I recently came across a post from my Facebook wall — i.e. the header picture I attached and for some reason, it brought me some interesting questions I would like to discuss. As crude as the picture might sound, I think it is a feasible concept which I would like to elaborate.
Living in this era where livelihood of a newborn is more guaranteed than ever, wouldn’t you tempted to have kids on your own to bring those supposed joy and happiness to your lives, given that, you can? Yeah, I suppose — why not? I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. However, if you take a minute or two, a mundane thing such as having kids might not be as simple as they appear to be. Things like overpopulation, poverty, climate crisis, economy crisis, and general chaos of the world we have today would severely affect the lives of your children. Let me explain few of those ideas.
i. Earth is Already Overpopulated.
If you look around, it’s easy to see that there are way too many impoverished, parent-less children out there. The way I see it, most people in modern era wouldn’t think twice about populating an already cramped Earth we have now. If you look even deeper, it is easy to see that we are “growing humans” more than our ability to accommodate them. It is a painful sight, to be honest, that the increasing easiness to give birth is now seen as just another thing one “have to do” in life. Now, I’m proposing an uncomfortable question—given that many children are still parent-less today, how are we going to save these very unfortunate children if we keep on producing kids mindlessly? I suppose it was never our business to begin with.
ii. Parenting is not an Easy Job
Especially in the modern era, giving birth is not something that is default and compulsory, to be frank. Back then during our earlier phase of the species, it was surely vital for us to make more and more babies to pass on the genes and continue the survival of the species. But now? You won’t die just because you are not reproducing (well, maybe the species would, but you get the idea). It’s pretty obvious to me that most people do it just because they can. I would say as supposedly civilized human beings, we have to take into consideration every aspects of our conscience, on why would we want to have them in the first place.
I might not be the one who have the credibility to say how parenting should be done, but one thing we all can agree: parenting is never an easy job. Things like manners, education, nature and nurture, social life, religious affiliations, political perspective of our kids and soon-to-be adults is no joking matter. For example, in one part of the world, we can raise well-mannered, healthy, sound-minded, spiritual, objective young minds. While on the other half of the earth, we are generating bigoted, self-centered, deluded and apathetic young minds, some even well-suited for suicide bombing missions. This is good and bad parenting at work. We take it for granted as adults that we already knew a lot of stuff we know today, but for the mind of young, everything had to be taught from zero. Are you soon-to-be-parents have what it takes to grow a child of character? Have you prepared for what is coming for them?
iii. Let’s Be Frank, This Planet Had Never Been a Good One
Most people might never thought of this, but planet Earth is not exactly a friendly planet to begin with. Humans, also, were never really friendly.
From the earliest days of civilization, the very thing we’re really good at were waging countless number of wars, teaching absurdities and sophistry to our children and cutting down trees while polluting the Earth. People might call this cynicism, but I call it reality. We have never ever been very peaceful to one another in the entire track of history either. Even now where “peace” appears to be abundant, you won’t believe the kind of cold-war people and countries are waging to one another — like a ticking bomb with no visible timer, it could just set off anytime. Endless arguments, disagreements and mockery against one another is commonplace today, and it’s pretty easy to find the evidence of it — one look at social media comment section you could see the worst of human mind within minutes.
If you have children, then sooner or later, they will see what you see, and there is a pretty good chance they will see worse than what you’ve seen today. Would you really that eager to introduce your innocent children to the world you are seeing today?
iv. So, Saving Earth by Not Giving Birth?
Not really. We kind of saving ourselves and doing our children a little favor in the meantime. Favor for our children, not to be born to such a chaotic world. Of course, by saying this, I’m not forbidding anyone to have children or suggesting that nobody should have one. I believe seeing life being born for the first time a feeling that would be irreplaceable for some people, especially for women. But I would make it clear that I also believe that having kids is a very, very huge responsibility. Goodness, I couldn’t imagine the kind of responsibility any bigger than that.
To sum up, I argue that anyone who want to have kids today, have to steer their conscience as clear as you can, since by giving birth you’re practically throwing your children to live into the world you are living in. Don’t get me wrong — it’s a wonderful world if we work together as human beings. But until then, well, we better tread carefully.
It is not our lives we have to think about — it’s theirs. You might not see the future of our world, but they would.
You would be leaving them pretty much with themselves once you are gone. You are going to see them surviving another years and years on this planet, for better or worse.
Do you mind leaving them alone if world is not going to be any prettier than what it is today?
— Teguh Li
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