The Tragedy Of Being Child-Free
And The Illusion Of Happiness
Introduction
During some of the ad breaks in the midst of the India-Sri Lanka bilateral cricket matches, I saw an ad for a non-alcoholic beer.
One of the characters is a child-free woman and she looks sad until an old man validates it as ‘her choice’. This shows the farcical nature of the ad: a feminist needs patriarchal support. So, the jokers who came up with the ad don’t know what they are doing or they don’t care.
Also, in the long term, it’s silly for a capitalist organisation like a beer company to promote being child-free.
If all women choose to be child-free from now on, where will they get their workers from in a few generations? Who will they sell it to? There will be no one left on the planet.
Their Motivation
So, obviously, they are counting on most women not being daft enough to be child-free.
So, what are they counting on? By pretending to be feminist, they hope the good will it garners among women translates to more female customers.
Why do I say they are pretending to be feminist? Because if they really were, they would address the pay disparity of their female employees and feature that in their ad. But that would eat into their capitalist wealth. So, they aren’t going to engage in real feminism.
The Malaise Is Spreading
The day before I saw the ad, I saw a promoted post on X from a woman. The caption of the video said that she was 42, child-free, stress-free and happy. I am 42, with children and stress and I still look and probably am happier, younger and healthier than her.
In the video, she was prancing around like a child. Then, she turned around and saw an actual child and quickly turned back around.
It was a Freudian slip that revealed that it hurt her to look at the child and be reminded of what P. G. Wodehouse calls the saddest thing: ‘what could have been’.
I was strongly tempted to reply strongly, but then thought I should make the reply kind till I realised that no matter how kind my reply, it would only increase her misery. So, I let it go.
Today, I saw another message about being child-free. I don’t remember exactly where. It wasn’t very memorable but it got me thinking that I should probably write this even though I have written another piece about this.
The Motivation For Being Child-Free
The motivation for being child-free seems to be to avoid the work involved in raising children.
This is understandable as it does take a lot of effort to raise children, especially safely and to make them good and quality individuals. But it isn’t acceptable.
Why? Because this can be taken a step further and people can also choose to not work if they have inherited some money that can sustain them for life.
Why should anybody encourage laziness in people? We need people to work and produce goods and services that others need and this includes children to keep the population and the world going.
Already, the global population replacement rate is 2.1, the bare minimum needed to sustain the population.
At this time, we shouldn’t really be encouraging people to be child-free as any further reduction in the replacement rate will lead to a decline in the global population.
If you think this is not a big deal, consider that if everybody decided to have only one child, the population of the world will decline to 4 billion, then to 2 billion, 1 billion, 500 million and so on till extinction.
In fact, countries such as Japan, South Korea and some in Europe are dealing with a population decline and there are fears that they will become depopulated.
China’s population is expected to decline to 500 million by 2100. Is putting ideas of being child-free in people’s minds the responsible thing to do in this situation?
Misgivings About Having Children
One of the reasons people might want to remain child-free is that they think they aren’t equipped to raise kids.
I know because I felt the same way, but after having two kids, I know that it’s not as big a deal as I had feared.
Pets
An insidious way to promote being child-free is to celebrate ‘pet parents’. Because if you are already parents, you don’t need to have kids, right?
But what does it mean for the pets. Most pets aren’t allowed to reproduce. They are sterilised and/or kept away from animals of the other gender. Those that are allowed to have kids find their kids forcibly separated from them to sell or gift them to others because most owners can’t support all the kids.
This is cruelty to animals masquerading as love for them.
Conclusion
Just to make a few bucks, some capitalists are willing to lead humanity on the path of annihilation. Let us do all we can to prevent this.
If you liked this, you might like my books.