I do not immediately judge those who are unlike me, but I am a part of the childfree crowd (and to an enormous extent promote adoption over childbirth, which is in no way atypical among childfree people), and the topic of being childfree showed up in the most unexpected conversation today.

So… I’m not going to go into specifics since many of them are already overblown topics, but I’ll start off by summarizing and saying a lot of people hold a “neutral people are as guilty as the wrongdoers” viewpoint. A kind of Edmund Burke or Anakin Skywalker way of thinking that has been used when it comes to neutrality in promoting world leaders, not helping human lives, etc. I saw two people debate about this, and one of them brought up the question “how do you feel about people who don’t adopt?”

“I don’t judge them, it’s not even that common. Why do you ask?”

“Visualize a bunch of children. Some are on the streets and some are in foster care centers. They suffer and suffer, and they look out onto the streets to see parents who willingly chose to go through the pain of childbirth to use their bodies to spend and convert a bunch of inanimate atoms into an entity that will be using more of our air and needs to eat [rather than going the painless route of adopting a child that is already in existence and needs a home]. Then they look at other people who don’t want to give birth and have birth children but still look in indifference at all the suffering parentless children. Around half of adults on Earth are currently childless, and yet around a fifth of children are in broken homes or are parentless. It is the closest thing to willfully being evil that the majority of humans come to. I’m sure most of the people obsessing over insurance for example are going to opt for no children or for birth children.”

That last part resonated with me. I’m testing this out because I’m interested in this as a mental exercise. What’s your view on people who don’t adopt, including yourself if you can justify it?