1. I think the impact on your own career and donations should plausibly go first. Here, your wellbeing still matters, but only instrumentally. You are one person, and if you’re impartial, your interests shouldn’t outweigh the interests of all of those you could help, who are also probably much worse off than you. The average cost of raising a child seems to be over $200K USD, and through the Against Malaria Foundation or Malaria Consortium, that could save the lives of several people. However, you may be able to raise a child much more cheaply, and if you think you can’t be happy without having children, not having children could plausibly be bad for your career impact and donations.
2. If your children donate to EA charities or otherwise contribute to EA (and it doesn’t have to be a lot), then they can make up for any negative impacts they would have, and I think this would come second. Maybe they can make up for losses in 1, too.
3. If you’re nonspeciesist and your children aren’t concerned with their impacts on nonhuman animals, then their effects on nonhuman animals would also come before the wellbeing in their own lives or your life, since they could be responsible for the suffering and deaths of many animals per person at any moment in time, on average/in expectation, mostly through their diets.
Then it’s your wellbeing, their wellbeing, and greenhouse gas emissions towards climate change, but I’m not sure in what order.
For example, you’d imagine 2 to 3 chickens and 11 to 12 farmed fishes, in misery, hanging around each human, on average (at any given moment).
You could also imagine each person slaughtering a chicken every ~40 days and a farmed fish about once a month.
This is the global average, and the vast majority of farmed chickens and fishes are factory farmed. The numbers should be at least a few times higher in developed countries on average, since animal product consumption is higher. On their welfare, see this report, which of course involves subjective judgements.
In developed countries, usually at least 20 farmed land animals are raised for food per person per year on average.
Here’s my own view:
1. I think the impact on your own career and donations should plausibly go first. Here, your wellbeing still matters, but only instrumentally. You are one person, and if you’re impartial, your interests shouldn’t outweigh the interests of all of those you could help, who are also probably much worse off than you. The average cost of raising a child seems to be over $200K USD, and through the Against Malaria Foundation or Malaria Consortium, that could save the lives of several people. However, you may be able to raise a child much more cheaply, and if you think you can’t be happy without having children, not having children could plausibly be bad for your career impact and donations.
2. If your children donate to EA charities or otherwise contribute to EA (and it doesn’t have to be a lot), then they can make up for any negative impacts they would have, and I think this would come second. Maybe they can make up for losses in 1, too.
3. If you’re nonspeciesist and your children aren’t concerned with their impacts on nonhuman animals, then their effects on nonhuman animals would also come before the wellbeing in their own lives or your life, since they could be responsible for the suffering and deaths of many animals per person at any moment in time, on average/in expectation, mostly through their diets.
Then it’s your wellbeing, their wellbeing, and greenhouse gas emissions towards climate change, but I’m not sure in what order.
Thanks. This is a challenging response to reply to. (3) risks “proving too much” but it seems like a valid argument on its face.
I left a related comment here. Specifically:
This is the global average, and the vast majority of farmed chickens and fishes are factory farmed. The numbers should be at least a few times higher in developed countries on average, since animal product consumption is higher. On their welfare, see this report, which of course involves subjective judgements.
In developed countries, usually at least 20 farmed land animals are raised for food per person per year on average.