Having kids is the most selfish thing you can ever do! You can groan and complain but why are people who do not want children labeled as carefree, irresponsible, biological traitors? Why are people so interested in playing god and making sure others are using their reproductive organs? And what is the end goal? To breed new generations of Walmart shoppers? They are wrong, wrong, wrong. Creating life shouldn’t be so cavalier. Thoughtlessly procreating without paying attention to the consequences of said life, unto children, is morally irresponsible. Why do our needs take precedence over people who we claim are our reason for living? And is their sanity sacrificed to fulfill our own selfish needs? 

     A human like any animal has basic physiological needs: food, shelter, water, oxygen, and some would argue sex. These things that sustain life and keep us functional are afterthoughts once met. A roll of bread, a cup of water, and a tent can keep us from divining galaxies or tackling the unsolved. Survival is not enough, we want other things: company, attention, purpose, and the longing never stops. A thousand questioning voices ring in the vestibules of our souls. And that constant gnawing makes us act – just to make the voices stop. “I don’t want to be alone.” “I am afraid of everything.” “All I do is fuck up!” “What should I do with my life?” And people just look for easy answers, they figure if everyone else is doing it, why not me? Let me find somebody to embrace, to share life with, to love and be loved by. Yes, this will fill the emptiness, this will make me feel alive. 

     Then come the sweet, sweet babies to fill the empty living rooms. We seek wonderment and find it, wrestle memories from the past, and live vicariously through our children. Trying to replicate experience, reliving it through someone else’s eyes. But you are just an observer, it is not new anymore. You can’t live off someone elses high. Once you are old enough to taste wicked things you are done – nothing is ever the same again. The rest of your life becomes a series of trying to one-up those moments that made you feel good. A fruitless dopamine hunt that cannot last or satisfy. 

     And we become less simple the more we grow up. We slowly realize the world is bad and full of evil things that want to hurt us. That soft baby skin turns to leather. We are no longer innocent, not children but people trying to survive. We then have to choose: will we live for pleasure, for material gain, for power? We live and do many things, some people do nothing, others collect accolades, some people are kind, some are cruel, some relish in others pain, some want to be the victims. And we are all thrown together in a giant salad bowl and shaken to the core.

     We think so much of ourselves and our development. There is so much weight placed on child-induced personal growth. “I did not know love before I had my daughter.” “My kids are the best thing that ever happened to me and I would literally die for them.” Parents undergo a transformation: They give up the Ferrari, quit drinking, willingly attend a Wiggles concert. Yes, there are a lot of sacrifices one has to make. Adults have to be selfless and shelf desires for responsibilities. Parents complain endlessly about their children, why they aren’t grateful, and on and on but who ends up with the load?

     Countless nights I have woken up thinking about what my purpose is? Pondering the meaning of life. How my being makes any difference at all. And I sound spoiled because while my mornings are filled with existential crises, others have bigger problems. I want to be grateful for all the advantages I have: for being healthy, for not being in physical pain all the time, for having the bare necessities. But how can I pretend things are alright? Why did my parents bring me to the world? To suffer? To fulfill their own emotional needs? 

     Am I just a plaything two people cooked up? Someone who will take care of them when they are old and small? Because they are afraid of dying..of being irrelevant and forgotten? Parents have kids for their own benefit. “I want to start a family.” “I want to be a good mom.” “I want a house full of kids running around.” Every sentence that has to do with starting a family starts with I or we. There is no, “making a child will be great for it because it will be blessed, and beautiful, and smart, and it is going to fall in love, become a venture capitalist, live with meaning, and enjoy every minute they have while they are breathing and healthy.”

     Does anyone actually think about the kids that are being born before they commit to having them? And even then when they weigh the risks and see how totally screwed up the world is they still decide to make ‘em. How irresponsible is that? I didn’t know that having a penis and vagina and bonking pelvises together made you a god. Just because we can make life doesn’t mean we should. There is no duty other than the one you owe yourself, countless parents have proven that. I don’t want to be another fertile adult responsible for dooming newborns to crushing torment. I don’t want my imaginary children to suffer because of me. I don’t want to lecture my children about how lucky they are when they breach from swells of sorrow. I don’t want to lie to them. I don’t want to shine the good and hide the ugly.

     Our best intentions fail our sons and daughters in the face of agony. Suffering builds character, gives us empathy, humanity, but what then after I have used up all my life? Does the pain then become meaningless? Is it just a constant reminder that we are vulnerable and therefore human? Do we just start the cycle all over again? Populate the Earth till there are no part-time jobs left?  Parents need to stop pretending they don’t know what happens without prophylactics. They entrust everything to chance and fake naivety once knocked up. It seems like every decision our parents make is for their convenience or pleasure. Instead of bringing me here I wish my folks would have played it safe. The days feel pointless and I find myself souring away, robotically going through the motions.

     All the grinding at work is just to keep us entertained and make us feel like we did something. Oh no, the stock markets are going to crash, who cares! Picking up the kids from school, the family dinners, it just goes on and on. There is no ultimate purpose, people choose what they want to dedicate their time to. You know why people have kids? Because they don’t know what else to do with themselves!

     Why would I want my kid to resent me? Because I need to fill voids; emotional, social or otherwise with the life of my kid? It screams I need a purpose, a project to try to make sense of my life. Or the simpleton version, I want to play with a baby that looks like me, has my chromosomes. I don’t care how unfortunate this kid’s life turns out to be as long as I feel more complete. It is selfish. The parents gain a domestic, a caretaker, a totem of emotional fulfillment, joy, and happiness at the cost of this kid’s blood. 

     And the worst part is when parents feel so betrayed for having brought you into this fucked up place, to have the gall to complain about you. “We are the reason you are here, we don’t understand how you can be so ungrateful for everything we have given you!” Yeah, of course you are the reason we are here! Parents owe their offspring for dragging them into existence. If you are willing to put your kids through hell just for your own satisfaction, then don’t expect their eternal gratitude. We are the suck it up society. You feel bad, suck it up. Life is unfair, suck it up. You feel like dying because the weight of the world crushes you and makes you question the point of living, go clean the porch. 

     I am grateful for my parents. But I also see how they have used me, how they have gaslit me into thinking I was weak so that I would need them. How they smothered me and it took me so long to develop individuality and strength. They were afraid for me and protected me, then they were angry because I was so weak. It just felt unfair, unjust, and I was to blame. But they are not bad or perfect. They are just ordinary people trying to get by in the world. People are not born to be happy, I guess that is the reason life is unfair. And I just don’t want to sacrifice some poor kid’s sanity so I can feel better about myself – just because every breathing mouth has done it.

     Life is not for pussies, and weak is the last thing we can be. But if not to end all human suffering by not creating new life, we should at least think before we make more human beings. If it is not the microplastics in our bloodstream, the greenhouse gases, the ever expanding sun, the lack of space and resources on Earth, it is the weight of life itself that is going to kill us.