Childless Cat Ladies

Can I tell you something?

My wife and I don’t have children. I could claim that’s because we met when I was 29 and she was 31, and we were both busy with careers so we didn’t get around to talking about a family, let alone have one, until it was too late. Or that we were concerned about overpopulation of the planet. Or worried that we would be bringing people into an increasingly hostile and dangerous world with a bleak future. Or all of the above. But that wouldn’t be entirely true. The truth is we don’t have children because we didn’t want any. And that would be more due to my strong feelings on the subject than Lori’s, so even though we are in complete agreement our lives were better spent playing the roles of aunt and uncle, I’ll speak for myself in this essay.

It's not that I don’t like children – they of course are little bundles of pride and joy – I just don’t want them around. I didn’t like kids even when I was one, so I was aware at a very young age I was going to remain childless.

For most people that’s hard to comprehend, and to some makes me guilty of solipsism and religious apostasy, but I assure you that’s not the case. I haven’t exactly followed God’s plan, especially in terms of the procreation thing, but I’m not selfish or greedy. I just prefer peace and quiet to Sturm und Drang, cleanliness to a complete mess, and adult company where a conversation can be conducted without ever having to say, ‘because I said so’ or ‘ask your mother’. Also, I’d rather not change a loaded diaper or step on Lego pieces in my bare feet.

But that’s not what I wanted to tell you.

Lest you think I am a Godless cold-hearted asshole and a total outlier living in a country full of avid offspring producers, consider that today nearly half of American adults under 50 say it’s unlikely they’ll ever have children.

Not all of them are childless by choice of course, and my heart goes out to them, and those in their 40s may rightly be concerned about childbirth at an advanced age because of health risks – more likely they don’t want people to think the grandparents are attending PTA meetings – but the majority of childless couples and singles today are that way on purpose. Which begs the question why and it’s my job to answer.

Some people point to the fact we’re living in an era of declining religiosity and rising individualism when young adults aren’t certain that having children is good and might even make the world worse. Certainly, that may be a contributing factor, but it can’t be the only answer, especially since I just cited ‘some people’ as my source.

Other people, an even less credible source than some, claim the high cost of raising a child to adulthood and beyond is the reason they are choosing to forego the blessed event and that surely must be the case with many people.

Whether you are one of the ‘some’ or the ‘other’ or the ‘many’, the cost associated with childrearing is totally verifiable and alarmingly high, and here I cite an actual source, the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

I suppose raising a family could be likened to growing a small crop of acorn squash but setting aside the baffling decision to put the U.S.D.A. in charge of studying and tracking the cost of childrearing, they estimate that in 2023 the average cost of raising a child in a middle-income family was $331,933.

And that does not include college. If mom and dad are footing the bill for higher education they can tack on an average $108,585 if junior gets his or her four-year degree at their in-state safety school, or $182,832 if they go out of state, or if they’re accepted to a prestigious private institution the average cost now for four years of tuition, room, and board is $234,502.

On the not very bright side, the U.S. government offers an annual tax credit for children under six of $3,600, and $3,000 for those age 6-17, so, if you make enough money to use the credit, you can deduct $54,600 from the sticker price on each little bundle.

But, in large part due to the intransigence of one of our political parties, and in contrast to the vast majority of civilized countries in the world, the U.S. offers no paid parental leave, or childcare which averages about $320 a week, and no medical care or higher education or any of that family friendly stuff, so that stingy tax credit doesn’t really do all that much to help.

To put it in worldly perspective, Singapore not only has free universal healthcare and college tuition, it grants 16 weeks of paid maternity leave and gives parents $24,000 cash on the rice barrelhead for each child born, along with a matching sum for the child’s savings.

And don’t think just because children turn 18 and are legally adults means parents get to stop raising and paying for them.

Bloomberg, another actual source, reports that the Covid pandemic saw a marked increase in adult offspring moving back in with their parents because they evidently discovered that sheltering in their folks’ place was a lot cheaper than doing so in their own. By 2023, approximately 45% of people aged 18-34 lived with their parents, as did nearly 60% of those 18-24. If you’ve read any episodes of The Way Back from my early adulthood, you’d know that I availed myself of accommodations in my parent’s basement on a couple of occasions well after such time I should’ve been acting more like an adult and less like a child. And even for those more responsible than I was, it’s still a wildly popular option for saving money while you get started in life.

But money might just be Occam’s Razor because another reason fewer people are having children is that doing so doesn’t seem to make them terribly happy.

I will cite an actual person this time, Jennifer Glass, Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas who says, “Children are incredibly important sources of life satisfaction, but that’s not the same as happiness, and it’s not the same thing as financial well-being, good physical health, or good emotional health.” She points to research which shows a ‘happiness bump’ right after the ‘baby bump’ turns into an actual baby, but that proves ephemeral, and the euphoria disappears after a couple of months when new parents learn that childrearing is hard. Measures of happiness really start to plummet when they realize exactly how hard. Metrics measured for non-parents conversely show that they tend to get happier over time. Moreover, her study shows that fully two-thirds of childless people report having no regrets about the decision to forego raising a family.

