comment: >
  
  Immoral? I don’t know. People should be able to reproduce without having a guilty conscience. But parents shouldn’t be all surprised pikachu that everything is absolute shit for their kids. Ironically, if we want any chance of change, a lot of people would need to devote their time to political change in lieu of having kids.
context: Antinatalists are generally negative utilitarians, meaning their primary goal is the prevention of suffering.  The argument would go that no one has the right to inflict suffering on another person without that person's consent.  Whether the act which inflicts suffering also causes happiness is irrelevant; individuals can decide for themselves whether such trade-offs are worth it to them, but no one can decide that for someone else and decide to hurt someone 'for their own good'.  
  
  Thus, the fact that the created life will experience both suffering and happiness does not justify creating it, as you don't have the right to inflict that suffering regardless of what else is going on.  It's not a view I subscribe to, but it is well-considered and internally consistent.
  
  Are you saying that maybe souls exist in a spiritual realm where they consciously decide to inhabit created fetuses and therefore all children do consciously and intentionally consent to being born?  That's the closest I can come to understanding your argument here.
  
  Yes, no one can disprove that such a thing might exist, just as no one can disprove that people actually like being owned and treated at chattel slaves despite their claims to the contrary (they could be lying or mistaken about their own experiences).  Anything is possible, after all, you can never prove a negative to begin with.  
  But in practice we don't treat things as true unless we have good evidence for them; there's no evidence that children supernaturally 'consent' to being born before conception, thus it's not rational to treat that as part of your policy justifications when talking about issues like this.
  
  See 1.  Your expectation that doing something that will hurt someone will probably also help them more in the end does not give you the right to hurt them without their consent.
  
  Imagine that your child is playing in the grass near a busy street, and wandering too close to the road.  You confidently predict that if you grab them roughly by the arm, yank them harshly away from the street, and slap them sharply across the face, this will cement in them a reliable fear of playing too close to the street, making them safer in the long run - it would be for their own good.  Does that prediction that it would be for their own good give you the right to inflict that suffering on them?
  Many parents would say yes, corporal punishment is a justified and acceptable part of childrearing, even if it involves great pain and fear, so long as it is done with a reasonable expectation of helping the child in the long run.  But many others would say no, you don't have the right to resort to violence and inflict suffering on others even if you expect it to be ultimately to their benefit, even if you predict that they would retroactively approve of it when looking back on things years later.
  Antinatalism draws on the latter assumption - even if you expect that a child would ultimately have more pleasure than suffering and be glad to be born, they will definitely experience suffering in their life and your prediction about what else will happen does not give you the right to inflict that suffering without their consent.  Again, not something I agree with, but reasonable and consistent.
  
  It would indeed be nice if we could treat the ultimate causes of suffering and dysfunction that create the conditions where antinatalism is a sensible position.  But we've been trying to do that for thousands of years, without mixed success at best.
  
  At a certain point, you can't criticize people for acting rationally given their shitty circumstances, when those circumstances are largely beyond their control and not likely to change any time soon.  Sure, overpopulation wouldn't doom the world if we switched entirely to green energy and vegan diets and a lower-consumption culture; we're not doing that and there's little evidence we will, so for now overpopulation does (credibly) doom the world.
  
  Not at all.  I think you're being heavily influenced by a few angsty antinatalists who post on social media; this type of hatred for life is not typical of the movement as a whole.
  
  As I've indicated, the movement has two main philosophical pillars: that the expectation that a created life will be net good does not confer the right to inflict the suffering that life will entail, and that slowing the rate of population growth will be beneficial to society and the people in it, creating a safer and better life for everyone.  Neither of these are fueled by hatred or resentment for life in general; the latter is specifically an average utilitarian view about how to maximize quality of life for everyone alive. >
  
  The argument that "creating" a life also inflicts suffering on said life is a logical contradiction. The act of creation cannot also be a change of the creation. >
  
  The act of creation can have consequences that influence the creation. There’s nothing logically wrong with that. >
  
  Logically, anything that is a consequence of the creation is already an inherent attribute of the creation. 
  If I create a sapient machine with a .5% failure rate every year, it's eventual failure is not some separate "consequence". >
  
