Q&A: Having Children
Having Children
Question
With God’s help,
what does the Rabbi think about having children? Is there not a moral problem in forcing upon a person a reality that is far from certain to be perfect, to put it mildly? It would be one thing if we could guarantee our children a bright future, both in this world and in the World to Come. But unfortunately there are difficulties in education, both spiritually and materially. So if that is the case, is there not a moral problem here?
Isn’t it better not to bring someone into the world than to bring them into existence and have them suffer even one minute of pain?
I am asking all my questions according to the assumption that childbirth means “creating” someone out of nothing. (Because it may be that insofar as it is only bringing down a soul that already exists in other worlds into our world, then perhaps it is different.)
Answer
As for the spiritual question, I do not see any problem at all. The Holy One, blessed be He, commanded in His Torah to bring children into the world.
If you are speaking in moral terms without connection to faith and religious commitment, this is a harder question. I think that overall it is hard to determine that it is preferable for a person not to come into the world, insofar as that is even a meaningful notion. See column 278.
But you are assuming that morality depends on the degree of pleasure and happiness that the person I created will experience. Think about the value of life. Does life have value only insofar as it enables a person to do things? Does the life of a suffering person have no value? Is it permissible to kill him? If you think, as I do, that it is forbidden, then the value of life is not a function of the happiness contained in it. And from this it follows that bringing a person into the world should also not be measured by the degree of happiness he will experience; rather, the very addition of life has value, just as taking life has negative value.
By the way, even if this is a matter of bringing down a soul and not creating it, I do not see what difference that makes. What moral justification is there for bringing it down into our cruel world?
Discussion on Answer
I didn’t understand. What do you mean, how is the value created?
It is possible that I did not fully understand earlier; your intent can be read in two ways.
You are claiming that just as a living person has value even if he is not functioning, so too the addition of life has positive value.
But adding something like value applies only relative to the world and not relative to the person, because he did not exist beforehand, so there is nothing to add. If so, it turns out that the added value is essentially an evaluative description that the act is good relative to the world. But one could also say that a particular person has value in himself and not only from the standpoint of his surroundings; if so, this value belongs more to the essential nature of the person. And if so, it would make sense to ask how it is created.
In a parallel question I wrote that in my opinion the added value is to the world, and not so much to the person.
Thank you very much, interesting. I did indeed mean morally. If so, with respect to what does the value apply? After all, the baby could simply not have been created, so you did not add or subtract anything from him. So do you mean relative to creation as a whole, that there is more good in it?
But how is that value created?
What I meant by bringing down a soul is that one could think there is a “storehouse” of souls preparing to descend into the world, as some people talk about, and then in any case they would come down into the world, as people also mention. So when one sees the suffering that sometimes exists in other places, maybe it is better that they come down here with us 🙂
But I am really not well-versed in theories about how souls are brought down; I just once heard this, I think, from a few women.