If somebody chooses to take these kinds of risks anyway, it's poor judgment. The chances of becoming wiser can actually decrease as a result of taking such risks. If you think about it. Perhaps if we knew all the risks in advance, none of us would decide to have children. We can't know all the risks, but we do know that children are wonderful and essential if our world is to endure.
Parents bear a great burden of responsibility in assessing risks.
At the same time, children need to learn healthy ways of meeting life's risks. Certainly, illness has become less of a threat to our children, but the twentieth century has also brought distressing changes to families and communities. These changes are associated with new threats from guns, from drugs, and from a decline of neighborliness. And political upheavals around the world have been horrible. The world may be a more dangerous place than even in some important ways.