  But the act of creation can have separate consequences that reach back around and affect the creation. That doesn’t mean it was built into the creation. >
  
  I don't know what a "consequence that reaches back around" would be. That seems like a contradiction in terms, since a "consequence" is defined by happening later in time.
  But to put my argument a different way: since we do not have different options for existing - we either exist or we do not - no possible moral judgement can attach to it. You need the ability to change the outcome to be morally responsible. >
  
  How bout this:
  Non existence: no suffering
  Existence: x% chance to suffer
  Lets forget the individual who may be suffering and look at the suffering instead as a universal variable that increases every time an agent suffers. DO YOU have the right to gamble with this variable? Should you have the right to increase suffering with no cost to self? >
  
  Sure, I should. I should have the right to increase any random integer I can think of.
  Once you get to an abstraction like "total cumulative suffering" you can justify all kinds of absurd results. Waking people up increases total cumulative suffering, so we should ban alarm clocks. Actually we should just put as many people as we can permanently asleep so they don't suffer. While we're at it, also sterilize as much as possible of the biosphere, because all that predation drives up cumulative suffering.
  That metric is entirely separate from any actual subject, which is the problem. That is a general problem in utilitarianism that only gets worse with more abstraction. >
  
  No, the difference I made explicit is that other people waking up is suffering inflicted on self. I specified “at no cost to self”, whereas waking up is suffering at the cost to self. 
  The point I intend to make is that someone giving birth gambles with another agent’s fate of whether they will suffer or not. >
  
  Is there any conceivable action that does not "gamble with another agent's fate"? I don't see how we could have a consistent moral standard that requires avoiding all possible suffering to any possible future agent. That would be entirely paralyzing. Given a long enough timeline, the probability that any decision causes suffering eventually approaches 1. >
  
  
  I think the idea that humans "did not consent to life" is a massive assumption.
  
  This does have parallels with other forms of assumed non-consent. For example, children below a certain age are deemed incapable if entering contracts under the law, because they are presumed to not have not yet developed the capacity to understand what they are agreeing to.
  Following this logic and extrapolating to even younger ages, the same general  principle of assumed non-consent should apply to people during their zygotic, embryonic and fetal stages of development too. >
  
  The problem being that existence is not something "done to" someone, nor something somebody does.
  Existence is not even really an attribute or a state. It's just the presence of anything at all.
  There is no meaningful way to consent to existence. No theoretical declaration of this sort is conceivable. >
  
  
  there is no meaningful way to consent to existence
  
  That's the point... >
  
  If the concept of consent does not make logical sense, the conclusion is that it is not applicable. >
  
  On what basis?
  Consent cannot be given, the reason why is immaterial. >
  
  Saying "I consent to existing" is nonsense. Gibberish.
  It's like saying "I consent to blue" or "I consent to 1+1 being 2". 
  An object exists when it's in a relation to a subject whereby it is perceptible.
  A subject exists if a subject exists. It's self-referential. Saying "I exist" contains no information, since existing is the condition for saying anything at all. >
  
  It's pointing out the obvious, I'll give you that, but it's certainly not gibberish. >
  
  How so? Explain. >
  
  Because existing is a thing you do, and continue to do.
  You could choose to take a step off of a tall building and cease to exist. >
  
  No, it's not, You cannot stop existing. Other people can die, but in your world, you cannot. If you stop existing, then nothing follows. >
  
  I think the fundamental premise of antinatalism rests on the fact that suffering and pleasure are not equivalent as demonstrated by a thought experiment. Obviously thought experiments usually rely on completely imaginary situations so there is a threat of them not reflecting reality but it does demonstrate a point.
  Imagine you had a fortune teller with 100% accuracy (obviously unrealistic) he tells you if you have a baby it will be the happiest baby of all time, it will never experience a moment of suffering. Do you have a moral obligation to have that baby? Most people’s moral intuition would say no. Now the opposite, the fortune teller says your baby will have a life of pure suffering, never a moments peace just a life of pain and suffering not a moment of joy. Most people’s intuition is it would be immoral to have that baby. So we get the conclusion based on that, that not having a child hurts no one but having children can be harmful. It also tells us that suffering is more bad than pleasure is good. 
  IMO why I’m not an anti natalist is because my views around suffering are that it is based on our perception rather than objective events. There are people who have very painful difficult lives but who are still very happy. And there are people with very wonderful lives on the outside who suffer immensely which to me suggests our joy and suffering might be our own responsibility rather than something externally imposed. But if I’m wrong about that I think anti natalists have a decently strong arguement >
  
