Do you think people with a genetic illness or recessive ailments should avoid having children?

Na, never any guarantees.

Supernova wrote:

Na, never any guarantees.

Truth is, probably just about everyone carries something. And regardless of genetics there are a million things that can go wrong.

Nah.

If 2 parents are carriers for the same disease than I do.

Depends on what the disease is. My daughter was born with a genetic form of cancer that affects the eyes (retinoblastoma), and as a result is blind in her left eye from that. We didn't find out until after the fact that my husband was a carrier for it, because his family kept it quiet about the brother he had that died from the same thing at 4 years old, 10 years before he (my husband) was born. --The whole "don't ask, don't tell" generation, and we had to force the information out of my mother in law.

Had we known, we may have thought twice about having kids, but I'm not sorry at all we did have our daughter--sometimes maybe it's better not to know, upfront. It did, however, influence our decision as to having more kids, which we cordially declined on the grounds that we had a 50% chance of the scenario happening again, and we're not gamblers.