Ezra Klein is not necessarily the sharpest knife in the drawer or the greatest writer in the world, but he did have a fascinating admission about children in a piece he did for the New York Times. This will give you the gist of it: To his credit, I suppose, since the piece is mainly filled with dubious global warming dreck (It’s supppperrrrr scary, but maybe not as bad you think, you guys!), Klein does at least point out that things have always been “bad” in one way or another:
Three quick things I'd say: first, the birth control pill moved sex from procreation to recreation for many people, and we were so busy pursuing stuff we wanted that having kids just wasn't a priority for many of my friends. Second, when I was growing up, the education system really drummed in the message: "the world is going to starve itself to death if we don't stop breeding so prolifically, and I sort of thought we were supposed to be a good global citizen by not having a (big) family- oops. Finally, people who believe that Greta Thunberg is some prophet should probably not be passing on their genes anyways, so that's not a bad thing, and I hope that true believers of the NYT (or WaPo, or MSNBC, or The View) choose not to bring kids into a world that they have made worse by blaming white skinned people for everything bad...
The one regret I have in my seventh decade of life is that I did not have more children. Children are our biggest worry, especially as they are growing up, but a profound source of joy, especially as they grow to maturity and take their place in the world.
Three quick things I'd say: first, the birth control pill moved sex from procreation to recreation for many people, and we were so busy pursuing stuff we wanted that having kids just wasn't a priority for many of my friends. Second, when I was growing up, the education system really drummed in the message: "the world is going to starve itself to death if we don't stop breeding so prolifically, and I sort of thought we were supposed to be a good global citizen by not having a (big) family- oops. Finally, people who believe that Greta Thunberg is some prophet should probably not be passing on their genes anyways, so that's not a bad thing, and I hope that true believers of the NYT (or WaPo, or MSNBC, or The View) choose not to bring kids into a world that they have made worse by blaming white skinned people for everything bad...
The one regret I have in my seventh decade of life is that I did not have more children. Children are our biggest worry, especially as they are growing up, but a profound source of joy, especially as they grow to maturity and take their place in the world.