Rachel's Stance On Parenthood Essay
I. Introduction
Many say that the children of today will be the adults of the future and shape the world as we know it. Every day there are about 341,681 babies that are born around the world to parents that hold that dream. The average family, in typical industrialized nations spends over $200,000 dollars on a child that they conceive and rear. That’s assuming the child remains in the family household until 18. When they stay longer, the cost is much more. For this reason, many philosophers including Stuart Rachels would argue that conceiving children in an industrialized nation is immoral. This paper will serve to (II.) Explain what Rachels' stance is on parenthood, (III.) Reconstruct his argument, (IV.) Refute his argument, and (V.) Conclude. I will argue against Rachels' thesis, that it is not immoral to conceive and rear children.
II. Rachels' Stance on Parenthood Towards parenthood, philosophers’ arguments usually takes one of three forms: Pessimism about human life, an unusual rights violation, and environmental strain. Pessimism about human life is an ideology that revolves around the idea that human life contains more bad than good, so it would be unfair for us to expose more people to the bad in this world. The unusual rights violation argument almost goes hand in hand with the previous argument stated. In this
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Remaining childless, in our case, allows us to be more charitable, allows us to immerse ourselves in philanthropy. This argument seems to be an extension of Peter Singer’s “Famine Relief Argument”. In this argument, Singer says that we should “forego our luxuries in favor of generosity”. In Singer’s case it would be the superfluous material, such as riches and personal amenities, which we can actually live without. In Rachels' take of the theory, having children would be his version of a “luxury” or the superfluous material that we can live
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