  The thing I hate about this thought experiment and its variants (no matter who presents them aka this isn't meant to imply I thought you were an antinatalist) is that no matter if I had a moral obligation or not to have the baby I still have a logical/temporal one in both the happiness and suffering scenarios because how could the 100% accurate fortune teller (or whatever a given variant of this experiment has in place of it) have seen that baby's future if there was no baby >
  
  As I said all thought experiments like these should be taken with a grain of salt. You could change it up to be a little more realistic say you knew your baby would be born with Huntington’s a very very terrible disease to have to deal with. People would probably be more split in that case but a lot of people’s moral intuitions would still be somewhat opposed >
  
  my problem isn't the only suffering or only joy it's that the knowing for 100% certainty either way creates a bootstrap paradox >
  
  That’s not something I’m familiar with could you explain a bit? >
  
  The entire Antinatalist philosophy has a strange understanding of suffering. They view it as something in its own right rather than a state a living being can experience. Strangely they also have this notion that you can ‘save’ something that does not exist. If you don’t reproduce as to ‘do the person a favor, or rather not do a disservice’ you have not actually done anything. As you can only do a disservice or favor to a subject, but there is no subject in this case. It is a general dissociation from reality to where ideas and abstracts take on actual substance to the person. A sort of common mental ailment in this age. >
  
  Per number 2: In logic and debate, there is a rule that the burden of proof falls on the asserter, not the defender. In normal terms, you can't and don't have to prove a negative. The obligation to prove something falls on the person asserting a positive. 
  For example, somebody saying God doesn't exist doesn't have to prove his statement is true - our senses tell us that is correct. We can't see, hear, smell, touch or taste god so any reasonable person would also assume god doesn't exist. If you want to assert 'god does exist', then you have to provide the proof that refutes the sensorial experience the rest of us reasonable folks are having. Make sense?
  Now back to the issue at hand: antinatalists do not have to prove humans aren't asked if we want to be born before hand because no reasonable person experiencing the world in a sane way claims to remember such a conversation. So the burden of proof falls on the person asserting we ARE asked before we are born whether or not we want to exist.
  Tl;Dr: burden of proof is never on the negative. The negative (god doesn't exist, we are not asked consent before we are born) is the default. If you believe those things (if you believe there is a conversation about consent before you are born), the onus is on you to prove that conversation happens, not on me to prove that it doesn't.
  I have yet to see that proof. >
  
  Yeah I think this is a fair argument.
  However it’s pretty obvious that humans do consent to being alive once they become teenagers. 99.9% prefer it to not existing and the other 0.1% commit suicide. 
  This is a better argument than the OPs and is something antinatalists just handwave away with their ridiculous nonsense. >
  
  I don't think it's handwaved.  Look up "The ones who walk away from Omelas".  
  Basically, imagine a city where everyone is amazingly happy, and life is great for everyone - except one child, who must be tortured endlessly with no possibly of death, in order for this city to function as it does.
  In this parable, the city residents are the 99.9% who prefer life to not existing and the child is the 0.1%.  The antinatalist would say it's not moral to torture this one child just to have everyone else living in paradise.  What would you say? >
  
  I would say that story has no connection to the world we live in and has been invented to justify doing immense real world harm despite having no connection to reality >
  
  What "immense real world harm" are you referring to?
  
  However it’s pretty obvious that humans do consent to being alive once they become teenagers. 99.9% prefer it to not existing and the other 0.1% commit suicide.
  
  I drew the connection.  The residents of the city are your 99.9% who consent to being alive and the child is the 0.1%. >
  
  I said the 0.1% committed suicide. In your example they are held alive, being tortured and unable to commit suicide. This two scenarios are completely different >
  
  There's always a 0.1% miserable enough to commit suicide though.  The one child in the story is a stand-in for the part of the population that lives in misery, not a literal single person. >
  
  
  There's always a 0.1% miserable enough to commit suicide though.  
  
