In deciding to become parents, there are a bunch of significant questions my partner and I had to (or rather, should have) considered.

Are we equipped to raise any children we have well? Will they be happy? Will we be happy? Will they be cared for if something happens to us? Will we be able to support the family?

These questions are exhaustingly complicated and richly philosophical. To some extent, they're philosophically impossible to answer.

As the philosopher Laurie Paul argues, we can't know how parenting is going to affect us until we've made the choice to become parents, meaning we can burn a heap of emotional and mental energy on the existential hamster wheel that is the question "am I ready to be a parent?".

Dr Matt Beard is a husband, dad, pop culture nerd, moral philosopher and ethicist. ( Supplied )

One equally philosophical question, which didn't cross our minds the first time around, is whether it's ethically acceptable to have kids at all. But for young people considering having kids, it's becoming harder to avoid facing this question.

Prince Harry recently promised to limit his family to two children out of concerns for the environment; US politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez acknowledged that many young people are questioning whether reproduction is morally acceptable; refusing to have kids has been touted as a new 'climate strike'; Pope Francis has asked Catholics not to "breed like rabbits"; and one bloke in India is suing his parents for "wrongful life".

The anti-natalist agenda

While there are probably a range of competing ideas underneath these examples, they all read from a similar philosophical playbook: anti-natalism. This is the idea that having children sits somewhere on the spectrum between morally problematic and outright wrong.

Until quite recently, it has always been a fairly fringe idea with few serious philosophers supporting it (the long-dead Arthur Schopenhauer and the still-breathing David Benatar being noteworthy exceptions). But as we can see, it's on the rise. And I can understand why.

The climate emergency terrifies me. Every day as I sit at my desk, I wonder whether I should be dropping everything to spend every waking moment trying to shift the needle, even a fraction. Part of that is self-interest. It seems increasingly likely that some major climate changes are going to kick in well before I'm in the ground.

But more than anything else, my terror is for my kids. What kind of a world will they inherit? Just as troublingly, if we all want our kids to grow up in a world that allows them to be happy and healthy, does that mean we need to have fewer kids collectively? Paradoxically, if we're going to save the world for our kids, perhaps we need to (metaphorically) sacrifice some of them.

It also seems very clear that even if we can't do much as individuals to mitigate the effects of climate change, we should do what we can to reduce our emissions contribution. And making more people — energy-guzzling, consuming, unsustainable people — is unlikely to do that.

Whether it's disposable nappies, running the air conditioner to keep your bub asleep in the (increasingly warm) Australian summer, or getting a bigger car to accommodate a car seat (we're guilty of all three), kids seem to tip the carbon scales in the wrong direction. Every child, philosopher Travis Rieder told me when I interviewed him last year, is an imposition on the world.

Plus, Dr Rieder added, whenever we have a child, we impose the world onto them.

What kind of a world will my kids experience as adults? Depending on which forecasts turn out to be true, it's conceivable that the world will impose a lot more pain than pleasure on future generations.

That's precisely the reason anti-natalist-in-chief, David Benatar, offers for not having kids. He thinks it's wrong to create a life that will experience more pain than pleasure (he also happens to think that all lives have more pain than pleasure, but we can set that aside for now).

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In defence of having kids amid climate change

Given all this, you'd think I'd feel guilty for our decision to become parents (not once, but twice!). But I don't.

I think the trend toward moralising the choice to have kids in the wake of climate change (Jane Goodall, in an interview with Prince Harry, explicitly told him not to have "too many" kids) misplaces responsibility for solving the problem.

This is particularly true when you consider that 50 per cent of consumption emissions come from the wealthiest 10 per cent of the world's population — who tend to have fewer kids anyway.

Seeing reduced reproduction as a solution is unlikely to target those who most need to change. It's likely to unfairly target the already disadvantaged.

Moreover, those whose kids are least likely to be affected by climate change are often likely to be the largest emitters, meaning again, we're punishing the innocent — twice.

What's more, climate change is unlikely to be solved by a group of individuals making different choices.

It's going to need structural, widespread changes to economic systems, business models and cultural priorities. Rethinking our attitude toward kids might be part of that, but by framing the decision to have kids as a kind of 'climate recklessness', we misdescribe the moral reality.

It's not that having kids is morally bad because of climate change; it's that climate change is morally bad because it's affecting our ability to share our lives with children, have families and feel confident in the future of our loved ones.

Being a parent doesn't make you a villain in the climate story; it makes you a victim.

It might also make you a hero.

Having kids is a statement of hope

Having the will to tackle the problems of climate change requires us to be the kinds of people who have a moral stake in the future.

The inability to take meaningful action on climate change thus far can be at least partly attributed to the inability to care at all about the world beyond our own lifetime. Parenting requires you to think about the long game — part of caring about your kids means caring about the world they'll live in.

Of course, you don't need to be a parent to have those concerns. We should all care about the future regardless of whether we have kids. Plus, if parents are only caring about the future because of their kids, then that probably reveals a very patchy moral compass.

But while we're working to change people's moral concerns, we might as well tap into those with a ready-made reason to give a shit about what's to come: people with kids.

By encouraging people not to become parents, we're eliminating a potentially powerful ally in the efforts to fix the world as much as we can.

And it's not just parents who can be motivated by the idea of children.

As a community, the idea of kids and future generations can capture the imagination. New life has always given us reason to hope.

As columnist and parent Elizabeth Bruenig writes for The Washington Post: "Children are a clear statement of hope, a demand that we claim accountability for the future. They are a rejection of cavalier disregard for the planet we share."

Not having kids seems like an obvious way to accept the current state of affairs. It's also a way of accepting that we have a duty not to live in ignorance of the lives of those who aren't born yet. We are accountable to them and should do them justice. But parenting can — and does — generate the same kinds of moral commitments. It's not about whether you have kids or not; it's about whether you're interested in the future.

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Good parenting in the era of climate change

For parents, it's not enough to worry about your kids future — parents have always done that. You're not actually doing anything to stop climate change. It just means you've got a really good motivation for doing so.

Listen to Short and Curly Hear more from the fast-paced fun-filled ethics podcast for kids and their parents with questions and ideas to really get you thinking. Read more Read more

One thing that the threat of a world wracked by climate change does is make us reconsider what it means to be good parents in this context. Arguably, it's not enough to keep our kids happy, teach them to be kind and to be responsible for their own lives.

Today, part of being a good parent means actively doing what we can to ensure the world our kids grow up in is one in which they have some reasonable chance at flourishing.

Parents like me can't sit on the sidelines: they — and I — need to turn their climate anxiety into action.

Having kids has always been a deeply personal decision. People may not want to risk bringing their kids into an uncertain world — made all the more uncertain by the threat of ecological catastrophe. Those who do, though, need not feel like they've failed either their kids or the world.

Anti-natalists worry that if kids ever asked "why did you have me?", parents wouldn't be able to offer a good answer. I'd respectfully suggest instead we should spend our energy making sure the world is in a state that as few kids as possible would ever dream of asking that question.

Dr Matt Beard is a husband, dad, pop culture nerd, moral philosopher, ethicist, author, presenter of the ABC's Short & Curly and a Fellow at The Ethics Centre.