I have dealt with existential dread for most of my life, my attitude and outlook on life has shifted within the past few years, and I'm starting to wonder what it would be like to have children. Is it fair?
For context I am a 32-year-old woman.
I remember being as young as 6, lying outside and looking up at the clouds, wondering what it was all about and why we were here. I remember feeling anxious not knowing the answers.
I've worked really hard on my outlook on life through therapy over the past 5 years. I'm more excited than I am dreadful now. The dread hasn't disappeared, it probably never will, but it's quieter. Life feels more like something I get to experience than something I have to survive. And strangely, that has made me think more seriously about having children.
I've been with my partner since I was 16, and throughout our 20s we both didn't want kids. We were still figuring ourselves out, and we felt that the world wasn't in the right state to welcome a child. But over the years, we've come to realize that the world is probably never going to be in the "right state." There has never been a time when suffering, uncertainty, injustice, illness, loss, and fear didn't exist.
I think that's where existentialism comes into this for me. If there is no guaranteed meaning to life, no perfect world we're waiting for, and no way of knowing what kind of life a person will ultimately experience, what does it mean to consciously choose to create a life anyway?
On one hand, I wonder if it's irresponsible to bring a new person into existence knowing that life can contain so much suffering. Especially knowing how I personally experienced existence for the majority of my life. I can't guarantee that a child of mine would be happy, healthy, mentally well, or that they would ultimately feel that life was worth living. I do have different characteristics than my parents that make me more suited for children and I've worked on myself, something my parents have never done, so I believe I have the ability to "do better" by my potential future children, but still.
And on the other hand, maybe that's part of the existential condition. We don't get to choose the circumstances of existence, but we do get to make choices within them. Meaning isn't necessarily something waiting for us to discover, it might be something we create through our relationships, experiences, choices, and the fact that we continue living despite the uncertainty. I don't know if that's an optimistic interpretation or if I'm just trying to justify something I want.
So I'm curious what other existentialists think: Is it ethically or existentially irresponsible to create a new life when you know that life necessarily involves suffering and that there is no guarantee the person will find existence meaningful?
And if there is never going to be a "right" time or a perfect world to bring someone into, does that mean we shouldn't have children, or does accepting that uncertainty make the choice more meaningful?