I remember my father telling me (probably slightly after my first son was born, great timing indeed!), it would have been a pity to gave birth to someone in this timeline.
Period was around 2010/11, I thought he was just extreme and depressed. Today I can’t really say he was wrong. We western people are just going to see a colossal crash and I feel bad having my kids as a spectator for that.
Humanity has seen crashes like this before, and worse. There’s a lot of philosophical arguments around natalism, but at the end of the day, there’s an argument to be made for having kids–even in a rough time.
All we can do at this point is try to equip our kids for the worst, and give them our best while we can. Their lives will be harder than ours in some ways, but possibly better in others. For example, kids today have such better emotional intelligence at a younger age than anyone in my generation did. They’re not perfect, but overall I’m super proud of how the newer generations are turning out. I hope to inspire my own kids by working for positive change, to eventually pass them the torch to do the same. And if I can find some value in that, I hope they can as well.