. But a single reason for considering more than 2 children unethical is still wanting. Do you actually have one?

Wilmol

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117699473#Comment_117699473

I'm almost certain you're trolling at this point. The king living in his castle while his 2 mistresses run around him with grapes in their hands. You seem to have plenty of time judging by your post quantity with this many children and mistresses to please.

[Deleted User]

@Wilmol You're getting unnecessarily personal now - I am not sure why. You started a thread asking about the ethics of having more than 2 children. Somehow my taking the side that there is nothing unethical about it has annoyed you to the point that you are now just making it about me - and flinging petty insults in my direction - and straw manning my relationship to make it sound like it is much different than it actually is. Why get personal here? Chill-ax.

I am not sure why you think I would have less time though. Economies of scale actually mean more adults in a relationship means you have more free time and money and resources. Not less. Or at least that's how our experience has been over the last 15+ years together. However if it makes you feel better I do not post all that much on boards and when I do it is usually when I am at work and am doing software testing which is a lot of pressing a button and waiting for results. Then I do indeed have time for discussing things on this forum. I have been on boards 12.5 years. That works out at less than 2 posts per day on average. Hardly prolific is it?

But to return to the topic of the thread - rather than drag it into a one sided and unwarranted personal abuse fest - The "Replacement Rate" is actually bigger than 2. And it is an average rate - not a per person rate. This means that to achieve the replacement rate in a society where some people have less than 2 children - or even no children at all - and where children die too - that some people will need to have more than 2 children. In my case it is 4.

So if we are using the replacement rate as a premise for the discussion - it would suggest that there is nothing at all wrong with having more than 2 children and in fact in some cases it is the right thing to do.

For me though I do not think the replacement rate is a good basis for discussing the ethics here however. Rather all of the factors a given parent - or set of parents - have for and against their ability to give a child a healthy upbringing should be considered before having any children at all - let alone subsequent children.

We as a family unit of three adults considered all of those factors and decided 4 was the right number for us. That was always our target and we have pretty much achieved that now. I will be getting the old "shave and a smell of bacon" procedure done after this I can assure you :-)

Nothing mentioned on this thread so far calls the ethics of that into question or suggests my fathering 4 children was the wrong thing to do. I am not sure why this fact annoys you to the point you need to get abusive and personal?

rainbowtrout

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117698855#Comment_117698855

Not a great example really. While Boris has been prolific, if we assume that he has 10 children from 10 different women, that's 11 adults it's taken to produce those 10 children. There is essentially 1 child to replace their own mothers, the replacement rate is still very low.

Not sure why you're having a go at taxAHcruel. His relationship, while unconventional has been well documented on boards over the years.

The current fertility rate in Ireland is 1.81. There are lots of people not having any children. If there weren't any families in Ireland having 3-4 kids, our fertility rate would be through the floor.

neenam

China and India have the largest populations in the world, 36% of the world's pop. between the 2. When you look at per capita CO2 emissions, These 2 populous countries rank lower than other countries, including Ireland in 2019.

It's not as simple as population size that's contributing to climate change. It's a number of other factors such as the petrochemical industry, flaring, mining, and in the case for Ireland agriculture. Not having children doesn't allow you a get out of jail card to have a massive electric SUV, going on flights and steak everyday if you want to lower emission rates, basically the lifestyle of the top 5% "polluter elite" - they're the biggest contributors, not those having +2 children. To mitigate CC and the ecological emergency we’re facing now, there is little to be gained from blaming it on a rising population.

Gregor Samsa

It all depends on how many spare parts you think you’ll need. I’ve erred on the side of caution and ended up with 3, but in fairness two of those are twins, so it was a bit like when you go to the supermarket to get a bottle of shampoo, but all they have is multipack offers with “not to be sold separately” printed on them. You can’t really say “thanks, but I only need one”.

mksbart1948

No such thing as overpopulation, there is still plenty of uninhabited land on Earth. This concept exists only in the minds of a few hundred richest people who still want more and more. It is easier to control a billion people than 7 billion

Wilmol

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117700307#Comment_117700307

So you’re confirming that we rely on poor people in terms of population and once India and China can have the same lifestyle as the west, we’re all screwed.

