Parenting effectively prevents people from pursuing their own interests and fulfilling their own goals. The child becomes the center and the only valid part of parents’ lives. By having kids, people turn from free individuals into servants. They often have to abandon their careers in order to take care of the offspring. Women’s careers are most heavily affected, as women usually end up being the major childcare provider. Furthermore, people with children have much less time for socializing resulting in losing friends. Couples’ relationships are also bound to deteriorate as mother and father become more interested in a baby than in themselves. It has also been proven that couples with kids engage in sexual activities far less often than those who are childless. All of these reasons contribute to general dissatisfaction of parents who feel they have lost their own lives. As the evidence for that we can quote Daniel Gilbert, who holds a chair in psychology at Harvard. Based on his research findings, he reports that childless marriages are far happier.* Such a view is supported also by Madelyn Cain, a teacher at the University of Southern California, who says "Statistics show childless couples are happier. Their lives are self-directed, they have a better chance of intimacy, and they do not have the stresses, financial and emotional, of parenthood."**

*Kingston, 2009, http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/07/24/no-kids-no-grief/3/

**Goldberg, 2003, http://dir.salon.com/mwt/feature/2003/05/06/breeding/index2.html

The level of emotional involvement in bringing the child up is immense. Parents pour all their souls into children, who, in turn, often leave them disenchanted and exhausted. Parents also have to share their child’s problems, fears and traumas, so that the amount of grief that parents take on themselves doubles (or even triples, depending on how troublesome the child is). Not only that, but those who have offspring also become more vulnerable. They worry about their kids from the moment they are born until the day they themselves die. Parents’ to-worry-about list is endless: from child’s nutrition to summer camps, from accidents to social acceptance, from choosing a school to moving out. Having raised children, parents become emotional wrecks. All parents agree that it is emotionally draining and stressful, in 1975, advice columnist Ann Landers asked her readers, “If you had it to do over again, would you have children?” seventy percent of respondents said “no.”* *Goldberg, 2003, http://dir.salon.com/mwt/feature/2003/05/06/breeding/index2.html

For majority of people children are the biggest expenditure they ever undertake. The United States Department of Agriculture reported in 2008 that the average annual expenses associated with raising a child can be as high as $22,960.* If we assume that a child will live with their parents until the age of 18 and add average cost of sending a child for 4 years to college, we arrive at the conclusion that bringing up a child in a developed country costs around $500,000. This money can be far better spent, for instance, on enhancing the standard of education or health care, subsidising economic initiative in developing countries, investing in green technologies, etc.

*Boy Scouts of America, 2011, http://www.scouting.org/filestore/media/ES_Finances.pdf

Four out of every five children will be born to families whose members survive on less than $10 a day. Around one third of children in developing countries is estimated to be underweight or stunted.* Research suggests that even in the USA, 20% of children live in poverty. And such an extreme plight of the child is only the beginning. Even if a child is born into a relatively well-off family, there are endless devastating situations he has to face during his life: war, death of family members, chronic illness, divorce, crime, and social exclusion. The list can go on and on forever. Having children is the equivalent of forcing innocent people, against their will, to experience the misery of life. Thus, it is inhumane.

*Shah 2010, http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats

The more people consume in the world, the greater the environmental damage. An average American produces 52 tons of garbage by the age of 75.* However, producing extra litter and pollution is not the only hazard that every child poses to the planet. Increasing world’s population also places incredible stress on Earth’s resources. It is estimated, for instance, that by 2025 three billion people will live in water-scarce countries. By reducing the number of human beings we will manage to avoid numerous overpopulation crises and reverse the damage done to the environment.

* Tufts Climate Initiative., 2006, http://sustainability.tufts.edu/?pid=106

Social and economic inequalities between men and women stem primarily from the fact that women are the child bearers, and mothers overwhelmingly spend more time on childrearing tasks than do their male spouses. Not surprisingly then, many employers still discriminate against women when recruiting to work. They view females as those responsible for parenting and thus not reliable, devoted or loyal as employees. Even when there is little or no discrimination in recruitment women often hit a ‘glass ceiling’ due to breaking their careers in order to have children, in the UK a recent report by the Chartered Management Institute found it would take until 2109 to close the pay gap.* On a social level, not having children will mean more gender equality as there will be no ground for justifying an unequal labour division.

*Goodley, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/aug/31/cmi-equal-pay-report