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In her 20s, van der Lugt looked around her peer group and saw people becoming parents without what appeared to be much consideration, sometimes, “seemingly, just for fun.”
在她二十多岁的时候，范德卢格特环顾她的同龄人，看到人们在没有经过太多考虑的情况下就成为了父母，有时，“看起来，只是为了好玩。”
One day, at a restaurant in Rotterdam, a friend she calls Sylvia tells her, “I actually believe having children is immoral.
有一天，在鹿特丹的一家餐馆，一个叫西尔维亚的朋友告诉她，“我实际上认为生孩子是不道德的。”
Sylvia reasons that because “life always contains some suffering”—ordinary or severe mental or physical illness, emotional pain, and all sorts of other potential harms—bringing a child into the world inevitably adds to that misery.
西尔维娅推断，由于“生活总是包含一些痛苦”——普通或严重的精神或身体疾病、情感痛苦以及各种其他潜在的伤害——把一个孩子带到这个世界上不可避免地会增加这种痛苦。
Van der Lugt is shocked, and unconvinced by Sylvia’s argument.
范德卢格特感到震惊，并且对西尔维娅的论点不服气。
The two begin an ongoing debate about the morality of childbearing, which is eventually joined by a third friend.
这两人开始了一场关于生育道德的持续辩论，最终第三位朋友也加入了进来。
These discussions spur van der Lugt to reexamine her long-held assumptions, a process that forms the basis of the book.
这些讨论促使范德卢格特重新审视她长期以来的假设，这一过程构成了这本书的基础。
Van der Lugt draws on a wide and eclectic mix of sources as she builds her arguments.
范德卢格特在构建她的论点时借鉴了广泛而折中的资料来源。
Among them: Lord Byron’s Cain: A Mystery, for its explicit connection of “the problem of suffering and evil” to procreation, and Hanya Yanagihara’s novel A Little Life, in which one character asserts that being a friend is enough to make a meaningful existence.
其中包括：拜伦勋爵的《该隐：一个谜》，因其明确将“苦难与邪恶的问题”与生育联系起来；以及柳原汉雅的小说《渺小一生》，其中一个角色断言，成为朋友就足以使人生有意义。
Insights from popular media such as The West Wing and The Hunger Games are put in conversation with the work of philosophers including Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Michael Sandel, and the early ecologist Peter Wessel Zapffe.
来自《白宫白宫》和《饥饿游戏》等大众媒体的见解与哲学家的作品进行了对话，这些哲学家包括亚瑟·叔本华、弗里德里希·尼采、迈克尔·桑德尔和早期生态学家彼得·韦塞尔·扎菲。
She begins by examining the ideas of several antinatalist philosophers.
她首先研究了几位反生育主义哲学家的观点。
Antinatalists come in many stripes, ranging from those who believe that humans threaten the well-being of nonhuman animals and the environment to some who are simply misanthropic; the most worthwhile of these arguments, van der Lugt believes, are the ones that are grounded in concern for the welfare of fellow people.
反生育主义者有很多种，从认为人类威胁到非人类动物和环境福祉的人，到一些纯粹厌恶人类的人；范德卢格特认为，其中最有价值的论点是那些基于对同胞福祉的关注的论点。
She engages extensively with the controversial South African philosopher David Benatar, who wrote in his 2006 book, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence, that “so long as a life contains even the smallest quantity of bad, coming into existence is a harm.
她大量地与有争议的南非哲学家大卫·贝纳塔接触，他在2006年出版的《最好从未出生过：存在的危害》一书中写道：“只要生命包含哪怕最少量的坏，存在就是一种伤害。”
” This idea carries with it, in Benatar’s view, an obligation not to procreate; the duty to avoid harm far outweighs the possibility of bestowing a benefit, especially on someone whose consent cannot be obtained. (The logical conclusion of this view is eventual human extinction.)
在贝纳塔尔看来，这种想法伴随着一种不生育的义务；避免伤害的责任远远超过了授予利益的可能性，尤其是对于那些无法获得其同意的人。（这种观点的逻辑结论是人类最终会灭绝。）
Benatar dismisses the notion of life being good and worth living as the product of the human tendency to hold more tightly to our positive experiences than negative or painful ones.
贝纳塔尔认为，生命是美好的、值得活下去的这一观念，是人类倾向于更紧密地抓住积极体验而不是消极或痛苦体验的产物，他对此予以否定。
But surely, as van der Lugt counters, “we are an authority on this, the value of our own lives?
但正如范德卢格特反驳的那样，“我们肯定是这方面的权威，我们自己生命的价值？”
” Still, the possibility of suffering does make any act of procreation a gamble with someone else’s life, irrespective of how valuable, good, or even sacred we deem our own lives, or human life in general.
尽管如此，痛苦的可能性确实使任何生育行为成为对他人生命的赌博，无论我们认为自己的生命或人类的生命总体上有多么宝贵、美好甚至神圣。
So how do we apply this bleak calculus to our individual choices?
那么，我们如何将这种寡淡的计量应用于我们的个人选择呢？
One’s intuitive response might be “to distinguish mere possibility from probability.
一个人的直觉反应可能是“区分纯粹的可能性和概率”。
” Most people, van der Lugt continues, likely believe, at least in the abstract, that we shouldn’t create people “who will most probably lead miserable lives,” such as a child with a hereditary disease that will cause them immense physical pain and an early death.
范德卢格特继续说道，大多数人可能至少在理论上认为，我们不应该创造出“极有可能过上悲惨生活”的人，比如一个患有遗传性疾病的孩子，这种疾病会给他们带来巨大的身体痛苦和过早的死亡。
But they probably wouldn’t argue that we “have a duty to avoid creating people who might just possibly lead miserable lives.”
但是他们大概不会争辩说，我们“有责任避免创造出可能会过上悲惨生活的人”。
She is careful to note that making such a judgment on behalf of others is a dicey prospect, one reason she is unconvinced by some people’s assertion that life is, on net, bad.
她谨慎地指出，代表他人做出这样的判断是一个冒险的前景，这也是她对一些人断言生活净是糟糕的说法不以为然的原因之一。
