Spare me a moment, friends, take off some time And think about felines parading around wine; The boxes left standing in lieu of some toys, That pitter-patter on tile floor not from girls or boys. But spare a good feeling I know you can give For the ones who are alone, yes, but have much to give . . .
Thank you, thank you, I’ll be picking up my Pulitzer for poetry next week. Truly, a national treasure am I. The point of this bit of doggerel remains, though: I don’t think we should hate on the childless.
What? Have I lost my mind? Am I, a “trad,”1 going soft? Isn’t having 11 children the highest duty any man or woman can have?
Actually . . . no. It is to love God with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to love our neighbors as ourselves (Luke 10:25-28).
Another interesting scriptural idea comes from St. Paul, who flat-out says something pretty wild. Here it is:
But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife. There is difference also between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit: but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband.
Do you see where I’m going with this? No? Okay, let’s move on.
How can I go out and fight when theres a war inside my home? The world outside of here can wait, I’ve got battles of my own. How am I to hit the street when lives around me are at stake? Where is the time to go and march? There are things I cannot forsake. Easy for you to call me weak, a coward afraid to lose it all; To that, I say, you’re halfway right: too many suffer if I fall.
Being fruitful and multiplying isn’t in the cards for everyone. And that’s okay; whether it is due to choice on other circumstances beyond someone’s control, we’re not all cut out for identical lives.
I am most definitely a natalist. I don’t think people are having enough children. Birthrates across the West, and in many countries in the East as well, are fatally low. This is a problem with many causes. I get it. But I don’t think mocking the childless, or excluding them, is a good idea or a smart one.
First, a distinction: being childless is not the same as being anti-child or anti-natal. I have no love for those who actively hate children or actively encourage those who otherwise would reproduce not to.2
Changing gears, think about the battles going on in life today. Many are cultural, political, spiritual, philosophical. Others, regrettably, are physical, though this can mean just physically occupying space rather that engaging in violent action, which is something I do not condone. What is the one thing engaging in any of these battles requires?
Time.
Time is the one thing there is never enough of and can never be artificially increased, saved but never created.
Time is the limiting factor. Time is the enemy. And every single parent knows this. Even people without children are acutely aware of the constant human struggle with time. Now, imagine multiplying the degree of difficulty by a few dozen ticks and you’ll start to see what I’m getting at.
Most parents simply do not have the time to be out there doing stuff. As lofty as our ambition, if we’re going to be good parents, and good spouses too, much if not most of our time will be spent in the quotidian pursuits that keep a house hold running. Leisure time is in short supply, forget time for activism.
Most “great” men and women aren’t family men or women. Some may have families—Elon Musk, right?—but how often do they see their children? How much time do they spend with their progeny versus the world?3
Given all of this, I think it’s a better idea to embrace our childless fellows as valuable members of any movement or scene. This probably makes me a minority in my particular sphere (awesome people), but oh well. “Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”4
Another factor that holds people with families back is fear of losing it all. When you have flesh-and-blood dependents, failure—or worse—means that they don’t eat. When you are the only one you have to care for, it’s easier to be risky and more cavalier about things. When there are defenseless others who will be affected, the whole equation changes dramatically.
I can already hear the criticisms, the most prominent one being that the childless have no stake in the future, and are therefore only short-term oriented and don’t care about their legacy, or the future of other people’s children and grandchildren, and so on, down the line. I think there is some truth to this, but it is hardly a general case.
First, this assumes that everybody without kids is some sort of hedonist. This is, observably, false.
Second, this assumes that only those with children can have a vision of the future. History does not entirely support this. Julius Caesar had no biological children who lived past prepubescence. Nikolai Tesla had no children. Neither did George Washington, Beethoven, Sir Isaac Newton, Michelangelo, Florence Nightingale, or Queen Elizabeth I, among others. Do these sound like people who did not care about the future?
