The ethics of having children
Malthus and the Population Problem
Starting with a podcast about Malthusianism that prompted him to put the issue of overpopulation and having children on the topics list. It's from the BBC Radio 4 show "In Our Time" by Melvyn Bragg.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/iotp
The original essay by Malthus http://129.237.201.53/books/malthus/population/malthus.pdf""
The Stanford encyclopaedia of philosophy has a discussion of the ethics of having children:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/parenthood/
particularly the following section on "the Morality of Procreation":
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/parenthood/#MorPro
Schopenhauer is the best-known philosopher for arguing that perhaps we shouldn't have children because life is full of suffering. This is discussed in his essay "On the sufferings of the world" :
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/pessimism/chapter1.html
In it he asks: "if children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence? Or at any rate, not take it upon himself to impose that burden in cold blood."
"Poor old Schopenhauer. He did not lead a happy life." -Andrew!
David Benetar presents a similar view. He states that even if a life is completely ecstatic, with just a pin-prick of pain, it is a bad life http://www.amazon.com/Better-Never-Have-Been-ebook/dp/B000TODSCY/ref=tmm_kin_title_0
An easy read in support of having children by Professor Christine Overall http://www.amazon.com/Why-Have-Children-Ethical-Bioethics/dp/0262016982
Peter Singer discusses the ethics of having children under various conditions in his Practical Ethics book that we discussed earlier this year. The most relevant bits are those listed under the entry "Total View" in the index. He is less pessimistic than Schopenhauer, so he seems quite sympathetic to the view that having children can be a good thing, if you are committed to doing your best to give them a good life, and believe yourself capable of doing so.
And a couple of articles about the modern environmental issues associated with population growth, as opposed to food resources.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/science/earth/05harvest.html?pagewanted=5&_r=1