Recently, I was reading an article about grandchildren-less older people which was quite frankly pretty damn heart-breaking.
This one woman entering retirement was talking about how her chance at becoming a grandmother was slipping away—her two children got married in their 40’s and by appearances were not planning on having children of their own. Her description of her feeling of missing out on grandchildren was pretty disheartening.
The phenomenon of people in richer countries delaying or even bypassing parenthood altogether has been discussed ad nauseum, but the knock-on effect of the disappearance of grandchildren has largely gone unnoticed.
When young adults explain their choice to remain childless, they often cite unwanted societal pressure on them that turns them off from having kids.
And yes, this includes pressure from their parents who are secretly desperate to become grandparents.
There is something visceral in the responses of young people who want to remain childless as long as they can. It is a rebellion against the urgings of their elders to procreate.
I get this. Being young with no kids is pretty fun. Why waste youth on the drudgery of cleaning nappies, doing mountains of kids’ laundry, and putting up with juvenile emotional breakdowns? Why have kids if it’s just what your aging parents want you to do?
Well, it’s because the old folks know something that us young people in short pants don’t know.
That’s this:
It is incredibly hard to find a replacement for the deep, inner satisfaction of creating and nurturing your own children.
There is a very, very good reason why prospective grandparents urge their adult children to have kids.
There is a very, very good reason why having children is one of the most satisfying acts that a person can do.
The real reason is not supernatural. It is not woo-woo nonsense. And it definitely is not based on societal pressure.
This is the real reason people are driven to have kids:
The act of having children is to obey BILLIONS OF YEARS of evolutionary programming in your DNA.
This is it. It is not complicated. No ideological, religious, or philosophical reasoning required.
What’s up with parents of adult children pressuring them into having children?
Why do 30-something adults all of a sudden desperately want to start having kids before… gasp… it’s too late? (And yes, there is definitely such thing as “too late”).
Why do you think people want to have sex?
It’s not social pressure, and it’s not a social construct that coerces people to have kids. It’s a manifestation of our innate need to propagate our genes to the next generation.
What if we have evolved past the need to have children? What if, like some post-modern ideologies would have us believe, humans have evolved past our biological urges?
I really think that these are faulty ideas.
The modern world has been but a fraction of the blink of an eye in our long evolution. This post-modern idea that humans have evolved past their biological essence is bunk. Anyone who says that biological urges are an anachronism should try not eating for a month.
That’s not to say that there aren’t completely valid reasons for any one individual to not want children. That’s not where I’m going with this. There are many people on this planet who choose not to have children knowing full well the trade-off that they are making.
What I am trying to convey is that the real reason for the desire to have kids is that it is deeply programmed into our DNA. Any denial of that fact to satisfy some ideological nonsense that is currently in trend should be strongly suspect.
It is very much OK to feed our deep, innate desires as biological beings, what our brains and bodies are built to do and designed to enjoy: to eat good food, exercise our muscles, sing songs–and to have and care for children.