544. A Philosophical Approach to the Question of Childbearing with Anastasia Berg

unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

When did the idea of parenthood become less of a certainty and more of a choice? How have anxieties about the modern world impacted our desire to procreate and thus impacted the world’s population? Is that impact even a big deal?

Anastasia Berg is an assistant professor of philosophy at UC Irvine and co-author of the new book What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice in which she takes a philosophical approach to the question of whether or not to have children.

Anastasia and Greg delve into the shifting motivations and anxieties influencing the choice to have children, how this question has popped up throughout history dating back to Aristotle’s time, feminism's relationship with motherhood, and the potential reasons behind declining birth rates.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

When choosing parenthood feels like losing yourself

18:53: The transformation is one that really threatens annihilation of self. It's more radical than this difficulty of doing a hedonic calculation. What you are saying about the reluctance of calculating, though, I think is really important to thematize, because we see it especially as people increasingly report a conflict between pursuing what a lot of people are able to actually articulate as, like, a family goal or desire to have children and what they can see romantic relationships to be for.

Why fewer people won't save the planet

42:39: The fantasy that depopulation is going to be a solution for climate change—it's just that: it's a fantasy. What we need is immediate global climate action, and nothing short of it will make a difference.

What are parents really responsible for?

37:07 What I think people are responsible for in being parents is not that overall wellbeing. What they're responsible for is preparing, to the best of their abilities, their children for meeting life challenges, pains, and suffering. So it's not to say that you can't fail as a parent. It's not to say that we can't say that. Some people, like, should you be a parent? I'm not sure. But it is to say that judgment is not going to be based on the likelihood of your child to just encounter suffering of any kind.

Rethinking parenthood as an avenue for self-fulfillment

30:17:  The question of whether or not motherhood is an avenue for self-fulfillment should give way to the question of whether or not parenthood is something of value in human life and how to reconcile it with other demands, moral, material, et cetera. And as we said, that's true at both the individual level. So, within a relationship, to try to overcome the thought that the liberal left thing to do is to put the burden of not just choice, but the burden of asking this question of deliberation, of assuming responsibility for the choice, squarely on the shoulders of women, and also socially, to try and find a way of both recognizing the unique burdens that parenthood places on women, especially in the early stages of parenthood, but also reminding us that this is a profound human question.

Show Links:

Recommended Resources:

• The “wisdom” of Silenus | The New Criterion
• After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People by Dean Spears and Michael Geruso (publishing July 2025)
• Melanie Klein
• Elena Ferrante
• Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at University of California Irvine
• Professional Website
• Professional Profile on X

Her Work:

• What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice