Yes, it's as if affirmative morality exists within a conceptual vacuum and is unable to survive a radical self-analysis! How strange that most people overwhelmingly see harm and manipulation as wrong but turn a blind eye when it comes to matters that threaten the stability and maintenance of the social order!

Any ethical system worth mentioning instantiates what we might call the "fundamental ethical articulation", or the principle that it is wrong to hurt and manipulate others without good reason. Given the procreation is entirely unnecessary, since it is also a given that the focus of ethics is clearly on the well-being of those who are sentient (to which the FEA would apply), it seems as though procreation has some formal issues for morality.

It isn't just a formal, conceptual problem, though. The structural, material aspects of life make this issue serious and irreversible. I have a hard time wondering why anyone would want to give birth to someone, knowing they will suffer and die, let alone think this act as morally innocuous as the second-order social morality advertises it as.

But what do I know? :-|

1 Do not harm others — Andrew4Handel

There is a great deal of philosophical discussion - some of it quite interesting - about the interpretation and implication of a premise like this in the case of beings that do not exist at the time of the action in question - 'future beings' or 'contingent future beings'. Peter Singer has an extended discussion of it in his book Practical Ethics - the chapter on killing animals.

There are various directions one can take with this, and some of them lead to some bizarre-seeming conclusions - eg in some cases that we should all have as many children as possible.

A way to avoid the reference to currently-nonexistent 'others' is to rephrase the premise as something like 'do not perform an action that you expect to increase the amount of net harm in the world'. Strong anti-natalists like Benatar would insist on removing the word 'net' from that sentence.

The trouble with the rephrase though is that one ends up with what looks like a basic statement of utilitarianism, so it seems one has not made any progress in identifying the consequences of one's ethical premise.

The mean problem I see is that creating someone can lead to them experiencing great harm which can be avoided by not creating them.

So when you create someone you expose them to a risk of great harm that you can be held accountable for unless you were coerced into having a child.

A person cannot claim ignorance of harm a child may experience. So we have this paradoxical irony that it is seen as totally inappropriate to touch a stranger against there wishes. You are not supposed to rub a strangers arm on the bus yet you can expose your child to immense suffering (parents privilege) It is confusing me.

If I create a child I will very likely not be held accountable if they end up paralysed, schizophrenic, bullied and or depressed. Even though I know these things could happen to my child and I know what the worlds like.

You could argue that each parent must take full responsibility for their child and they cannot blame nature or other humans for that child's fate. There is that classic line "Won't somebody think of the children.." which is often used to enforce morality. Essentially morality is justified around the protection children but really in my opinion it is a way of parents passing the buck or just a sentimental ploy

You can't apply morality to that which doesn't exist - that is, the unborn child. You can, however, determine whether such a future child ought to be brought into the world in the first place, based upon whether or not such an act is moral or immoral. Now, I agree with much of your list in the OP, but I think it's important to differentiate one thing, here. When you mention parental responsibility, I would say that parents are only ever morally responsible if they had a child full well realizing that their offspring would suffer, which is honestly the least loving act one could will, and is, in fact, perhaps the most heinous, in my estimation. Yet, I don't think most parents are conscious of this factoring in when they make the decision to have a child, they merely follow a path of reckless, happy-go-lucky sentiment, which results, rather regrettably, in a negligent act. But is such an act of negligence immoral when the parents' intentions were not necessarily to bring a child into the world despite its future suffering? I don't think so. The intentions have to be there, otherwise the enterprise of assigning guilt becomes unfruitful. Regardless, if two parents acknowledge before choosing to have a child that said child will suffer, then that's where I would pipe up. Such is both negligent and immoral, as each parent is passively willing their child to suffer.

This distinction is perhaps what grinds my gears the most, from an intellectual standpoint. More emotionally, though, I just think of all the suffering that I've experienced so far in my life, and I can't even begin to fathom me choosing to bring a child into such a world as this one. I don't wish ill upon upon even my worst enemy, so the thought of actively willing that pain upon an innocent that need not even exist in the first place would be a monumental mistake.

That reply is a statement of the anti-natalist position. I am very familiar with the position and have seen it discussed often enough that I have no need to see a reprise of it. Nor I think do most other regular posters on such a forum.

My point was about what sort of ethical premise one needs to adopt in order to provide grounding for such a position, and that there are problems with Premise 1 as stated. I also indicated in my post alternative premises you could use to ground your position.

The trouble with the rephrase though is that one ends up with what looks like a basic statement of utilitarianism, so it seems one has not made any progress in identifying the consequences of one's ethical premise. — andrewk

A common response to antintalism is that there are opportunities for happiness in the human project. A decision not to create life, is a decision to prevent the opportunities for happiness. Of course, why people have a duty to live a life filled with known burdens and suffering, in order so that they can pursue opportunities of happiness in the first place is never explained.

In other words, there is an implication in pro-natalism that life needs to be carried out for some X reason when the opposite scenario is nothing being around to be deprived, but this reason when held to the light of rigorous justification, fails to find any justification. Whether it be culturally-contexted knowledge, relationships, or accomplishments, why one must pursue these goods in the first place when much of life has structural and contingent suffering elements, does not make much sense. At its best, we are finding ways to fill time and survive efficiently, at its worst we suffer immensely while trying to survive efficiently and find ways to fill time.

We have a great sense that because practice and experience causes us to improve X, this means there is some grand betterment project for ourselves and mankind that must be continued, when this is just a sort of informal law of how we learn. Being better at whatever skill, does not necessarily translate to a justification for having to overcome the burdens of life in the first place. Why should these burdens be endured and life lessons be learned in first place? If the alternative is not even having to need anything to improve or overcome (because non-existence), what of it?

Even worse though is we cannot endure existence on its own bare naked, we must dress it up with more goals so we don't think about it. This all translates to some idea that at our best we are "self-actualizing" and that this is the reason people need to exist. Somehow self-actualizing is important for an individual to be born in the first place. This overcomes any idea that suffering is important not to be suffered in the first place.

I also suspect that there is a psychological dilemma that one does not want to look a gift horse in the mouth. If one is having a relatively good time at the moment of this posting.. why question existence when it is working out at this exact moment? Why would you tempt fate in such a precarious manner? Won't the gods listen in and then knock your blocks down and make you regret questioning their kingdom of existence? Do not look a gift horse in the mouth, you might say lest ye get the wrath of the various fates/gods/luck.

What I am trying to understand is how on e can be morally consistent.

I think morality is hard to justify for a variety of reasons including the lack of a basis for moral truth. But it seems we can't claim things are wrong that we do ourselves in the process of procreation.

So we can't value consent as much as we claim to because we know people can't consent to being born so we need a different morality that doesn't make this all incongruent. My suggestion is that parents are the primary responsibility for creating children in a decent situation (I have explored this in another thread in general discussion)

For example it seems bizarre to complain about problems with the world and then have children in these same situations when you could tackle the problems first.
It is almost like infantilizing parents. I could easily create a child in poverty and with inadequate emotional stability. The challenge is for me to get in a stable situation first before procreating such as having a mortgage and counselling etc.

I think mindless procreation benefits exploiters who need other people to prop up their lifestyle. The rich depending on the cheap or free labour of the poor. So I would even see me having a child as enabling and endorsing the system. (unless I constantly fought the system)

You are absolutely correct.. sadly, there are few people in the world with enough intelligence to see this.