Creating people by definition cannot be for those who are created since no one asked, wanted, needed or preferred to exist prior to existence. Those who do not exist have no interests, therefore creating people is necessarily not for them and in order to promote their interests, but necessarily for the promotion of the interests of others, usually the creators, which are usually the parents. And to create someone in order to promote the interests of others is to treat children as means to the ends of others, which according to many ethical views is morally wrong.
The decision to procreate is necessarily treating people as means to the ends of others because to be created can never be someone’s goal prior to existence. Those who do not exist have no goals, including existing. It is impossible to create someone as an end in itself since no one has a purpose to be created before it happened at the hands of others. The creation of someone is necessarily the goal of others who already exist.
People can try not to regard that someone as a means once they already exist, but this does not eliminate the circumstances of the creation of that someone as a means. The very existence of that someone is still an outgrowth of an action that treated that person as a means to the ends of others. They are still necessarily created as a means to the ends of others. And it doesn’t change even if these ends are to raise someone as an end in itself and not as a means. Because this is still the ends of the parents and the child is still a means to fulfill it. To grow as an end and not as a means was never the end of the one who was created, therefore even if the parents succeed in this task, they will not change the circumstances of their child’s creation.
Since before being created no one has desires, it is necessarily the desire of the creators that motivated the creation. It is their desire for a child that created someone, and not the desire of that someone to exist before they were created. Being parents was the end of people who decided to create someone and that someone they created is their means to achieve this end.
People can develop their own ends in the course of life, but as long as the reason for their creation is not because they asked, wanted or because they had some end to fulfill in existence, but rather their creators had some end to fulfill in existence and therefore they were created, they were still created as a means to the ends of others.
People can lead lives in which they act in order to fulfill ends that they seemingly chose for themselves, but in doing so they are, as it were, making their lives their own ends, not their creation their own end. That will forever remain their creators’.
People are never created as end in themselves since being created is never the end or the will or the interest of those who are created before being created. The creation of people is always the decision of others and the ends of others, never the decision of the created and because it was their end. It is impossible to create someone other than as a means to the ends of others.