Becoming a parent, once the expected outcome of adulthood, is increasingly viewed as a potential threat to the most basic goals and aspirations of modern life. We seek self-fulfillment; we want to liberate women to find meaning and self-worth outside the household; we wish to protect the planet from the ravages of human-caused climate change; we must do what we can to protect others from senseless suffering. Weighing the pros and cons of having children, young people today are finding it increasingly hard to judge in its favor.  Exploring the nuances of our collective contemporary anxiety about having children, the book offers those struggling with the decision themselves the philosophical guidance necessary to move beyond their uncertainty.

Peeling back the layers of resistance, What Are Children For? argues that when we make the individual decision whether or not to have children we confront a profound philosophical question—that of the goodness of our very form of life. How can we justify perpetuating human life given the catastrophic harm and suffering of which we are always at once both victims and perpetrators? If we wish to meet this challenge without succumbing to naïveté about our predicament, we must, the book argues, uncover a capacity to grasp the fundamental goodness of human life—not only theoretically but practically, in the actual lives we lead today.