I think people should have kids, society and humanity cannot survive without children and children can be a gift. However, if you're going to be a bad parent and don't see their lives as your responsibility, not just for their own sake but for the sake of society... don't have kids. But if you do, and you -allow- your kid to be truant or become a criminal, etc., you should be punished and held personally liable.
Do you think people set out to be bad parents? And do you think that they can be punished into being good parents? It seems pretty tough to me.
And yes, the idea of having children in order to feed them into the same meat-grinder of education and employment that I went through in order to perpetuate some cycle for reasons unfathomable to me is about the least convincing reason to do so. I used to think I was an outlier, but as fertility rates fall near continuously, I'm beginning to suspect that I was just early in realizing it.