  Fine, they can commit suicide then. I encourage it. I encourage all the anti natalists to commit suicide. >
  
  Lol I understand your first comment better now.  Antinatalists aren't handwaving anything, you just suck at arguing your point. >
  
  Took you long enough. >
  
  I’m not an antinatalist but here is what I understood of their philosophy:
  
  
  We do indeed experience good things as well as suffering, but there is always a possibility that the total bad experiences outweighs the good, resulting in a net negative life. This inflicts harm onto an actual person. However, you may want to argue that life also have the potential to be filled with net positive experiences, missing out on this positive experiences can be considered an opportunity cost. But this is a cost inflicted onto someone who didn’t exist in the first place, no one is actually harmed. So antinatalists are simply choosing to accept this opportunity cost being incurred by a hypothetical person than to risk harming an existing person.
  
  
  It is not an assumption that humans did not consent to life, it is merely not assuming that consciousness exists before conception. Since the only observable fact is that consciousness comes after conception, the burden of proof lies with those who claims otherwise. 
  
  
  Purpose of life is an arbitrary concept, and I agree that it is our responsibility to find things that give our lives meaning. However, this burden or responsibility to find a purpose is a direct consequence of existence. Or as Sartre argued, “Existence precedes essence.” Purpose in life is completely irrelevant to those who are yet to exist.
  
  
  When a vegan chants “meat is murder” while you’re eating a steak, the problem is not with veganism. The problem is you are hanging out with an obnoxious prick.
  
  
  Your assumption here is that people only adopt this belief because they hate themselves or human beings as a whole. Antinatalists are not misanthropes.. I think you’re barking up the wrong tree here
  
  
  Most importantly, even if your assumption is true to any degree, and that antinatalists are just miserable and self-loathing people. Do you really think it’s a bad thing that these people don’t want to have children? >
  
  
  Antinatalists are not misanthropes.. I think you’re barking up the wrong tree here
  
  how can a belief system that logically ends with extinction of the human race not be misanthropic  
  Also for 2 the rebuttal isn't that people did consent/were conscious before living, but that the idea that consent should apply to something that doesn't exist, like humans before they are alive, is complete nonsense. >
  
  Antinatalism is a philosophical position, it’s not a movement where they go around sterilizing people against their wills. Antinatalists can’t make natalist extinct. Slowing down the population growth benefits everyone, regardless whether this statement is true, antinatalists believed this is true and chose the best course of action. It is completely illogical to think that they are only doing this because they hate humans.
  A violation of consent is bad because you are the one who is making a decision for someone else, and that person has to solely suffer from the consequences of your decision. Even if the consent cannot be given before existence, the consequences to your violation of consent immediately comes into effect after conception. >
  
  Doesn't really refute my point just that there aren't enough anti natalist in the world for it to matter, doesn't change the fact that if most people were anti natalist the human race would go extinct. And I feel safe in assuming most anti natalists want everyone else to be one too. If it is morally unconscionable to bring life into existence then that doesn't leave much room for exceptions
  
  Even if the consent cannot be given before existence
  
  its not that consent cant be given, its that the idea of consent doesn't apply in the first place. Who's consent have I violated by bringing life into this world? Are you supposing that humans have souls waiting to be born but that don't actually want to? Otherwise I'm not making a decision for anyone else because there is nothing else before a life is made, it by definition doesn't exist. >
  
  
  And I feel safe in assuming most anti natalists want everyone else to be one too
  
  This is simply not true. I have a few anti natalist friends, none of them goes around stopping others from having children. They are just choosing not to have children because it is not the moral thing for them to do. Just because you believe that something is right or wrong doesn’t give you the right to force your morality on others. This has nothing to do with the antinatalism but their inability to respect other people’s beliefs.
  Also, antinatalism is a philosophical belief and human beings are not moral rule following machines. Apart from subscribing to a set of moral beliefs, people also tend to follow certain normative and/or meta-ethical theories to make decisions, and these help people resolve morally gray areas, or conflicting moral beliefs. One example is utilitarianism, this means that if the net good of the action outweighs the net bad of the action then it is acceptable.
  If you subscribe to utilitarianism, you can simultaneously hold the belief that it is selfish/immoral to have children, and make still make the selfish decision to have children if you perceive the joy of child-rearing brings to your partner (who perhaps really want a child) to be much more than the potential harm you bring from having children. On the other hand if you subscribe to Kantian deontology, you might strictly refrain from doing anything you view as immoral regardless of the circumstances.
  Finally, and most importantly regarding consent. I really really hope that you understand not for the sake of this discussion but in general as well. A violation of consent doesn’t just happen when you do something and someone says “no” or they don’t want to. It is a violation of consent if even if the person is incapable of saying “yes” or “no.” For example, when someone is unconscious AND even if you know they would’ve said “yes” if they were conscious, it is non-consensual. This includes when the person doesn’t exist yet, because they will still exist to suffer the consequences of your decision which they had no say. No “yes” = non-consensual I hope I stressed this enough. >
  
  
  Just because you believe that something is right or wrong doesn’t give you the right to force your morality on others
  
  also slight tangent but this is not a given. There are plenty of accepted immoralities that people should be forced to not accept. To use a heavy handed cudgel you would never say its wrong to force slavers to stop owning slaves even if they don't think they are doing anything wrong. And while different immoralities require different levels of force if you philosophically draw the conclusion that something in morally wrong you probably should try to make people change. Again to veganism you shouldn't hold people at gunpoint when they buy a burger but if you could legislate away factory farming that would cause far more harm reduction then whatever harm you've done to people by forcing them to eat less meat. I don't think it would be particularly wrong for someone to try that, even if it's "forcing their morality". >
  
  
  Guilt-tripping parents because of issues that are overwhelmingly systematic, I think is often strange and misplaced. Ultimately, the fault lies in a world where, despite insane amounts of technological and scientific achievements, let injustices happen. 
  
  So the world is shit but it's the worlds fault, not parents who choose to bring a kid there? >
  
  It may be the worlds fault (well..) that the world is shit, but whether you put a kid in there is your own responsibility.
  It's not my fault that [whatever country] is currently a warzone, but it sure is my responsibility if I decide it's (not) the best place for my next family vacation >
  
  The thing is, every country is bad to live in. There's inflation, job insecurity, climate change worries, lack of resources and not to mention jobs are getting automated already (USA got first fully automated McDonald's restaurant a while back) >
  
  Well, if this would cause you to truly believe there's no country in earth you can live a happy life, than indeed I'd say it's pretty immoral to have kids.
  I myself currently am not too much burdened by the things you mention. But mental health is a struggle, and kids may well inherit some of my traits, so I myself won't. >
  
  Regarding poins 1 and 2, you miss the point of both arguments. The suffering/pleasure imbalance argument says nothing about quantities of suffering/pleasure. It merely states that both do in fact exist. (I can explain further)
  The consent argument is not about a being in pre-existence giving consent, it's about a living person who had that choice made for them. They're stuck here and they never agreed to it. 
  Also, sinful? No. Antinatalists are not calling anything or anyone sinful. That's religious terminology that is not used.
  That is just a correction, it probably won't change your mind.
  I would like to say a few things about it being a poor idea to live by. In fact, based on your post, you basically already belive that it's a reasonable decision.
  
  While a reasonable suggestion in many situations would be not to have kids [when in poor financial circumstances, vilifying people who do so anyway is misguided.]
  
  You basically make my point here. Many antinatalists will agree that shaming parents is not acceptable. But deciding to not have biological kids because of all the systemic problems is living by antinatalist beliefs.
  
  The only way I can think of this narrative being even remotely appealing, is if the person has already framed their own life as overwhelmingly painful and terrible, and therefore this kind of overarching narrative is the only way to cope with their experience
  
  Exaclty! A big part of AN is the idea of breaking the cycle of abuse. Hurt people hurt people and all that. So if your life is shit isn't it an immensely fucked up decision to bring annother person into it? AN also pushes against the idea that is prominent in society that a child will give you purpose or you become a better person for your kid and similar bs that is proven not to be true. Fucked up people more likely than not fuck up the child. So isn't it a reasonable choice (as a fucked up child) to decide to break this cycle and not have kids?
  