Wilmol

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117700653#Comment_117700653

So every inch of land needs to be filled? You do know that these lands that humans need to live on would be taken away from animals like deer, foxes, rabbits.. Not only that, nature such as forests need to be destroyed to make space to build housing and for raw materials.

mksbart1948

We are far far away from filling 'every inch of the land'.

Plus putting the rabbit on an equal footing with the human is another leftist social engineering aimed at promoting these hilarious theories unsupported by any scientific premises.

Durag

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117700786#Comment_117700786

We don't need to 'fill' every inch of the land. We've already decimated enough of it on land we dont even live on, i.e. agricultural land. We share this land with other mammals, it isnt ours to completely fill and if we did, the land would be a completely barren uninhabitable wasteland as we would have no forests and no wild spaces for mammals and insect life to prosper.

Sounds like some right-wing social engineering aimed at promoting hilarious theories unsupported by any scientific premises.

[Deleted User]

@Durag People also need to eat, so filling every available space with people is not such a good idea I think. All living things are important as we are all interconnected. The importance of microcorzial fungi for soil health. The importance of animal dung for fertilising crops. The importance of trees for providing oxeygen. The idea of pillage pillage is not so smart I think. The world is wonderfully complex and interdependent.

MowldyCabbage

Given how thick and incompetent a lot of people are it's unethical for them to be breeding at all.

[Deleted User]

@mksbart1948 All living things are equally important surely. We all need to eat.

mksbart1948

If you think there are too many people, there is a simple solution for you to help.

The history of mankind is based on the use of resources. When any of these resources run out - we use our infinite ingenuity to replace them with others. The history of Homo Sapiens is at least 200,000 years old, for about that many years we have cut down trees and somehow still the earth is very far from being a 'unihabitable wasteland'.

I prefer right-wing 'culture of life' from left-wing 'culture of death' any day of the week.

[Deleted User]

@mksbart1948 Life is dependent on the use of resources for sure but resources need be managed sensibly not obliterated. I really don’t think labelling opinions in this chat as left or right wing is helpful to be honest. If you want to label things surely your proposition that humans are more important than anything else is a religious theory rooted in Christianity? In my opinion all living things should be respected in a reasonable manner rather than being disregarded.

Durag

Yeah, there's definitely nothing like climate change currently happening, or a mass extinction going on, or oceans been drained of life, or pollution everywhere. Lets keep chopping down trees!

[Deleted User]

@mksbart1948 You really need to expand on what you mean by that last sentance. ‘Right wing culture of life and left wing culture of death’ That makes no sense to me so i’d appreciate an explanation. Most Irish people are neither left or right wing anyway, This is isn’t the USA.

Wilmol

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117701024#Comment_117701024

Shall I send you the population graphs from 50 years ago? The population in 1900 was 2 billion and now it is near 8 billion. The quantity of humans alive today is on a scale never seen before. I imagine 200 000 years ago, there was less than 10 million humans alive. Hilarious comparison. So a few cavemen didn't change the world, what a surprise...

mksbart1948

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117701061#Comment_117701061

I agree 100% with first and last sentence

neenam

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117700748#Comment_117700748

No. I was addressing the point made in the original comment that reducing the population will still not solve the issue of CC and other issues.

The myth of overpopulation originates from the "Essay on the Principle of Population" by Thomas Robert Malthus. The essay contributed to the rise in racism and eugenics, and pushing the narrative that developing nations causing CC. There are enough resources for everyone. It's possible to be carbon neutral while feeding 10 billion people in a sustainable manner and providing a decent, comfortable existence for everyone aswell. The economic system and capitalism as it is currently is the issue, not population.