it’s nevertheless hard to shake the suspicion that, for many of the people inveighing against the morality of child-rearing, the prospect of a life without children appears to be less a sacrifice than a relief

That we can even ask such a question suggests that having kids is no longer, as it was for previous generations, a necessary part of the good life. But it reveals something more besides: that as we deprive the earth of its capacities to sustain life, we are losing our own ability to see the point in it. Increasingly, we do not live as if life is worthwhile in itself—as if in the face of pain, disappointment and no credible promise of progress, the struggles it involves and the choices they demand are meaningful.

Some philosophers say that to ask “why be good?” is to betray a fundamental misunderstanding. If there is such a thing as doing the right thing—not right relative to some other goal, in the way that taking out the trash is the right thing to do in order to get rid of that smell in the kitchen, but right absolutely, in the way that keeping a friend’s confidence or standing up to injustice is the right thing to do—it’s the sort of thing one does for its own sake. To ask why one should do that which is obviously the right thing to do, to demand a further reason for it, is to admit that one no longer comprehends the possibility of such a thing as the right thing to do—one cannot tell right from wrong at all. To ask “why have children?” may not be so different. What, after all, is one asking for? A list of benefits?

The choice between the climate-moralizers and the leisure-maximizers, for all their apparent differences, is a false one. At heart they are the same: young people for whom child-rearing, once the expected outcome of adulthood, has become one possible project among many. Weighing the pros and cons, neither group can find a good enough reason to go through with it, and plenty of reasons to avoid it altogether. Even for many of us who want kids, starting a family is something we think we’ll get to eventually, once we’ve checked off enough of our personal and professional to-dos: education, a fulfilling and well-paid job, a few key professional accomplishments, an active social life, meeting “the right person,” adopting a rescue dog as a trial in co-parenting, terminating analysis. The interesting thing is not that there are fewer reasons to have children now than there were before—there has never been a shortage of reasons why it would be better not to—but that we’re asking why in the first place. The evident differences in the negative responses reflect mere variations in personal priorities.