Why have children?

A fascinating debate is being held on the ethical issue of having or not having children.
The New Yorker refers to books and discussions that look at both sides of the debate in this article - Why Have Children: The Ethical Debate?

The reviewer ends with this interesting point.

'The decision to have a child, or one more child, or yet another child may seem to be a personal one—a choice about how many diapers you want to change in the short term versus how many Mother’s Day cards you hope to receive later on. But to see it in these terms alone is to be, as Caplan points out on the cover of his book, selfish. Whatever you may think of Overall’s and Benatar’s conclusions, it’s hard to argue with their insistence that the decision to have a child is an ethical one. When we set the size of our families, we are, each in our own small way, determining how the world of the future will look. And we’re doing this not just for ourselves and our own children; we’re doing it for everyone else’s children, too.'

While I agree that the decision is not simply a personal one, I would argue that it is almost impossible for anyone to take the decision to have or not have a child from anything other than a personal standpoint.