I could also point to data which shows young people today are just not gettin’ jiggy wit it as much as they used to, and medical science confirms that will lead to fewer pregnancies and births.

On top of that, social media and the widespread availability of virtual partners, and sex, to many makes marriage and childrearing an anachronism.

Whatever the reason or reasons, 58% of all American households are now childless. Half of those contain single people which makes sense because it’s harder to procreate by yourself, but half are married couples. Obviously, some houses no longer hear the pitter patter of little feet because the nest is empty, but many don’t because they aren’t crazy about the pitter patter. By another measure, in 1960 there were on average 2.3 children per household in the U.S. and by 2023 that figure had dropped to 1.6.

I should mention that 2.1 children per household are required to sustain a stable population, so as long as I’m skewering the grand old parsimonious party of intransigence – to be fair they are very generous with tax cuts – they might want to consider either more generous government assistance for parents, or a more generous spirit regarding immigration, or just stop giving lip service to family values and actually value families. Or all of the above.

But that’s not what I wanted to tell you either.

This essay may strike you as an elaborate and unnecessarily snarky rationalization for remaining childless, and maybe it is, but my broader point is that we live in a troubled world and a deeply divided country, and are facing existential threats which no longer loom in a distant and easy-to-dismiss future but have inconveniently arrived in the here and now.

The danger of nuclear war – this possibility had been mothballed in the linen closet of our greatest fears due to the ironic security of a cold war between the only two nations capable of creating global Armageddon – is now more real and present, thanks to wars in Europe and the Middle East, than it was when Nikita Khrushchev tried to park a bunch of missiles in Cuba.

Climate change and global warming, despite still being dismissed as a hoax by people of a certain political stripe, is incontrovertibly the cause of a dramatic acceleration in the frequency and intensity of natural disasters, with melting ice threatening to inundate coastal areas and displace tens of millions of people worldwide.

Overpopulation is taxing food supplies beyond their limits, and the change in the weather I just mentioned has already wreaked havoc on acorn squash and other crops and will continue to get worse. And don’t get me started on what generative artificial intelligence could mean for the future of mankind.

Even if you don’t consume any actual news or do so but are partial to wearing rose-colored glasses, all that shit is happening and hard to ignore. And here in the land of the free and home of the brave, our politics is so poisoned that the government is paralyzed from the neck up and agreeing on who or what the threats are, let alone taking action, is a pipe dream.

So setting aside the obvious financial and emotional burden of childrearing, is it any surprise that more and more young potential parents are wondering why in the world they’d want to bring more people into the world?

Despite what you might hear come out of the mouth of some politicians, childlessness is not a decision people make to thumb their nose at God or so they can own lots of cats. Low birth rates are not the cause of our problems but a symptom of serious disease on our planet and in our societies. Addressing the root causes and neutralizing these threats is a monumentally difficult task and one I’m frankly not optimistic mankind has the wherewithal and intelligence to accomplish – maybe the artificial kind can help although I’m concerned it will conclude that the only logical solution is to exterminate us – but treating the symptom by bribing people to have children, or worse yet ridiculing those who don’t, is surely no way to treat the patient.

But what I really wanted to tell you is this.

I have friends in my AARP age group who have grown children, including many with grandchildren, and they are manifestly and rightfully proud of their offspring. Despite real trepidation about existential crises and violence both here and abroad, they are hopeful for the future, not in spite of having children but because of them.

As you may have gathered by now, my wife and I don’t regret our decision to not have kids, but I can see in my friends’ eyes, and through their eyes, what a deep sense of pride and joy they feel. With a bit of envy and not a drop of condescension, I can honestly say I’m happy for them and grateful they shouldered the burden and suffered the sacrifice to keep this thing going and at least give us a shot at keeping the world we were so graciously given.

Over the years, Lori and I have on occasion talked about what it would’ve been like to raise a family and speculate about how we would’ve fared as parents. She would no doubt have been an excellent mother – I say this because I have been on the receiving end of both her tender loving care and one of the great stink-eyes of all time – but I’m pretty sure my record as a father would be in question.

I’ve always believed I would’ve found a way to cope with the early years and be a good dad and passable youth soccer coach, but when they hit their teens, I refuse to rule out the possibility of filicide. If there ever had been an insolent screenager in my house, I surely would’ve killed it.

So, as we enter our dotage we have no Thanksgivings to host, no grandkids to spoil, no one to take away our car keys if they haven’t gotten the driverless car thing figured out yet, or to put us in an assisted living facility with well-maintained pickleball courts, or even remember us when we die. We are left with our pride and joy in each other, our friends and family – I did let a substantial limb of the tree die but there are still a few relatives out there – and our professional accomplishments and the many wonderful experiences we’ve shared.

And one of our favorite songs which came on the radio the first morning we woke up beside each other, Pride and Joy by Stevie Ray Vaughn. If you’ve never heard it, you should check it out on YouTube.

Thanks for listening. Talk soon.