[Mrs. Don-o]

"Maybe people who are only children do 'better' than people who come from a family of ten children...should we try to stop people from having so many kids?"

Maybe people who have extended family around them (aunts, uncles, grandparents) do 'better' than people who have no extended family around...should we tell people not to move away from their extended families?

"Mother" and "father" are essential components of personal and genetic identity, to say the least, and aunts etc. are not.

If I'm not mistaken, what you're getting at is, "Can we welcome children who don't come in optimal conditions?" And the answer is a big, vehement YES!, assuming that you're not deliberately depriving the child of some part of his common human birthright.

That "deliberately" part is important. Children grow up and even thrive under all kinds of sub-optimal conditions; but father-deprivation is one of the most serious deprivations; and to deliberately beget a child into this kind of deprivation is as seriously wrong than to deliberately design a child to be armless, or eyeless, or deaf.

If a child's parents were blind, and they preferred a blind child so they had him blinded by some prenatal maiming, would your attitude be, "So, he was born! Get over it!"?

[Born in a Rage]

Like I said to someone else, the woman is probably not poor, so the kid has a future ahead of him/her. Who is to say that a woman who has had a child by IVF won't get married a couple of years later? And any single woman who has sex and then gets pregnant could be said to 'deliberately' conceive...there's always a chance of getting pregnant, but those people didn't plan it. Also, some people have great conditions in their lives when the woman gets pregnant, but then they divorce a few years later, or their financial situation changes, anything could happen.