but feeling like the negatives of life outweigh the positives SO MUCH that the very idea of bringing a chid into this world seems inherent immoral to you is... not healthy. it seems indicative of some deep issues that are probably worth addressing.
While I don't agree with the guys reasons for why having a child is immoral (in that no life is perfect), the argument that doing so can be made without having any kind of deep issues.
First off, to address an earlier statement you made:
(It's not. But does the joy outweigh the suffering? Maybe for you, but for someone else?)
for everyone.
and if it isn't for you, i encourage you to seek help.
First off, I think you can look up cases where a persons life has been nothing but utter hell for the vast majority of their existence or suffered in ways that made life not worth living.
The Fritzl case, for example. I know I would genuinely rather die or have never existed than be subjected to that ever. In such cases, I think it's perfectly reasonable to say that that life in particular is not worth living.
But even without extreme cases like this, the idea that the joys of life outweigh the suffering, how would you even qualify that? Your saying you'd have to personally interview the entire world and get them to think deeply and abstractly about whether their life has been worth it, and have to be sure their mentally sound (not depressed or anything) while doing it. Most people don't think about their lives on that broad a scale or objectively enough to make an offhand judgement like this. So I think that saying life is great for everyone one that is made on blind faith and you should not make that kind of judgement for others. They can barely make it for themselves.
But ignoring the extreme cases of a terrible life and being unable to answer impossible questions, I'll just offer the logic my friend offers. He alos believes, like the OP, that having a child is immoral because a being can't consent to life. He doesn't think that you have the right to choose whats best for that being. Even if you think life is a great thing, even if your
correct that it is, it's not your right to impose that judgement on others. He himself says that he wishes he had never been born. Not because of any angsty reason or anything like that, his life is pretty good and he's pretty happy. But had he been given the choice, he'd rather have not bothered with the whole thing in the first place and would have preferred to simply exist as a consciousness without form or thought (his belief is that you exist before birth as energy or something similar and he'd have preferred to stay like that).
I'm not arguing either way, that it's immoral or not, but I'm just clarifying this because you don't have to be depressed or have deep seated issues to hold the position that having children is immoral.