Charles E.F. Millard is a former New York City council member and former director of the U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.
I know a little bit about pensions and politics, but I know a lot about having and raising kids. My wife and I have been blessed with nine children, each one a unique, irreplaceable miracle. We’re all too familiar with what many people think.
“Surely you’re joking,” some say when they learn that our house could field a baseball team. “When I grew up, that was much more common,” others add. “You never hear about that anymore.”
What often comes next, though, is a little sadder. “I always wanted a big family,” some will reminisce, “but my spouse wanted to stop at two.” “We thought we couldn’t afford it.” Most common and wistful: “I wish we could have had one or two more.” No one, I can assure you, ever says: “We should’ve stopped at two.”
So many young couples today are avoiding or postponing having children. They think it would interfere with their careers, and they’re right, it probably would. They think parenting is difficult, expensive and chaotic. It is.
Yet each of those considerations misses the point. When we consider what gives our lives meaning, is it our CVs and salaries, tidy homes with complete control over our schedules? Or is it knowing that we have the opportunity to bring life and love into the world?
Some of life’s best moments are bathing a newborn or witnessing a baby’s first words and steps. It’s when he wraps his entire hand around your index finger, or when she says she likes your tie. It’s the private nicknames, the secret hiding places, the impromptu games. Watching her dance ballet. Dealing with adversity together. Holding them as infants, children, teens and adults. Hearing “Thank you” from them when they are grown. There is nothing like it, and it makes all the chaos and sacrifice worthwhile.
But even beyond the personal fulfillment and joy, there is purpose in the responsibility and obligation of parenthood. So much of life is focused on the conflicting goals of self and meaning. If I seek the latter in so-called self-actualization, whatever that means, I’ll never find it. Having children gives us the duty — and gift — of caring for others. Knowing that you are providing love, values and lessons to someone who will carry them on to another generation means your life has a purpose beyond yourself.
And if that doesn’t move you, perhaps saving humanity will. Alongside the “it’s too hard” worries, there is an increasingly popular concern that bringing children into the world is irresponsible because they will pollute the planet. A Lund University research team concluded that having one fewer child — and all that child’s never-born progeny — is among the best ways to reduce your carbon footprint. It would save 58.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, much more than, say, going without an automobile (2.4 tons per year). What a depressing way to value human life.
That leads nevertheless to the other fear-based leg of anti-natalism. If the world is such a terrible place, isn’t it more humane not to bring more children into it? South African philosopher David Benatar advocates not having kids as a way to reduce suffering. “The quality of even the best lives is very bad — and considerably worse than most people recognize it to be,” he presumes in his 2006 book “Better Never to Have Been.” “Although it is obviously too late to prevent our own existence, it is not too late to prevent the existence of future possible people.”
But isn’t the beautiful spousal act of conceiving a child an act of love, and isn’t giving that child life an act of hope? Aren’t the years spent raising that child filled with quotidian acts of affection? Each of these is a demonstrable way that we can add to the good in the world and fight against the terribleness and fear of today. As Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote in “The Brothers Karamazov,” the burden of freedom — including the suffering it can generate — is precisely what allows us to grow and experience genuine love.
If you cherish and have hope for humanity, consider that the consequences of a shrinking global population are enormous and terrifying. Economic growth would stagnate and poverty would spike. Innovation would fall short of human potential as fewer brilliant people are born. The “quality” of life that Benatar laments would worsen.
This demographic ice age may be coming. Capital Group estimates that we are passing a “point of no return,” and that the global population may peak and then inexorably shrink within the next 25 years. No developed nation will be spared from that decline. So if you are worried that having children would be bad for the world, think about how much worse it would be if you don’t.
I can guarantee one thing: If you do, you won’t regret it.
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