“Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.”
― Neil Postman
Living in cultural decline is easiest for those who take the plunge first. Take, for example, Chelsea Fagan of The Financial Diet. First, kudos where they are in order: Fagan built a brand concerned with fiscal responsibility. This I applaud.
Why then do I accuse her of living in cultural decline? She is giving voice to the growing childfree by choice crowd. Fagan, as we will see with other financial experts on the internet, is functionally a materialist. You can pick up some good tips about clean financial living, but their vision for the whole of human life is limited.
From a spiritual perspective, we stop having children when we have ceased to believe in the eternal and a future that meaningfully continues after us. Currently, we continue to reap the benefits of a culture that has for thousands of years grown and developed on the premise that reality will endure. Intentional childlessness is, undeniably, a state of decline.
In a video entitled, “Watch This If You’re Not Sure About Having Kids,” Fagan explains her own decision not to have children (along with some hogwash about how you might be forced to procreate against your will [you won’t]). After all her analysis of her personal position and the trends she sees in her peer group, Fagan turns to the subject of children in your life who are not your own and how fulfilling those relationships might be.
Fagan describes her sister, still in her 20s, living in a farm in the South, married with three children already. She draws an analogy to the country mouse and the city mouse dynamic, which seems wryly self-aware. Does any child reading the story aspire to be the city mouse? I suppose some born daredevils might.
Fagan mentions this fact of her sister’s motherhood in passing to explain why the pressure is off for her. Those pesky boomer parents have been granted their living grandchildren and will get off the case of their urban daughter. Fagan breezily dismisses the concern that by not having children, you will not have the experience of having a close relationship with children.
Easy for her to say as a trailblazer. Fagan is correct in asserting that until now it was not socially acceptable for people to proclaim as a social good their decision not to welcome children. She is on the cutting edge of “childfree by choice” as a statement about one’s direction in life.
Perhaps Fagan herself is a lovely hostess who regularly welcomes guests into her home and heart. Perhaps one day she will do some good for an abandoned child somewhere. But, in general, there is a connection between openness to new life and openness to the other. Closing ourselves off from the transmission of the cosmic life force that animates us also seems to accompany closing ourselves off to others. Maybe not at first, but quite likely as we age.
In the prime of life, surrounded by friends with a kid or two, reassured by the distant reality of nieces and nephews, it can be easy to assume that kids will always be there. That is not how demographic decline works. Some places, like the South with the fertile sister, will be bursting with children, building new schools. Other places, first and foremost New York City, will see the population of children dwindle and disappear. When most we need the reassurance of the young and the care and presence of others, we may find them far away.
Do I think Chelsea Fagan should have a baby? Absent a radical lifestyle change, the obvious answer is no. I do think people listening, the people to whom the video is addressed, should consider carefully just how many children they will actually know in their childfree life. Will they be there? Will we remember how to enjoy the impish antics of the very young and full of life? Or will our homes and hearts go quiet in the oppressive tedium of growing older without meaning?
