5 reasons (not) to have children
Lately I caught myself thinking about having a child. When I asked myself why, and tried to answer consciously, I had to admit that it’s because I’ve lost purpose in life.
I don’t know what to do, I have no goal, no mission and uncertainty of the world is really getting to me lately.
And you know what? I think that is a terrible reason to have a child.
When I look around at my peers who decide to have a kid, I keep wondering (and directly asking some of them) what is the reason for that, their answers seem blurry (except accidents 🙈).
“It’s time.”; “I want to raise a human of my own.”; “I always wanted a child.”; “I want a family.”; “I want someone to love.”
All of them are… selfish. And I’m not judging, I do a lot of selfish thing all the time. My wanting to have a child came from the same reasons. I just share the observations.
On the other hand, there are many reasons not to have kids, and they are more rational. Here, the expected 5:
- Climate change
- Your child won’t be as amazing and perfect as you with it was
- You will cause the kid a lot of trauma no matter how hard you try
- You can have all this money for leisure and doing fun things
- You can spend this time and energy on developing yourself and/or saving the world
So here it is. Truth is revealed, but I know that this changes nothing. Our biological urges to procreate and pass our genes to other generations are stronger then any argument ever made. Because body&emotions > mind.
I am also very well aware that it is not my place to tell anyone whether they should have kids or not, I just want some of you to consider it deeply and then make a decision instead of going all in, because “that’s the way it is”.
Photo from Unsplash — author Jonathan Borba
