Reasons given
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Real reasons
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Suggested alternatives
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I can’t help it, it’s a biological urge. |
Unexamined motivations. |
Institutions await those who can’t control their biological urges. |
Want to give our parents grandchildren. |
Still seeking parental approval. |
Live your own life and encourage your parents to do the same. |
I just love children. |
Out of touch with inner child, and with existing children. |
Adopt, step, and foster parenting.
Big Brother/Sister. Work with children, teach. |
I have superior human genes. |
Doesn’t recognize an oxymoron.
Megalomania. |
Do great things with your genes, rather than expecting the next cultured batch to do it. |
Need help on farm or in family business. |
Too cheap to hire help.
Child labor laws inconvenient. |
Mechanization gives faster return on investment. |
Want someone to care for me in my old age. |
Fear of aging.
Exploitative personality. |
Save money and prepare for retirement. Be nice to people so they will visit you in the home. Build social support network. |
Pregnancy and childbirth are life experiences. |
Life choices limited by social indoctrination. |
Rent pregnancy simulator. Choose different life experiences. |
A good family is essential to career advancement and strong standing in the community. |
Social insecurity. Wants trophy children to improve social status. |
Rent children from talent agency on special occasions. Have white picket fence installed. |
We want to create a life which embodies our love for each other. |
Ego, times two, minus imagination, equals three plus. |
Garden. Adopt a stream, trail, or hiway. Rescue animals. Protect & restore ecosystems to embody love. |
I want my kids (who don’t exist yet) to have all the things I didn’t have. |
Unfulfilled childhood desires and fantasies. |
Deal with regrets & make best of life. Provide for existing children. |
To carry on family name. |
Trying to please Dad.
Duped by bloodline superstition. |
Create something enduring & give it family name. Donate blood to pass on bloodline. |
Want to see a little me. |
Self-absorption. Lack of ego gratification. |
Order custom-made, life-like doll.
Create a gratifying life of your own. |
My wife/husband wants a baby. |
Giving in out of fear of losing partner. |
Communicate true desires. Spouse may feel you’re the one who wants to breed. Rent baby simulator doll. |
Want a child with our bloodline. |
Ego extension. Racial identity. |
Recognize value of people with different genetic makeups. |
It’s a spiritual thing for me. |
Other reasons too easily refuted. |
Find truly spiritual experiences. |
I’ve always wanted to have children, it’s what people do. |
Unquestioned cultural conditioning. |
Consider alternatives. Question expectations. Adopt. |
To cement our relationship. |
Fear of failed marriage. |
Communicate to strengthen relationship. Attend retreats for bonding couples. |
I love babies. |
Short-sighted view of reality. |
Babies soon turn into children, then adults. Infant care work is available. Life-like infant doll may help. |
Being a mother is a woman’s highest calling. |
Beguiled into believing compliance is noble free choice. |
Motherhood, and fatherhood, may be achieved without breeding. Many children wait for good homes. |
We’d like to try for a boy/girl this time. |
Ego extension. Gender identity insecurity. Dissatisfaction with existing offspring. |
Appreciate who you have, they might resent their sibling whose gender is preferred. |
I just want to. |
Just wants to. |
Choosing to breed precludes most other things you’ll just want to do. |
I want someone who will love me and not leave me. |
Fear of rejection. Unresolved relationship issues. |
Give love to get love. Accept change and deal with loss. |
Our economy needs young workers to replace retired workers. |
Willing to sacrifice offspring to gods of National Economy. |
Automation reduces need for wage slaves. Consider rights of unconceived to stay that way. |
The world needs more of us or we’ll be outnumbered. |
Elitism. Xenophobia. Eugenics easier to conceal than genocide. |
Convert others to your views so there’ll be one more of your kind and one less of Them. |
We may as well, the planet is doomed anyway. |
Nihilistic natalism. |
Consider ethics of sentencing an innocent person to life, and death, in ecological collapse. |
I’d like to achieve a sense of immortality. |
Fear of death and non-existence. |
Accept mortality. Spread memes not genes. Socrates’ heirs are not apparent, but his ideas linger strong. |
My biological clock has gone off. |
Women’s normal heightened sexual desire in 30s & 40s difficult to accept in puritanical societies. |
Disarm that culturally-implanted mental time bomb. It’s okay to make love and not babies. |
I don’t know. |
Never thought about it. Unthinking conformity. |
Think before you breed, and you might not. |
I might regret not having had the experience later, when it’s too late. |
Fear of future worries and life passing too fast. |
We can’t experience everything. Far better to regret not breeding than to regret breeding |
I do not want to deny my kids (who do not exist yet) the joy of existence. |
Ignoring lack of joy in existing children. |
Promote existence of joy rather than imagining joy in mere existence. |
Procreation has traditionally been a source of personal empowerment for women. |
Feels powerless. Desires power and respect society appears to give to mothers and withholds from others. |
Mothers get more lip service than respect. Picking up family’s slack is not empowering. Seek self-defined sources of power. |