From the Editor: Where Are the Children?

Where Are the Children?

By Janice Lane Palko

“The soul is healed by being with children.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky

Happy Mother’s Day! From the time I was little, I always knew I wanted to be a mom, and happily that dream came true. I had twins and then a single birth. Throughout time, motherhood has been revered as a noble calling in life. Today, that is not so. There is a movement afoot for people to refrain from having children. In fact, there are entities such as the group Stop Having Kids that promotes a child-free existence and even takes out billboards urging people not to procreate.

If you are dead set against having children, that is your prerogative, and I would never browbeat anyone into having children. However, I believe most women would be good mothers and would love being a mom. This anti-children movement seems to me to be nothing more than a trend trying to shape society away from a natural inclination to have children.

Urging people to stop having children poses large and small problems. A lack of children is detrimental to society. I’m no fan of Russia, but I recently read an article on how the Russian population has declined since the Communism takeover, although in recent years their government has incentivized people to reproduce. The article explained how dire a dearth of children is for their military and national security. In previous wars, there were many more young men to defend their nation; now that is no longer the case. And if this trend continues here, we will have fewer young people to defend us too.

Innovation and enterprise stalls when you have an older population. In Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling book Outliers, he examines successful people and notes that most great accomplishments come from young people because they have more energy and are more willing to take risk.

A December 2021 Fortune magazine article highlights this conundrum. ”The U.S. birth rate declined by 4% in 2020, but fertility rates have been at a record low since before the pandemic, and a growing number of adults have recently expressed they don’t expect to ever have children.”

Innovators like Elon Musk have warned that the world’s declining birth rate will create a disastrous outcome, and urges “So many people, including smart people, think that there are too many people in the world and think that the population is growing out of control. It’s completely the opposite. Please look at the numbers—if people don’t have more children, civilization is going to crumble, mark my words.”

Fewer people in the country will collapse our Social Security system as we will have fewer workers to support our retirees. And we are already seeing a shortage of workers.

Those urging people to refrain from having children site many reasons from the tired old canard—that it’s cruel to bring children in such a messed-up world. When hasn’t the world been messed up? They also say that the world is already overpopulated. However, I’ve read environmental reports that the entire earth’s population could fit into the state of Texas with each person getting a 33’ x 33’ plot of land. Texas is a tiny speck on the globe.

One could debate the pros and cons of having children for hours, but there is one thing you cannot debate.

I once read a great article about the difference between fun and happiness. Most moms, would say that they are not having fun when they are changing diapers, walking the floors with a teething toddler, or dealing with a child taking a fit. But most would say they are happy. Fun is fleeting; happiness is something deeper and requires sacrifice. Many people site being selfish as a reason to not have children. But being selfish is not something forever baked into your character. You can change and become more giving. In fact, one of the best things about being a mom is not only forming and shaping the future through your children, but also that they, in turn, help you to mature, think less of yourself and make you a better person.

What was one of the most heartbreaking results of the COVID-19 lockdowns? For many, it was being alone in your old age in a nursing home and not having relatives visit. Think long and hard before eschewing children. I’ve been to several nursing homes in my life, and when you’re old, that career you’re so concerned about? No one cares that you were the CEO when you’re in a home. That Gucci bag you’d rather have than a kid? When you’re 90, you’ll have nowhere to show it off.

What matters in life is who you’ve love and who has loved you. If you’re only loving yourself, that’s all you’ll have at the end of your life aside from loneliness. n

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