[IggleSniggle]

The burden it places on yourself, your child, and the incremental burden it places on everyone else living on the planet?

If the ethical thing to do is increase the total happiness (or perhaps contentedness, or satisfaction) of all humans...well it's just not really clear that adding a statistically average human is the way to increase human prosperity / reduce human suffering.

To your other point, now that I'm a parent, it's easy to see that becoming a parent made me into a better person, but there was no way I could have known that that would happen before becoming one.

[tom-_-]

Increasing human prosperity/reducing human suffering is largely a function of technological advancement, wealth distribution and avoiding wars. All of these require a large population of educated humans to drive forward and since yours will likely be educated, probably net positive.

[parineum]

> well it's just not really clear that adding a statistically average human is the way to increase human prosperity / reduce human suffering.

All of history has been an steady march forward of more prosperity and less suffering accomplished by an entire population of, on average, average people.

[wesapien]

You couldn't observe that around you growing up? It's was clear to me growing up that big families and children with siblings were mostly happier. It didn't matter if the family was rich or barely getting by.