Being Unborn maybe the Greatest Gift
I’m not looking for anyone’s approval or agreement on this. This is simply my personal view after walking on this earth for a while, observing people, experiencing life, and thinking about what it actually means to bring another human being into existence.
I’ve slowly come to believe that being unborn may be the greatest gift a parent can give to their child. I know how strange that sounds. A child who is never born cannot receive a gift, cannot feel grateful, and cannot know what they avoided, so I don’t mean “gift” literally.
I mean it as the ultimate form of protection.
When we create a person, we make an irreversible decision on their behalf. They never asked to exist, yet they inherit everything that comes with existence: pain, illness, fear, disappointment, loneliness, responsibility, loss, aging, and eventually death.
Of course, life contains good things too. Love, friendship, curiosity, achievement, beautiful places, good food, pets (i love them!), laughter, you can name them. There are countless things that can make being alive worthwhile, and some people genuinely love being alive. Some would choose their life again without hesitation.
I don’t deny any of that. Seriously. But we also cannot deny that everyone receives a different experience.
No one can guarantee what kind of body their child will have. We cannot know whether we will pass on genetic conditions that affect their quality of life, what kind of mind they will have, what circumstances they will grow up in, what they will lose along the way, or whether they will eventually consider their own life a gift at all.
That uncertainty is exactly what has bothered me for the past few years. When deciding whether to create another human being, I am not gambling with my own life.
I am gambling with theirs.
If I choose not to have a child, there is nobody somewhere feeling disappointed because I denied them existence. There is no person suffering because they were never born. But once someone exists, suffering becomes possible, and sometimes that suffering can be enormous.
Even when nothing catastrophic happens, existence still comes with obligations. You need food, shelter, healthcare, money, and some form of security. For most people, that means spending a large part of life working simply to maintain the life they were given.
Learn, perform, compete, work, pay bills, save money, prepare for emergencies, prepare for old age. For many people, decades of life are spent earning enough to keep participating in life.
Realization
That sometimes makes me realize. We create someone without asking them, and then that person inherits the responsibility of sustaining the existence we gave them?
This is why my idea of parental responsibility eventually became very different from the usual one. People often describe good parents as those who sacrifice for their children, protect them, provide for them, and try to give them the best possible life.
I respect that deeply. No argument from me.
But personally, I arrived at another conclusion. Perhaps the most complete protection I could ever give my hypothetical child is to never expose them to the risks of existence in the first place.
No expectation that they continue my family or traditions.
No expectation that they give my life meaning.
No expectation that they care for me when I’m old.
No expectation that they repay me for raising them.
No burden of becoming someone just because I wanted them here.
They owe me nothing, because I never put them in the position of owing anything at all.
And to be clear, I am not against other people having children. I am not saying every life is miserable, and I am not saying people who love being alive are wrong. This is simply where my own experience and reasoning have taken me.
I can value my own life and still believe that creating another one is a completely different decision.
For me, love does not always mean giving someone something. Sometimes it means refusing to expose them to something in the first place.
And perhaps, for a child who will never need to suffer, struggle, grind, prove themselves, lose someone they love, worry about surviving financially, grow old, or eventually confront their own mortality, nonexistence is the one protection that can never fail.
They will never know what I chose. They will never thank me for it.
A gift should not require repayment anyway.