  As someone who's alive and wishes to strive for the purpose of doing and having things which resonate and brings me satisfaction, I find very little meaning in the antinatalist narrative for the purpose of living life.
  
  No one expects you to (except maybe weirdos online, ignore those). in contrast, we're pressured to find meaning in having offspring. That's what we've been hearing our entire lives and that's why you're so bothered by AN. 
  
  That thought alone would obviously spur feelings of resentment and hatred, towards oneself and towards others, because you frame all of human life to be of the same pitiful character. 
  
  That's simply untrue. For the people that are already born (including oneself) the objective is reduction of suffering. That means showing compassion to everyone, helping those in need, striving to improve the conditions in one's own immediate environment and society as a whole, fighting climate change, etc. If one doesn't live by these principles, they don't live by the AN ideas. >
  
  I assumed the rationales you would mention would be aligned with Church of Euthanasia or ecofascism.
  The consent angle is novel to me, and hilarious. >
  
  
  Similarly to claims about the existence of a god, claims about whether or not we ever were in this pre-existence are ultimately assumptive.
  
  Anti-natalists simply do not talk about pre-existence, they just talk about the real world. So, no need to add other worldliness to the argument.  You seem to think that the concept of consent applies after the existence of a person, but asking a child whether it wants to be born after it has been born is just absurd. So, it is the responsibility of the parent to choose if they want to subject a person to a combination of suffering and happiness by giving birth or prevent the person from existing in the first place. Anti-natalists make the argument that even the most amount of happiness a person can experience in life is not worth it because there would be at least some amount of suffering in the total lifespan(I am ignoring extreme cases-all suffering or all happiness). If you prevent the birth of a person, the combination of suffering and happiness that they would have experienced if they were born, will just not be experienced by them because they don't exist.  If I go by your logic, then this problem withholding of experience from unborn people is a non-issue because you'd have to add other worldliness and souls for it to make sense. >
  
  There are 154 million orphans in the world. If you can afford to have a child and raise them for 18+ years, you can afford to adopt one and raise them for less than that. You would still have a child and now a child has a parent, net positive.
  If there were no longer any orphans, then I would no longer judge parents for reproducing. >
  
  but the best way would be for all wannabe-parents to adopt orphans instead of reproducing meaning unless they somehow raise all of them all together every parent adopting a child makes it harder for another to by removing an option >
  
  Being unconscious and not existing are not remotely the same thing.
  The entire problem is how you argue that nonexistence is preferable to existence. Every possible moral framework requires subjects who already exist and have interests. >
  
  They are for the purposes of OP’s argument - someone in an irreversible coma doesn’t have interests as such, only by proxy, because they are incapable of either expressing or fulfilling them. 
  For the purpose of the argument of consent they are identical. 
  The unborn objectively do have interests - if you can agree there is ever an example of when a birth would be immoral (say, when it is guaranteed the individual will only suffer and die), then they objectively have an interest NOT to be born into that scenario.
  If that is the case - which it is - then they do de facto have interests - they are just about what it’s in their interests not to happen. 
  Seeing as the negative can be guaranteed (because I am alive, I could make it happen myself) but positives cannot by the same measure as they are not exclusively material (in fact, as the world shows, providing everything for your children materially does the opposite of guarantee they won’t suffer) - it is correct to say both that the unborn have interests, and those interests are to not live a life of abject suffering. >
  
  Your whole point rests on the assumption that given the choice - which requires some mental gymnastics anyways - the non-existent will choose not to live. Given the choice, I would certainly choose to have lived. Would that mean that it would be immoral for my parents to not have had kids? >
  
  The argument actually doesn’t rest on that. The argument rests on the importance and impossibility of prior consent. 
  Example: I’m at a party, and I come across a sleeping girl. I begin to have sex with her. In the middle of intercourse, the girl wakes up. Luckily, she’s excited by the situation that she finds herself in and enjoys the act to completion.
  Did I do anything wrong by having sex with the sleeping girl? >
  
