I get depressed .....

What obstacles keep you from a child?

Are you a kiwi?

Think of it this way - when you see these 'happy family' scenarios, know that is just a snapshot, and there is lots more time spent dealing with temper tantrums, budget woes, colicky babies and having someone completely dependent on you for a number of years.  No privacy, perhaps a spouse that lets you do all the hard stuff... it's not all Hallmark cards and loving Thanksgiving gatherings.

I knowingly didn't reproduce, for many reasons. One, my family wasn't happy and I didn't want to bring children into an already dysfunctional environment. Two, the environment - too many people.  Three, I wanted to focus on my career. The list goes on...

If you have a need to nurture children, there are plenty of disadvantaged kids that would welcome a 'Big Brother or Sister".

"It wasn't all bad: in the top eight ranked countries – Portugal, Hungary, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Finland, France and Russia – parents reported being happier than non-parents.

But that left 14 countries where the childless were happier than those with kids.

So what accounted for the happiness gap? Co-author of the study and professor of sociology at the University of Texas, Jennifer Glass, wrote that what they found "astonishing" was that their data provided a clear and simple answer.

"The negative effects of parenthood on happiness were entirely explained by the presence or absence of social policies allowing parents to better combine paid work with family obligations," she reported.

"And this was true for both mothers and fathers. Countries with better family policy 'packages' had no happiness gap between parents and non-parents."

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And if society wants the fairest possible state of affairs, that would mean no humans and no society.

Doesn't address the fact that the unborn have no pressing need or desire to be brought into existence, and the happiness gains of parents in the top 8 nations are by a small margin (which could be explicable by other sociological factors which separate the types of people most likely to have children and those most likely to remain childless, including the fact that people such as the OP feel that they are being deprived, without actually having experienced the reality of parenthood to compare it to their present circumstances) :


www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/06/many-americans-will-tell-you-having-kids-made-them-happier-theyre-probably-lying/?utm_term=.072a3253e753

8% is the top one (Portugal), but is less than 5% in the other 7 nations.


So at best, there's not much good reason for the OP to think that their life has a big hole in it because they are childless; and there are a great many good reasons to refrain from imposing risk on someone who would never miss the purported benefits of being brought into life. So even if parenthood were a virtual guarantee of increased happiness for the parents, it would still be an unnecessary and selfish decision - taking a gamble on someone else's wellbeing in order to fulfill some kind of white picket fence fantasy on the part of the parents.

The authors didn't make any claims which contradict the points that I made. Show me any part which claims that the study was controlled for all relevant sociological factors. 

Nobody who doesn't exist feels deprived of the option to take or leave life. So in order for them to even desire the choice between living or dying, they must already be thrust without consent into a high risk, high stakes gamble. And anyone who has ever rejected the 'gift' of life has suffered in order to reach that point. The vast majority who reach the point of actually committing suicide have suffered grievously, rather than committing suicide at the very first hint of suffering; and a great many more continue to suffer until their natural death without having been able to commit suicide, or sincerely believing that suicide would sentence them to an eternity of suffering as opposed to a lifetime of suffering. There's no good reason to risk everyone's wellbeing for a purported benefit that nobody would miss in the first place. It's almost never standard practice in society to presume consent for something that is both highly risky and entirely unnecessary on the part of the person who cannot consent to the action being taken.

Catman is glad to have only cats.

Having the choice is only superior to those who are capable of appreciating the fact that they have a choice. Therefore, this excludes the non-existent, who have no desire for this choice. The probablistic justification that you are offering up only makes any sense if there is a potential negative consequence to the non-existent of failing to bring them into existence. And everyone, at the time they are born, could potentially have terrible suffering at some time in their future. At the time of making the choice to bring a child into the world, there is no way of knowing the full extent of their luck or misfortune. 

You're the one who is implying that the non-existent must therefore be desirous of the choice. Your reasoning wouldn't work unless the non-existent had desires. If you have the conscious ability to assess your choices, then of course it is better not to be restricted to one choice. But nobody who doesn't exist wants or needs any choices. The concept of choice is meaningless to the universe, and is meaningless to anyone who doesn't already exist in order to appreciate the concept of choice.