Since Rand speaks my thoughts, but I have no standing when it comes to stating her position on children, I went back to AS for reference. After paying closer attention to John Galt’s speech (who I think was her stand-in), I believe that the birth of a child, when it is to a mother who values children, represents the product that helps her achieve happiness, selfish though that may be. This is completely consistent with her philosophy.
The absence of children (or mothers) from her work mitigates contra, as they say.
And children, by the way, are not products. They are human beings with souls and free will.
It's also completely idiotic.
Are you really saying that a mother has a responsibility toward her children only if she "values children?" That's clearly wrong.
Did Rand really suggest that the purpose of children is to "help her achieve happiness?" It means that my child exists solely to make me happy: his life is meaningless except in relation to my own. What, then, of Rand's statement about men being ends in themselves, etc.? The two concepts cannot both be correct; and since children obviously exist as individual human beings, the idea that they exist to make us happy contradicts reality -- and by her own standards, the claim must be rejected.
Which means, obviously, that there is a different moral imperative at work, when it comes to children.
Rand seems to treat children as somehow peripheral to her philosophy. This is unsurprising: Rand's philosophy completely breaks down when it comes to the subject of children; and I believe Rand was aware of the difficulty it posed, and dishonestly glossed over it.
Consider: Rand went so far as to relegate sex to a mere "exchange and expression of values," rather than an exchange of reproductive material that, when the two parts come into contact, actually creates children. I'm pretty sure she knew where babies came from ... and really didn't bother to address the fact in any coherent way.
Why not? Well, because the moral implications of children are antithetical to her philosophy. It is simply not possible to "be an end in ourselves" when we are also responsible for the proper upbringing of our children. We do not simply take care of them for our own good, after all: we are also responsible for preparing them to lead their own lives. We are a means to our children's ends, just as surely as we are a means to our own ends.