  Yes, because sleeping people still exist. >
  
  and existed as awake before they went to sleep >
  
  I'm going to hit point number 4. The human population has been steadily growing for hundreds of years. In just my lifetime the world's population has increased 33% from around 6 billion to 8 billion. By the time i die of old age, the population will be well over 12 billion.
  Every human being must consume to survive. Even with a minimal agrarian existance, humans must still consume land, water, food, and other resources to survive. Despite war, famine, drought, and disease, the human population continues to grow exponentially. At some point the planet's ecosystem will break under the load of human consumption, with or without industry. If we do not at least limit our reproduction, we will quite litterally fuck ourselves into extinction.
  That being said it is a systemic problem, and you shouldn't villify individual people who want to have children. But this is definately something to consider when deciding how many children to have, if any. >
  
  
  That being said it is a systemic problem, and you shouldn't villify individual people who want to have children.
  
  Yep!
  I also think, to further avoid both stress for the parent and for the child to be neglected, I also think more alternative family structures should have more prominence. No wonder parents can often define their life through their stress, when they are one of usually two sole caretakers of a kid for 20 years >
  
  The best argument for antinatalism is the seemingly intuitive assymmetry we feel about bringing someone into existence.  If you know for certain that your child will suffer and still choose to conceive, you will be seen as a moral monster.  On the other hand, if you know for certain that your child will be happy but choose to not conceive, there is no moral judgement on you.  The avoidance of negative utility creeps in intuitively in this hypothetical example. >
  
  I don’t think this works. 
  Everyone knows, basically for certain, that their child will suffer at some point. Yet they’re ok with it. They believe life is valuable despite suffering, 
  So it seems to me that your intuition isn’t really a natural one - it’s just yours. >
  
  You are explaining the mixed case.  I am talking about at the ends where both suffering/happiness is extreme.  Do you disagree with my two assertions ("If you know for certain that your child will suffer and still choose to conceive, you will be seen as a moral monster. On the other hand, if you know for certain that your child will be happy but choose to not conceive, there is no moral judgement on you.")? >
  
  I agree with your premises, but not because of a positive/negative utility asymmetry. It’s because of an action/inaction asymmetry. 
  Flip your example. If you conceive knowing the child will be happy, you’d be seen as benevolent. If you failed to prevent the birth of a given suffering child (AKA did nothing in light of an incoming birth), you wouldn’t be seen as a moral monster. 
  If it truly were a positive/negative asymmetry, then a certain perfectly mixed case would be seen as a moral crime by most. To me, that would be truly neutral.
  A better analogy for you to remove the action/inaction dimension is to assume the same in both cases. For example, compare actively birthing a suffering child vs actively preventing a happy one. Or failing to birth a happy child vs failing to prevent a suffering one. 
  That’s far more comparable >
  
  Your flipped example assumes that birth happens automatically without action. Prevention as you have used it would entail two actions, the first being the initiation of a process (which doesn't happen automatically) and the second, the interruption of the process before its completion. According to antinatalists, one ought not to initiate the process (which again doesn't happen automatically ) in the first place. >
  
  Births are happening on an ongoing basis despite your inaction >
  
  You are only responsible for the birth that you initiate. >
  
  This is my point - the asymmetry has nothing to do with positive and negative utility - that’s a complaint strictly about the outcome. You are appealing to a sense of moral character (I.e., being a moral monster) - which is not strictly about the outcome. Your argument relies on their being a difference between initiating and not initiating. Those are not utility based concepts. 
  If your argument stands up to scrutiny, it should apply to initiating the perfectly neutral utility case - not from a perspective of moral character, but strictly from the outcome. After all, you are appealing to a utility asymmetry. >
  
  You’re missing the fact that a lot of what is driving this is the climate catastrophe. Earth is over. The corporations have an irrevocable degree of power. Our offspring has little chance of a decent life. >
  
  That's a very reasonable personal choice not to have kids.
  But is it immoral for individual people to reproduce? Isn't the global catastrophe a symptom of the type of human society we live in, rather than individual actions?