A Tendentious New Book Argues against Having Multiple Children https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/history-ideas/2015/12/a-tendentious-new-book-argues-against-having-multiple-children/

December 3, 2015 | Heather Wilhelm
About the author:

In One Child, Sarah Conly, a professor of philosophy, argues that having two or more children is an immoral indulgence. Heather Wilhelm writes in her review:

The health of humanity is not the book’s central operative metric. Rather, environmental health—the fabled steady state of an innocent, benevolent Planet Earth, which is being corrupted by the “parasites” that dwell upon it—is. Thus, we come to Conly’s . . . conclusion: human beings have a right only to a “minimally decent life” and, as a corollary, a right to having only one child. . . .

Having multiple children, Conly argues, “is not so basic an interest as the interest in sustenance, or health, or social connections.” Having one child, she writes, serves all the potential purposes of procreating in the first place: equality (“being treated as just as worthy as others to reproduce”), creating a family life (albeit without siblings, which she equates to “expensive toys”), and the simple, caveman-like duty of passing along one’s genes. . . .

Children, in this view, are tools; they are ours to own and manipulate, and exist solely for our gratification. This distressing outlook—a sort of raw materialism as applied to human life—flows throughout the book. If your one allotted child dies, Conly blithely notes, you can certainly have another one; the answer is less clear, unfortunately, if your child is disabled or as “good as dead.” . . .

Beyond this, at the heart of One Child, there’s a genuine befuddlement as to what people are actually for. . . . Humanity should continue, she generously concedes, but it’s quite obvious that she has no idea why. Understanding why would require deep thoughts, and deep thoughts have no place here.

Read more on Commentary: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/what-are-people-for/