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Ryan, a 48-year-old teacher living in North Carolina, quite literally wishes he had never been born. He has a “deep resentment” towards his parents. He believes they were wrong to bring him into existence, and that it would be wrong for him to bring someone else into existence, too.
“Life has been an experience of suffering,” he says. “I wish I weren’t here. Why would I want to do this to anyone else?”
Ryan is a member of the antinatalist community; a group who are ethically opposed to human reproduction.
It’s hard to gauge just how big that community is. There is no research on the prevalence of antinatalist sentiments, but the antinatalism subreddit boasts 37,000 weekly visitors. The channel is full of views like Ryan’s. “You’re bringing another person into an increasingly unaffordable world when you yourself may never achieve basic financial security,” one Redditor wrote. “Don’t bring a human into this world to suffer,” wrote another.
As the birth rate dips across the globe, the antinatalist community stands in stark contrast with the growing panic among politicians, commentators, and, of course, the vocal pronatalist movement. That movement has found some powerful supporters, who have positioned the declining birth rate as an “emergency” to be solved. In the US, President Donald Trump has declared “we need more American babies”, called himself “the fertilisation president” and launched a $1,000 ‘baby bonus’ plan. Vice-President JD Vance has considered the idea of giving parents additional voting power in future elections and said on stage at the 2025 March For Life: “I want more babies in the United States of America.” Elon Musk, no longer best pals with Trump but still holding immense power, has long associated himself with pronatalism, stating back in 2021 that “one of the biggest risks to civilization is the low birth rate” and continues to post about the falling birth rate on X, most recently responding to a video about Singapore’s birth rate with: “humans are disappearing.”
In the other corner of the ring, alongside “childless cat ladies,” are antinatalists. They’re doing more than simply resisting the societal pressure to have kids. Instead, they’re fighting back. Up against pronatalists asking people to have more babies, antinatalists are trying to convince people not to reproduce at all. Their ideal outcome? The end of human existence.
We are against bringing un-consenting creatures into this world because they will suffer.”
“Antinatalism is the view that choosing to bring new sentient beings into existence is ethically wrong or unjustifiable,” explains a man who asked to be referred to as Nume, who is a moderator for the ‘/antinatalism’ subreddit. At 29, he has always been opposed to parenthood, but it was only when he found the subreddit that he found the word for how he felt. “It was very much an ‘aha’ moment. I just didn’t see the purpose in creating new people, and I was puzzled about why I was even made.”
While antinatalism is sometimes confused with being child-free, there are some important distinctions. Child-free refers simply to the personal choice to not become a parent, for all sorts of reasons (money, a lack of interest, the earth burning, to name a few). To be an antinatalist, however, is to oppose birthing children not just in your own individual case, but for everyone. Antinatalists believe human reproduction is morally wrong.
Why? There are a few different lines of thought. One is simple: no one gives their consent to be born. Gijs, from the Netherlands, sums up why he’s an antinatalist as “because no one asked to be born, and some of us come to regret it.” This logic was behind the headline-generating story of a man from Mumbai who announced he planned to sue his parents for bringing him into existence. It’s a rationale that’s hard to dispute.
“Bluntly, it’s true,” notes Jonathan Ives, professor of empirical bioethics and head of population health sciences at Bristol Medical School. “It’s just fundamentally true. Nobody can consent to be brought into existence.” Every parent is, in essence, taking a gamble that their offspring will be pleased to have been brought to life. The odds are up for debate, but the element of chance is always there.
The other line of thinking centers on suffering. “We are against bringing un-consenting creatures into this world because they will suffer,” says Lily, a 34-year-old from Chicago. “No doubt.” Antinatalists point to physical disease, global inequality, mental health issues, the pain of breakups and rejection and grief, and so on, as a pile of suffering likely to be present in someone’s life. Many subscribe to David Benatar’s ‘asymmetry argument,’ which is, in the briefest terms, that pain is morally bad, pleasure is morally good, but while the absence of pain is good, the absence of pleasure is not bad… thus, the absence of both, by not existing at all, has less ‘badness.’
These two beliefs tend to run together for antinatalists. If bringing a being into the world without their consent is morally wrong, doing that with the knowledge that the being might experience a life of suffering is even wrong-er.
This is why, if one of Lawrence Anton’s friends announced their pregnancy, he wouldn’t offer his congratulations. The 29-year-old from London confirms: “Every time I hear the announcement of a pregnancy or something like that, it does fill me with a bit of sadness.” Lawrence is well known in the antinatalism community. He has a YouTube channel entirely dedicated to spreading the word with more than 8,000 subscribers, and was involved in creating the antinatalist handbook, a website that offers detailed rebuttals to 55 potential objections to antinatalism, such as “but… humans will go extinct” and “but… my children are my legacy.”
“Most people haven’t ever heard of this view, let alone considered it in an actual, open-minded, reflective way,” Lawrence says of his YouTube channel. “Most people who have heard of it probably just dismiss it as crazy, insane, or a result of depression, or something like that. If people seem to be creating new people into a world where they could suffer significantly and die, and they’re generally doing it on autopilot. That’s something that needs to be addressed. I want to play a small part in doing that.”