Another point, slightly tangential, is that not all parents are good parents who take the long view and are serious about legacy building. This is so obvious I really don’t have to say it, but it also doesn’t mean that most parents aren’t concerned about the future. This is getting circular, but my point is that I don’t think it’s quite as pat “No kids = no concern about the future.”
Those without children have vital roles to play. They’re the ones that can really get out into the world, organize, and take more calculated risks—and absorb the consequences—than those with families. It makes no sense to drive them away merely because they don’t have kids. Some childless people devote themselves to God, become nuns or monks or priests5 or higher up in the hierarchy, or to some other form of service. And others devote their time to creation. If someone is literally on your side, I don’t see any practical utility in alienating them for not having children.
That said, it is probably a good thing that some people without children do not have children. Some people just have a revulsion towards children or the idea of being a parent, and it makes one wonder what kind of lives their children would have. Perhaps some of these individuals will learn to love their offspring, but you never know. The world, in fact, might be better off due to some people like this not having reproduced at all (Seth Rogen pictures purely coincidental).
All of this brings us to the elephant in the room: the fact that, as it is said, many childless people direct their parental instincts towards things, usually political, that make the world worse. Childless women are often blamed for making the government their spouse and demanding more and more services. Childless men are often blamed for not living up to their duties. And so on. As with the “no children, no stake in the future” axiom, I don’t think that this is as cut and dry as we’re led to believe on the Internet, but there is still something to it. Women and men channel this instinct in different ways, whether it’s destructive social causes or self-destructive personal behavior. Our job is to help channel it into good causes. We can do this by not driving them into the arms of those who would channel these instincts into these destructive pursuits.
- Alexander
I honestly don’t know how this post will be received, but it’s been something on my mind for a while. I do hope that you found it, at the very least, thought-provoking. If you enjoyed this, you might like reading my fiction, which you can find here. You can also support the site by throwing a few drachmas into the tip jar over at Buy Me A Coffee. Thank you for reading and God bless.
I’m not a trad.
This could be due to ideological means or more chemical/physical ones—what is encouraging young kids to transition but a way to ensure that they never reproduce?
Yes, exceptions exist. Blah blah. You can be pedantic in the comments.
Frank Zappa. Talk about a guy who ignored his children . . .
In traditions where priests cannot wed.
An important reminder, Alex. Yes, having children and bringing them up in the faith is the most important contribution most of us can make. But, the Death Cult specializes in turning our virtues into vices. How often have we heard an otherwise faithful, based family man say, "I'd stand up to the DIE pogrom at work, but I've got mouths to feed," or "I know colleges are woke, but I want my kid to land a good job," or "I know it's untested and the drug peddlers can't be sued, but getting fired is a bigger risk""?
The current regime operates by holding everything we're attached to hostage. People who, for whatever reason, remain single and childless, have much less to lose.
You strike a good balance here. I grew up in an Evangelical Church that stressed marriage as the only life pleasing to God, and as a result, many of my friends who, for whatever the reason, have not gotten married, are essentially just waiting around until they meet someone they marry. It makes me sad, not only to see them sad that they are not married, but also because they are wasting a great opportunity. "Don't waste your singleness", I say. You can do so much good in the world as a single person. I realized this partly due to my conversion to Catholicism, where instead of the preoccupation being marriage, your vocation could be anyone of several paths of celibacy. Feel called to be a professor and mentor students? You could do that very well as a single person. Feel called to be specially devoted to God? perhaps a religious vocation. It was like a breath of fresh after my Protestant experience. Now that I am married and with a child, I realize just how much that cuts in to my ability to volunteer at church, mentor people, and build community, because my family comes first.
A lot of times the pro-natalist position is straw manned as a believe that child-rearing is mandatory, but this is not true. Even Matt Walsh (who I did not expect to have this nuanced of an opinion, but he is Catholic, so it makes sense) said that this is false, there are many other vocations people can be called to and there are many ways to be a "father" or a "mother" that do not involve having biological kids.