For the first time ever, an enlightened philosophical essay sheds light on our desire to have children, and on the meaning of birth in our time.

Being born and giving birth are no longer givens. Many people, both men and women, are questioning their desire to reproduce. Let alone those whose desire to have a child has been thwarted (by infertility, their biological clock, etc.). While it once was seen as miraculous and spontaneous, giving birth now falls more and more under a logic of control. On the one hand, it is ever more determined, mechanized and medicalized, through reproductive technology, cloning, genetic manipulation. On the other, the fate of the climate casts a shad-ow over any project that looks to-wards the future. Are there too many of us already? Does it make sense to bring another being into a world on its last legs? Rarely examined by philosophy, it has become urgent to explore and define the contours of the act of being born and engaging with the world in order to respond to the challenges of the Anthropocene era. So that birth contributes to saving an inhabitable world.

A text that takes a firm stance against today’s catastrophism and collapsology.