Children are manifestations of nature's agenda to continue human species. Birthing a child is the aftermath: the result of a relationship existing between a man and woman. A child is the consolidation of the union between both parties. For "deserving parents", children are a thing of joy and some fulfilment. 

It was a thing to have a family centuries ago, even to the 20th century. Society provided level-playing grounds for men and women to cater and organize their families. The cost and standard of living were in moderation to afford diligent men and women to establish, at least, modest purchasing power to meet up with associated daily expenses to sustain their homes and families.

 Social incentives such as free or low-cost housing schemes, health care services, abundance of food items, affordable consumables, scholarship-supoorted educational.backings,  schools for children, young adults and adults interested in furthering their education, available job opportunities and other privileges like luxuries, financial bonuses and special welfare schemes were unequivocally in place.

Conversely, our contemporary world is an epitome of the erosion of the old system of the world where  Millennials, Generation-Xers and generations prior, typically grew up. Simply, the world they grew up in, for those who are still alive, doesn't exist!  Synthetic foods, lack of functioning health facilities, expensive hospital services, limited job opportunities to accommodate the growing number of men and women, absence of adequate learning facilities, increased cost of living, dwindling purchasing power and skyrocketed prices of housing, and limited social incentives are clear-cut depictions of what are tenable currently.

There was a time where a modest income can cater for an entire family. The fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, even to the early two thousands economies are instances, for most parts of the world. It was economically viable to get married and raise children. In fact, men would go all out to work to provide for the family while women will be the stay-at-home wives, organizing the family and taking of the children. Fast forward today, particularly after the pandemic, the cost of living hits near all-time highs in most economies of the world. It becomes stringent for man and wife to go all out to provide for the family, living their children at the mercy of contracted care-takers or social workers. It's concerning how children raised in such conditions get to grow to become adults. The home-makers are now labour workers, having little or not time for themselves, let alone their children. That wasn't the world the previously mentioned generations grew in. 

The world of today is economically, socially and politically very harsh, tantamount to unforeseen suffering. The need to meet up, the disappointment encountered, the physical, emotional and mental pain one is having to deal with, the desire to becoming successful in this age, given unfavorable yardsticks have successfully established untold hardship and consequent sufferings in the lives of men and women.

It becomes vivid that the world is currently in a wrong state that what is left of it isn't right and what should be right isn't left. Life of today has become the consciousness of suffering. Therefore, birthing children would be an epitome of multiplied suffering, be it physically, mentally, emotionally and otherwise,. manifesting as ordeals associated with birthing children, seeing them go sick, experience pains in some ways, sometimes, due to circumstances beyond human control, witnessing  children die, desire things endlessly and not achieving them.

There are people who are genuinely selfless, who would love to have a family and raise great children. Nonetheless, in a world where the old system that permitted thriving families is dead, ushering in a  new system hinged on  "survival", is it healthy for one to consent to have and birth children?

Arthur Schopenhauer, the German philosopher, said "the best legacy you can establish for your children is to ensure that they don't exist" 

I stumbled across a TikTok video. The interviewer asked a random guy (I guess), who granted the interview, "What would you you advise the upcoming generation?" His response: "Don't come!"