The antinatalist community is working hard to distance itself from the stereotypes Lawrence mentioned. They say that individuals like Guy Edward Bartkus, who set off a bomb outside a fertility clinic in Palm Springs after “indicating antinatalist views” online, are radicalized antinatalists and not representative of the philosophy.
Simone Collins, a prominent pronatalist, said she and her husband “fully support [antinatalists’] choice to not have kids” and “ardently defend their right to pursue their philosophy”… but was quick to highlight “coercive and violent antinatalists, such as those who shoot up schools and bomb fertility centers.” Collins specified that she was referring to Sandy Hook – in Adam Lanza’s vlogs, he espoused views that align with antinatalism, among other philosophies – and Palm Springs.
I spoke to more than 50 antinatalists and didn’t encounter any violent or radical views, but there’s of course the chance that those with more extreme views wouldn’t be up for talking to a journalist. There are certainly radicalized antinatalists shielded from view, but the group on the subreddit aren’t them.
“As a community leader, I confess that our spaces have challenges in who we let represent us,” says Nume. “We’ve taken this very seriously since I became head moderator, and especially following Palm Springs.” “Challenges” is perhaps a polite word for the reality of how easily antinatalist spaces can slip into extremism. Nume shared that he keeps the contact information for his local police detectives on his desk. “Two weeks ago, I banned a user for stating she planned to sneak an abortion pill into her sister’s food.”
“People come to antinatalism for various reasons and philosophies,” Nume adds. “Unfortunately, some of them are reprehensible and I do my best to censor them.” He says that 70% of threads posted to the subreddit are removed, in large part using AI tools that look out for “parent-hatred (we’ve banned pejoratives like ‘breeder’ and ‘NPC’), suggestions of forced medical procedures by the state (sterilization), posts that target geography or race (for example complaining about the high fertility rates in Nigeria), and misogynists who blame women for reproduction.”
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Since 2007, the US birth rate has dropped 23%, reaching historic lows. For antinatalists, this is, of course, cause for celebration. “I am happy to see birth rates declining not only because less sentient individuals are exploited by being forced into existence, but also because I would like these inherently oppressive institutions to dissolve,” shares Mallinco.
But the decline in birth rate has ushered pronatalists into prominence, including in the United States government. Since he took office in January, President Trump has signalled interest in boosting the birth rate, going so far as to call himself the “fertilization President.” Prominent pronatalist Elon Musk has espoused the virtues of reproduction from the West Wing, and pronatalists like Collins have gotten more media coverage.
For anti-natalists, the panic around the birth rate declining was an anticipated frustration, along with governmental initiatives such as monetary rewards for procreation. “The more people on the planet, the more consumers and the more precarious the job market will be, so you have more and more underpaid individuals that are willing to take on any job,” said Lily. “Corporations pay less while they earn more, breeding is a win-win for them. And governments are always tied to these corporations so they want the same thing.”
Experts agree that the antinatalism movement isn’t the reason behind the dropping birth rate, and pronatalists likewise don’t see antinatalism as a huge threat. When asked if Collins was worried about antinatalism, she responded only: “The antinatalist worldview is deeply depressing, so we feel bad for the many people who hold it – it sucks to be them.”
Realistically, with more governments expressing pronatalist views and parenthood remaining the norm, it’s unlikely antinatalism will make much of a difference. Antinatalists themselves acknowledge that their ideal outcome is incredibly unlikely, and have no illusion that they’ll be able to convince the majority of people to come to their way of thinking. Still, they’d like to try. Joseph would like his legacy to be that he “reduced suffering” by “nudging people in the direction of not having children.”
“I know this isn’t going to happen,” agrees Lawrence. “But my ideal world would be that everyone is able to have access to the technology they need and information they need to decide not to reproduce.”
However unlikely their goal, Ives said non-extreme antinatalism probably isn’t a harmful worldview.“I don’t think antinatalism is a dangerous idea that should be censored,” says Ives. “It’s not a vicious philosophy. It’s not hateful. It’s a legitimate position. Something that antinatalism does, which I think is a good thing, is it encourages people to think about why they have children, and why they want children. Having children is a morally weighty decision. It is perhaps something we ought to think about more deeply and more carefully. Even if I don’t think antinatalism is credible as a movement, and I wouldn’t buy into it completely, it encourages people to think. That is a good thing.”
That thinking has been positive for Gijs.
“Antinatalism is an expression of radical empathy,” Gijs said. “Some think we’re a death cult, that we’re suicidal, that we hate children or parents. Antinatalism has given me a whole new outlook on life. A more self-consistent and defensible one. And I doubt I would have gotten there on my own.”
Plus, for people who would prefer that they hadn’t been born, having a uniting mission – even if that mission is to convince people to not have children, to make the birth rate drop faster, to bring about the extinction of humanity – provides meaning that makes continuing to live worth it.
“I wish I weren’t here,” says Ryan. “The oblivion that I had before I was born; I see that as being preferable to the sum total of my life experience. As humans, we’re just trying to get by. Any time I see a person open their mind to something they hadn’t considered before – like whether or not they should have kids – it makes me much more hopeful about life and humanity.”