Why do people living under awful regimes, such as Eastern Europe under communism or Mugabe's Zimbabwe, have

children....knowing they will grow up in that same regime? Isn't that cruelty?

they don't go to school so they DON'T know that.

Social and economic pressures. Large families are highly valued and fertility is important. Though the infant mortality rate dropped years ago, the birth rate is high because Africans believe that two or three of their children will die. It is also about lack of education and poverty. The poorest families have the largest number of kids. The impact of tribal beliefs and religion is strong. The desire to mate and reproduce is quite strong in a 'natural setting'. Our desire is curtailed by the Western economic structure, cost of living, desire for education, job demands and social standards. People who make more have fewer kids most of the time, except it works opposite in China.

For Africans, they may send the kids to work on the farm and need the labor. They want the economic security of having six incomes coming in when older and want a family to protect them. Religion may demand a high birth rate. If there is no monogamy and women have a low status, they tend to have high birth rates. Constricting women to the home has this effect, as does that type of poverty, social structure and illiteracy. The kids may also go and work in sweatshops, textile factories, recycling, begging and processing food. This brings in extra-needed money.

When it is the only life you know, there is nothing to compare to. How is having children cruelty? There are far worse things for children than living under communism. Two parents who love them unconditionally, but happen to live under communist rule is far less cruel than abusive or neglectful parents who live in a democratic society.

Most people want kids.

You are born where you're born, and that's the life you know.

But the main reason is hope.

It's universal to hope one's children will have a good life, or at least a better life than one has.

Besides, it's not as though people in such places never know any pleasure or joy in their lives.

By your thinking, not one of us would be here now, the entire species would have died out.

Probably the real reason is that people want kids.

Most do.

It's part of what we are to want off-spring.

People don't sit around asking whether it's wise to have kids -- hardly anyone does.

Besides, how could things get better ever if no one had any kids -- some of whom will be the ones to make things better.

If you look at it in the long run, Mugabe won't be around forever. A baby born today will long outlast him.