Better to have never been, or, I didn’t sign up for this bullshit”

The modern world isn’t kind to parents or the children they bring into it: On falling birth rate, infanticide and parental discrimination

If porn censorship is the canary in the coal pit of freedom of speech, then female infanticide is perhaps the best bellwether of the state of the nation’s health. The spate of infanticides hitting the headlines of late should be ringing alarm bells in the highest echelons, were those ivory towers not seemingly committed to bringing us all to our knees. Maternal distress is a key indicator for infanticide – after all, distressed animals in the natural world will often kill their babies.

You don’t need to read between the lines to discover why today’s mothers and their babies are facing such an uncertain future.

 Access any daily news outlet, and it’s like the seven horseman of the apocalypse are running amok on the face of the globe right now. Who’d want to bring a child into a world like this? In particular, to a world where austerity, and the natural discrimination faced by parents in the workplace are commonplace; where long working hours are demanded at all levels from employees, if they are “lucky” enough to have a job, in an increasingly polarised society of haves and have nots where either you have the time or the money to raise a child – – or increasingly, neither. Only a small minority have the luxury of both.

Is it any surprise the birth rate is falling? According to some, this is a good thing: the planet cannot sustain any more humans they hand-wring, imploring us to “stop at two.” But economists worry about an ageing population, which brings its own set of burdens. And as the scales of wealth increasingly tip in favour of old at the expense of the young, what hope it there for the children of the “squeezed middle” whose pockets are increasingly straightened, to make it on their own. The law of diminishing returns appears to be working perfectly, and short of an economic revolution, it ain’t going to improve. We are working harder and earning less, and even corporate behemoths are starting to feel the pinch at their online tills. This is the way empires fall.

In my musings about whether or not to have another baby, when weighing up what sort of life they might lead, how much time I can devote to their care and attention, the fact that I will have to go back to beginning in terms of nappies, teething, the alphabet and fucking Twinkle Twinkle, teaching them to read and help with their homework, I find myself also worrying how much of a leg up I will be able to offer them?

I might, *might* be able to stretch to get my first two on the property ladder, or get them through uni by the skin of my teeth. But a third? Economies of scale cannot justify the extra expense of childminders, clubs and all the other stuff I fork out for in the hope it might give my child an advantage in an increasingly competitive world. And it’s only getting worse. The fact is, population has soared and will continue to do so until 2080, though some estimates have it taking a nose dive after 2040. But still, that means for my 35 year old kids trying to get on the property ladder, (they’ll be lucky if it happens sooner) there’ll be a whole lot more people looking for somewhere to live, even if the green belt is swallowed up trying to house them all. In a market based economy, they’ll be fucked. It means more people looking for fewer jobs, as technology increasingly means we are reduced to little more than IT administrators, servicing the need of an increasingly artificially intelligent technological workforce.

Deliberating whether or not to bring yet another human being into the world feels like it should just a matter for me, my partner and close family at most. And yet in the midst of a perfect storm of overpopulation, environmental meltdown, global terrorism and, ya know, ebola, it feels like it’s become a question of morality, in this world which seems to offer as much fear and pain as pleasure.

As I approach the now-or-never-age of my mid thirties and beyond, it’s the horns of a dilemma on which I’ve been perched for some time.  And I feel like I may have finally found some form of reconciliation to the question of whether or not I can stomach another 15 years of cleaning up puke, picking up dirty socks and paying through the nose to leave the house. I just don’t think it would be fair on them. Or me, for that matter.

To be born is to inflict, unasked for, a great harm, at least according to philosopher David Benatar. Given my own children’s difficulty transitioning into existence, which seemed a tough experience despite all the advantages of comfort and safety they enjoyed, you have to wonder if it wise to allow someone to be born at all.

To be alive is to learn to accept compromise and inequality, to be categorised, judged and graded, to find a niche where you might exist – that given the societal and global pressures to which we are all of us subject seems increasingly difficult. It requires swallowing the doublethink of equality that only seems to exist in government-run institutions which themselves are not held or ruled equally, or else be forever bitter; to live in a world that uses torture to serve its own ends.

For now, I’m enjoying the familiar coziness my family life has settled into. Ages 6-10 are the years of relative plain sailing, now the trenches of toddlerdom have been traversed and the tortures of teenagedom are as yet on the horizon. We are in the golden years, where my children’s futures are not yet entirely shaped and we can have optimism about the future and enjoy living in the moment; of doing the fun stuff while also having time and energy to enjoy being an adult, rather than the repatriated kidultism of the early years. It’s a good time, yet outside the confines of my family and friends, the world feels increasingly unfriendly, and I worry what another five or ten years of turmoil will mean for any future children’s long term happiness, and the stability and prospects of the two I already have.

It is not a bleak position to want so much for your offspring that you decide not to have them at all. It feels sad though, to give up on that hope that comes with wondering what they might become, in favour of the relative certainty they’ll have it tougher than me.

My children have forced me to recognise how untenable my own situation is if I can’t afford to provide for them in the way I wish, for all society does not seem to support the family (despite a recent policy enacted by parliament that all new laws should). And for all the sacrifices I quite willingly – and sometimes less willingly have made, it is my children who have given me a greater sense of purpose, satisfaction and direction than any other single event in my life. They have made it worth the struggle of being alive, even though they have sometimes, through their natural demands on my time, energy and resources – which I haven’t always been lucky enough to have at my disposal – driven me to sometimes want to end it.