Have you always imagined that you would have children when you grow up? Or, in the time of Covid-19, climate change and global catastrophe, do you worry about the world you would bring children into?
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When you were younger, did you play house or pretend to be a parent to a friend or younger family member? Have you always wanted to have children of your own? Or, as you’ve gotten older, have your feelings about having a family changed?
Do you worry about the world that you would be bringing children into? Or do you think that children, and future generations, have the potential to change the world and make it a better place?
In “Why, Despite Everything, You Should Have Kids (if You Want Them),” Tom Whyman explains why some young people might be concerned about having children:
Alfonso Cuarón’s 2006 film “Children of Men” depicts a dystopia of childlessness. For the past 18 years, the human race has been completely infertile, with no new babies born anywhere in the world. As the species faces the possibility of extinction, society is in an advanced state of collapse. In the southern England where the film is set, normal life — franchise coffee shops, the empty grind of office work — carries on. But only by pushing to its margins a state of exceptional suffering, as Britain’s authoritarian government turns what used to be whole seaside towns into hellish refugee camps.
In his book “Capitalist Realism,” the philosopher Mark Fisher claimed that the question “Children of Men” poses is: “How long can a culture persist without the new?” In the movie, there is (barring one fragile exception, which drives the plot) no future for the human race. And this makes it impossible for the characters to fully experience either the present or the past. Without a better future to hope for, there is no ultimate point in any of the characters being alive. What hope they have left is “senseless.” With every step they take, the people in this dying, childless world stand on the threshold of despair.
Dr. Fisher was writing not long after the film had come out. But “Children of Men” has become much cited in our current apocalyptic moment. Its dystopia is one that resonates with how we live now. For with the pandemic has come not only an immense toll of death, sickness and immiseration but also, for many, a loss of joy and possibility — disenchanting our feeling for the future. If we are minimally functioning, we feel grateful for it; who knows if we might ever hope for something more. If you are under the age of 40 or so, this is almost certainly not even the worst global crisis you will face over the course of your life.
So is it any surprise that people don’t seem to want to have kids?
At the start of lockdown, some puckishly predicted that all those couples locked away together would set off a pandemic baby boom. In fact, across the developed world at least, the exact opposite has proved true: In the United States, an estimated 300,000 fewer babies are expected in 2021. And Europe has experienced the most severe slump in its birthrate since the end of the 1970s.
What is driving the Covid “baby bust”? Perhaps some of it can be explained by people simply getting sick of each other, feeling unable to maintain the mystery and romance in their relationship. More profoundly, the pandemic has compounded the material difficulties — low wages, high rents and insecure jobs — faced by the generation that came of age in the wake of the 2008 economic crash. Birthrates have been plummeting in the developed world for some time now. And it isn’t just about good access to contraception.
Increasingly, young people feel not only deeply uncertain and insecure about the state of their own lives, but also so drastically concerned about the state of the world that they almost feel it would be an act of cruelty to bring new life into it.
But, Dr. Whyman argues, even in the time of Covid-19, climate change and catastrophe, “having a baby is an act of radical hope”:
What if hope exists not for any individual human being now living — but rather for the members of future generations, who though powerless to redeem us, might nevertheless be able to overturn the injustices we have been subject to and carve out a better existence for themselves? In this view, hope is not for “us” but it is nevertheless related to us, by means of our connection to other, future human beings. “I” might not be able to hope for anything. But “we” certainly can meaningfully hope for a better world — through the actions we might take, through the world and across generations, together.
This, at any rate, is how I would answer the anti-natalist position. It makes no sense to think of children as tokens of their parents’ carbon consumption, inheriting a taste for steak and air travel. And it makes no sense to think that whole generations might simply be blindly condemned to a certain fate, before they have even been conceived. The reason for this is that human action is not determined in any hard sense: Human beings exist transformatively in relation to their world. Another philosopher, Hannah Arendt, referred to this fact with the concept of “natality” — “the new beginning inherent in birth.”
The world might well be a terrible place, but by having a child, you are introducing something new into it. Of course, this is a sort of gamble with reality: You don’t yet know who your child might be. But if we dare to do it, to bring something new into the world, we might hit upon the right path — and then things really could, conceivably, get better.
Students, read the entire essay, then tell us:
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What is your reaction to Dr. Whyman’s essay? Do you agree with his central argument that people who want to have children should? Why or why not?
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How do issues like climate change, racism, financial insecurity or the pandemic affect your interest in having children someday?
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How do you feel about the statement that having children at this time is an “act of radical hope”? In what ways do you agree and disagree?
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Do you think that having children is a “selfish act,” as the South African philosopher David Benatar has argued? If you agree, explain why. If not, why do you think people have children?
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After reading this essay, has your desire to have children or not changed at all? If so, how? If not, why not?
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Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
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