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Children

What is a good reason to have kids? Is desiring to have somebody to love a good reason to have kids? Is desiring to be a parent a good reason to have kids? Is desiring to have someone who unconditionally loves you a good reason to have kids? What on earth could justifiably compel someone to instigate such an ontologically significant event fraught with perhaps, if not infinite, vast moral significance, as creating another human existence?

Good questions, ones that are receiving more philosophical treatment recently. As a parent of three I better have some good answers, eh? First off, I haven't read either the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) entry on Parenthood and Procreation or the book Why Have Children? by Christine Overall (see this article ), but you might find those interesting. So, here are five reasons that I think are good reasons to have children, though of course, they might be outweighed by other reasons (such as worries about overpopulation, or lacking financial resources to raise children well, etc.): 1. Human life has value and humans create valuable and meaningful things (such as art, philosophy, humor, and pleasure), so it is good for humans to continue to exist. So, someone should have kids. It might not be necessary for me or you to have children, but assuming it is better for there to be humans than not (and I think it is), then it is necessary for some people to have...
Children
Ethics
Medicine

Over the past few years, my wife has become a staunch antivaccinationist. (We have a son on the autism spectrum; she has bought into the discredited vaccine causation theory of autism.) She is unreachable on this topic; no facts or reason will move her from her position. Unfortunately, she has decided that our children are to have no further vaccinations. She will not compromise on this. I, of course, want our children to be protected from dangerous diseases and thus want them to be vaccinated. My question: What are my ethical obligations in this situation--to my wife, to my children, and to society? Going behind my wife's back and having the children vaccinated without her knowledge does not seem ethical. Agreeing to her demand that the children receive no further shots also seems unethical--this would put my kids at risk of disease, as well as other people. Telling my wife up front that I'm taking the children to get their shots, despite her objections, also seems problematic--they are her children...

I agree with Professor Smith. The only thing I would add may be obvious and may be something you've already tried. It sometimes helps to have third parties intervene to provide all the facts and arguments you would use to try to persuade your wife to change her mind. Here, your knowledge of who might influence her is useful. Would she trust your family's pediatrician or react harshly against him/her as a member of the 'vaccine conspiracy'? Her parents or yours? Mutual friends? While an 'intervention' would be extreme, making friends and family aware of a serious issue that affects the health of your children (and others) and enlisting their help might make it easier for your wife to back down without feeling pressured to do so solely by you. But should these methods fail, then Prof. Smith's suggestion seems appropriate.
Children
Ethics

Is it immoral for a person in a rich country to adopt a child from a very poor country, while the parents are still alive. Often, the parents in poor countries will beg rich people to take their children, so consent is not an issue.

Since your question is so timely, given the arrest of the missionaries in Haiti who were illegally taking 33 children out of the country, the first thing to point out is that it might be immoral to adopt such children, even with parental consent, if the adoption was made possible by actions that were illegal . That is, it might be immoral because, in general, it is immoral to break the law. Nonetheless, we might ask whether it would be immoral even if it were not illegal or whether this is one of those cases where breaking the law is not immoral (e.g., though some may take it as controversial, I take it that Rosa Parks was not doing something immoral in breaking the (immoral) segregation laws and that homosexuals were not doing something immoral when they had sex in their own homes in states that had (immoral) laws against such acts). Other philosophers will know this literature better than I, but I take this case of adoption to be one where questions of consent become very difficult,...