ABSTRACT
Procreation is an activity widely engaged in and often considered virtuous, life affirming, and generous. Most people find it deeply counterintuitive to consider the fact that having children may always be wrong, yet many have found Benatar’s arguments difficult to escape. This chapter explains Benatar’s arguments and show how, though they are often relied upon, and widely cited, they do not succeed in showing that procreation is always wrong due to the harmfulness of existence. Benatar’s asymmetry is explicitly about states of affairs in the absence of interested parties. However, pleasure and pain are essentially interest-bound goods, good or bad only in virtue of the interested subjects that they affect.
