"Kant [...] would have acknowledged ... that each baby should be treated as an end in its own right, and not as a means to an end. So one should have a baby because one wanted that baby to be born and to have a life, not because one wanted the pleasure oneself of having a baby."
Most of the conversations I hear about children are about 'wanting'. Do you want children? When? How many? Boy or girl? How much of a gap between them?
Much of that is just the way people talk: it doesn't necessarily indicate a selfish attitude. It's too easy to judge others on the basis of such conversations when one is childless oneself.
Nonetheless, it is interesting to consider: is my reason for seeking pregnancy born of compassion for a potential person as yet unborn, to whom I can help bring the gift of life? Or of my own wanting - a biologically and status-anxiously driven consumerism that compels me to possess a child?
I realise that thinking about such things is a luxury. Choice played no part in conception and birth a few short decades ago. But now it does, and along with the new-found freedom of choice goes the responsibility to try to choose well. And it's rather nice, in fact, to have been given by infertility the space to reflect on things like this and then to make my choices more carefully.
Incidentally, the book also acknowledged that Kant probably had no idea how to change a nappy.
