Fall: The season when social media is flooded with back-to-school photos, kids on their doorsteps in oversized blazers and overly shiny shoes.
In school WhatsApp groups across the country, parents are congratulating each other for surviving the rain-laden weeks in Devon while completing holiday assignments and dealing with multiple cases of norovirus.
“We did it!” is the general tone of solidarity and mutual pats on the back.
Parents are often accused of being presumptuous, and today there is a new reason to feel superior in our life choices: birth rates are plummeting across the Western world.
A study published in The Lancet earlier this year warned of “astonishing societal change” as a result.
Fall: The season when social media is filled with back-to-school photos, kids on their doorsteps in oversized blazers and overly shiny shoes (file image)
Mothers don’t deserve medals. The real heroes are the childless ones, says Clare Foges (pictured)
Having children is thus presented not just as a nice-to-have but as an act of national service: relax, my dear, and think of England’s population bomb.
As birth rates plummet, panic-stricken politicians around the world praise women who have children.
Motherhood should be “the highest aspiration” for girls, says Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Putin has revived a Stalin-era reward for super-mothers, giving a million rubles to women who have ten babies.
While women who have children are praised for their fertility, those who don’t have a bad reputation. Visiting Indonesia last week, Pope Francis expressed despair that, unlike people in the host country who have “three, four or five children”, some in the West “prefer to have only a cat or a little dog”.
It’s a recurring theme, as last year he criticised Italians, who are “selfish and self-centred”, for being more interested in having pets than children. So says the father of, ahem, none.
Meanwhile in the US, Donald Trump’s vice-presidential nominee JD Vance has also criticised “childless cat ladies” who selfishly enjoy their kitties when they should be in the delivery room, doing their bit for the free world.
Perhaps, as a mother of four, I would be expected to nod along with the Pope and Vance, looking down from my lofty procreative perch at the wanton, irresponsible childless people who prioritize foreign vacations and luxury cars over the important business of perpetuating the species.
Quite the opposite. I think it’s complete nonsense. It’s not those who raise children who tend to be the silent heroes or the selfless ones, but those who don’t have children.
Donald Trump’s vice presidential candidate JD Vance mocked “women with cats and no children”
Parents are often accused of being presumptuous, and today there is a new reason to feel superior in our life choices: birth rates are plummeting across the Western world (file image)
Parenthood may turn your heart to clay in the hands of your loved ones, but nine times out of ten it also makes you selfish, or at least severely short-sighted.
Before I had children, I used to think deeply about the problems facing the nation: how to alleviate poverty in inner cities, fix the National Health Service (NHS) or plug the holes in the UK’s defence budget.
These days, 95 percent of my brain is occupied with urgent matters like whether we’ll have enough Babybels for tomorrow’s lunchboxes.
Before I had children, I was a devoted contributor: at the Christmas soup kitchen, at a hospital radio station, at a charity shop. Now, every free minute I have is devoted not to the common good, but to the good of my family. It is perfectly natural, but not praiseworthy.
A recent incident underlined the selfishness instilled in me by my son. As I was pushing the double stroller down a busy street, I was stunned to hear a screech of brakes and a cry of pain.
Twenty metres ahead, an injured cyclist was dragging himself along the pavement, not seriously injured but bloodied and dazed. In the old days, I was the first to move forward, call the ambulance, search my bag for a bottle of water for him, etc.
Before I had children, I used to think deeply about the problems facing the nation: how to alleviate poverty in inner cities, or fix the National Health Service (NHS) or fill the holes in the UK’s defence budget, writes Clare.
But since there were other people on the sidewalk who could help (without kids in tow), I made a detour and continued home to turn on the oven in time for dinner.
Good mothers are not always good Samaritans.
I still care about the world beyond my home, but frankly, motherhood has completely consumed me, draining much of the energy I once had to look outward. I am too exhausted to be of much use to society.
When you find yourself deep in the trenches of parenting, selfless instincts get trampled.
While some people may be able to “give back” when their children are older and it is easier for them, many others will not. Children still require enormous amounts of time and energy when they are teenagers, twenties, thirties…
So who takes care of the problems that plague us as parents when we have to comb our children’s hair or deal with their latest crisis? The much maligned “childless.”
Go to any library, charity shop or food bank and you can be pretty sure to find some of those “childless cat ladies” that JD Vance mocks.
With perhaps more time and energy at their disposal than some peers with children, I’d venture to say that those without children play a disproportionately important role in keeping the country’s show on the road.
With perhaps more time and energy at their disposal than some peers with children, I’d venture to say that those without children play a disproportionately important role in keeping the nation’s show on the road, writes Clare.
One of the roles that many childless people fill is that of primary caregiver for an elderly relative. While there are of course those who feel overwhelmed by the dual task of caring for both children and their elderly parents, in my experience it is often the adult children without offspring who do much of the caregiving.
When my late great-aunt lived alone in her mid-90s, her main pillars of support were two childless middle-aged men, one a relative and the other a friend.
It was they who traveled hours to see her, not the relatives (including me) who were absorbed in raising the children.
So let’s forget this binary nonsense that pits those who don’t have children against those who do. Yes, as a society we need people to have children and raise them.
But we also have those who do not have children and whose energies are spent not at home but in nursing homes, hospices, charities and community clubs, in millions of quiet, compassionate actions every day.
Their role in society may not be as praised as that of parents, but their service is just as important.
