“The short of it is, I don’t want children.”
At 29 years old, this week’s poster-child for the childless has made sure she won’t have offspring. Proactively made sure. Which the Swedish national state broadcaster thought remarkable enough to make news out of.
Truth of the matter is that this isn’t the first time childlessness, deliberate or not, has made the news. And since I am of like mind, it grates at me a little. Doesn’t feel newsworthy at all, to be frank. But newsdesks around the country obviously disagree with me.
But what is so controversial about refusing to have children? In my mind, children are a burden, a draconian responsibility that you’ll never shed, an unmitigated drain on resources; financial and temporal both, they warp your life into something utterly unrecognizable, and from working with children I can tell you that it takes uncommon – nigh rare – effort not to let them turn into absolute shits and monsters.
And yet, some people become so utterly upset with the very notion that not everyone commits to produce spawn…
The upset seems to come from three distinct camps. The religious, the nationalist, and the unimaginative. Two of which are easy to dismiss, and one which is sad in itself.
The zealots become distraught because it is God’s mandate, is it not, to go forth and multiply. Like locusts. Like a disease. To spread across the face of the world until there’s no recourse left but to initiate Armageddon. And may we all condemn the heathens who would oppose God’s plan of unsustainable growth and dominion. By slim contrast, the economists worry that dropping fertility rates among the population won’t sustain a growing tax-generating demographic which they can ply for their own unsustainable economic investment interests. So not only are the childless heathens, but dangerous anarchists who stand in the way of Progress.
And then there’re the people who levy pity upon the deliberately childless. The unimaginative. Those who cannot imagine other goals in life than to harbour a classical family unit under one roof. Who cannot conceive of a different purpose to be found than to pour your heart and soul and wallet into a new generation of unimaginative little creatures, who can pass on their unimaginative little lives for another generation. “Oh, pity you, children are such a joy” as if there aren’t others. “Oh, pity you, you’ll regret your choices when you’re old and alone” as if the elderly need be so interminably dull that only their obligated offspring would deign to spend time with them.
And of course, there’s the fourth camp, which I must mention but who are by no means the target of this column’s ire; the unintentionally childless. Those who try, sometimes desperately, to conceive children, but for a myriad of reasons haven’t succeeded. They, too, may direct ire to us who chose a different path, but for neither zealotry, nationalism, or lack of imagination. And though they have my sympathy (for I am aware of how needling unfulfilled aspirations can be), I will make it perfectly clear that if neither God, the Crown, or Old Age can inspire me to sow my seeds, then neither shall guilt.
Birth rates are nearly down the whole world over. Some countries, like South Korea, Hong Kong, and Puerto Rico even sport fewer than one birth per woman in 2020. In fact, all the western world produce less than two children per woman, which equates to a population decrease (if it weren’t for immigration). Only offset by the (comparatively) massive population production in (primarily) Sub-Saharan Africa with its collective 4.7 births per womb. A rate which, also, by the way, is sinking.
And yet, the world’s population balloons.
So what?
For sustainability purposes, the human population of the world must decrease. Rapidly and drastically. Because every ill upon this planet stems from overconsumption. And every single consumption issue can be solved by fewer individuals to consume. Simple, plain, arithmetic. And although refusing to have children of your own will not decrease the population, at least it won’t put more fuel on the fire either. And although population control laws are both necessary in the long run and almost invariably authoritarian, most of the world have none yet. So far, by and large, having children is still a personal choice. By all means, exercise that choice.
But don’t, in your petty mind, pressure others to follow you up the stream to spawn. It only serves to expose you as either zealot, nationalist, or dullard. Not everyone wishes to follow a tyrant’s dogma, add churning cogs to a monstrous machine, or embolden our own importance by producing lifeforms who cannot survive without us. Some of us chose differently. And if you can’t respect that others may chose differently than you, then at least be so kind as to fuck off.
/Sebastian Lindberg 28/3-2023
WastedWords 