“I’m 42. Child-free. It’s the weekend. No babysitter needed. Can I get a cheers?” The X post included a photo of a woman holding up an adult beverage.
Angela Belcamino seems to be a parody account, but as someone remarked, it’s not clear whether she’s trying to aggravate the left or the right, despite 260,000 followers.
No matter, I responded with my own current life status: “I’m 56. Newly child-free because our kids grew up. It’s the weekend. Just attended my cousin’s wedding with my sweet husband, whom I met at 18. We made it through the hard part and he’s my best friend. God, our family, friends and pets are our joy. Can I get a cheers?”
I wouldn’t call it viral, but my reply began getting a fair share of responses and reposts. Something about it seemed to resonate.
This all might seem a little silly, but underlying both posts, and the vigorous responses, lurks something deadly serious: the myth that living childfree is the best life possible. This sad trend is gaining traction in our society and beyond but it’s built on the false premise that a selfish life is the optimal life.
I need to qualify this how Trent Horn did in a recent podcast. There are many couples who want to have children and can’t, for whatever reason, and singles eager to have a spouse and children.
This column isn’t a degradation of those very real sufferings.
Rather, it’s about a movement taking hold pertaining to planned childlessness; a decision of married couples who are financially set to, rather than lovingly welcome children, use their resources on such things as traveling and other self-aggrandizing pleasures.
The myth is that life with children spoils joy. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Is life with children easy? Is it without suffering? Is it bliss every day? Of course not. It’s real work—and real fulfillment like nothing else can give. It is an investment in people, in the future, in love.
By scaring our younger generations into thinking life with children means misery, we’ve created a situation in which we are no longer replacing ourselves, leading us toward certain economic disaster. It’s a real problem in western civilization and will bite us sooner than we realize.
One could say that Climate Change is real, but it’s a Climate Change of Anti-Population, not the threat of a thinning ozone layer, that will destroy us. Horn began his podcast mentioning how Taylor Swift had signed her presidential endorsement as, “Childless Cat Lady,” borrowing from a 2021 statement from J.D. Vance referencing the “childless cat ladies” who are miserable and want everyone else to be miserable too.
Vance received quick, harsh backlash, and Swift seemed to be referencing that couple-years-old statement. But I truly hope she does find the guy, and someday, herself cuddling their child as the babe touches her cheek: “Mama!”
Indeed, true joy comes from expending our lives for others, and the rewards are golden.
[For the sake of having a repository for my newspaper columns and articles, I reprint them here, with permission, a week after their run date. The preceding ran in The Forum newspaper on Oct. 6, 2024.]
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