Is bearing a child a duty? Not necessarily. But it becomes a duty when one chooses to do so. This is the monstrous fact behind becoming a parent. It is not a duty to have a child, a parent need not have become a parent. He or she could have chosen to remain childless. There is nothing necessarily unfortunate about not having a child. In this overpopulated world, it might even be the more rational decision. But once the choice is made, one is absolutely obliged to make sure that the child grows into an independent adult. There are so many things at stake for the child at each step of its life that at that moment the parent is no longer a single individual, but rather divided between him or her self and the child. A parent needs to live three lives: one for himself, another for his partner, and a third for his child.
Does this mean that the child has the right to reproach his or her parent for bearing him or her? It is an extremely popular and easy thing for a contemporary child to slander his or her parent by asking the blasphemous question: "why did you bare me?" In Japanese: nande boku / watashi wo unda no? The question is so painful for the parent, not because he or she feels guilty for giving birth, nor because the parent somehow thinks that the decision might have been wrong. The pain comes with the fact that the child, by asking such a question, is absolutely refusing to become an adult. An adult is someone who is a master of him or her self. This means that an adult assumes responsibility for his or her own existence in the world. The question for the adult is no longer "why am I here?" but rather "how should I be here?" But the child wants an answer to the former question. The reason why the child is here is because his or her parents decided to have a child. Why did they make such a decision? Thus, the child asks such a question.
What the child doesn't know is that there is no higher answer to such a question. Any honest parent will say that the reason why he or she decided to have a child was because he or she decided to have a child.
Other answers might be given. However, although they are not necessarily false, they certainly are untrue. The first answer is that the parent wanted to have a child because of some inner feeling, perhaps a natural instinct. It is only instinctive for a human to have a child at a certain age, the parent might say. But this is untrue. A human is able to choose to follow or restrain his own instincts. Thus, while it might be true that there was such a feeling, even a natural instinct, this is no sufficient ground for a human to have a child. It is not a good enough reason.
The next answer is that the child is a by-product of a higher activity, namely sex accompanied by love. It is love that drives humans to have sex, and in the moment, so to speak, when sex and love merge at their highest peak, it is only natural for anyone to make up his or her mind to become a parent. Again, this is not necessarily false, but not the whole truth. For one thing, it is not universally true that sex is the highest expression of love. There is no such "highest" way to express love. Sex might be unique in its own way, but love demands that I love another person even if all things go contrary to my expectations, including the expectation to have sex. Love is, and ought to exist, without sex, if that is necessary. Moreover, there is something called contraception which a man may want to consider before plunging into sex. The fact that he did not make any effort on this mark is already a choice. The contrary choice could have been made out of pure love. This means that the choice to not have a child is just as much a loving choice as the one to have one.
Finally, one might appeal to a higher authority, perhaps that of religion, to justify his or her choice to bear a child. God commanded that Abraham's descendants multiply like the stars in the sky. This, however, is a reasoning based on a shallow reading of the Bible. The God of the Old Testament commands absolutely, and humans are, for the most part, portrayed like naughty and helpless children who need some higher power to guide them. Not so with the New Testament. Jesus is God becoming man, and man here is equal to God. If God commands man, then man can equally command himself. Jesus showed that a divine a commander as God is really within each of us, that each of us is capable of making an absolute decision and standing by this decision on our own. Thus the decision to have a child, if it is something which God commands, is at the same time something man commands to himself, and thereby makes his own decision. There is no basis, no higher purpose or calling, behind such a decision. Yet man ought to keep his promise once the covenant is made.
There might be many more variations on these kinds of justifications or rationalizations. They are all untrue to one degree or another. There is nothing behind the decision itself.
This is the reason why the child's first naive question is illegitimate. It asks for a higher ground when there is none. The duty of the adult is perhaps to show that this is the case. A simple assertion will not convince a child. It is even worse for an adult to challenge the child to give a reason. This is childish. Rather, an adult ought to first suggest a reason, give a convincing case for it, and then refute it, all in one breath, in front of the child. This has to be repeated for different variations. The child needs to be patient. This is an altogether different problem. But once patience is in place, this is the correct way.
