The Role Of Children In A Chaotic World
If you’re like me, you’ve been thinking about babies lately. Maybe it’s because it’s spring and all of the kits, cubs, and hatchlings are poking their heads out. Maybe it’s the baby picture of me with a colander on my head that mom has been showing around lately. I’m not sure why I’ve had babies on the brain lately, could be anything. At least part of the reason though, is an argument I heard the other night, and it’s a surprisingly common one.
A couple was arguing about whether or not to have children and one side tried to end the discussion with “I don’t want to bring kids into this screwed-up world.” Variations on this argument have been used by many people in many different places and times and its continued use and acceptance imply some very dangerous perspectives. I’d like to break the argument down into its underlying thoughts and see if we can’t turn them inside out.
The premise that the current world is worse or more chaotic than any other version is one of my least favorite arguments and enormously self-centered. Your world is no more chaotic than that of any of your forebears. It’s simply the only one you experience in the moment which will always seem more intense. It’s also the only one for which you don’t have historical perspective which will always smooth out the rougher edges of the past. The next generation will think their world is infinitely crazier than ours and they will be equally as wrong as we are.
Assume the world is crazy though; too crazy to ethically bring a child into. The argument in question implies you’re not involved with how the world becomes what it is, and that’s simply not the case. A child doesn’t just live in the world, it first lives in your world. It’s a different scale for each of us, but we all have some control of some corner of our environment. If you set the rules properly, the child will apply them to the ever-growing borders of the world, no matter how chaotic. The larger the world, the less control you have, sure. To counter with one of my favorite philosophers, Lao Tzu; “all difficult things have their origins in that which is easy, all great things in that which is small.”
That thought speaks to a larger issue at play with this argument and the backwards paradigm it presents. Claiming “I don’t want to bring kids into this screwed-up world” implies that the theoretical child will only ever be the recipient of the world in which it lives. Shouldn’t that perspective be flipped? Shouldn’t the goal be to raise a child who is a creator of the world in which it lives? Shouldn’t the goal be to produce a child that will help to guide the world in a more productive direction, away from whatever chaos may or may not be? Maybe such behavior even follows the parent’s example.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to not have children. Not wanting to “bring kids into this screwed-up world” isn’t a very good one. The argument seeks externalize the power of living. It either claims that the parent doesn’t have the power to guide the environment, the parent doesn’t have the power to equip the child to adapt to the challenges of the environment, or that the child will never have the power to meet the challenges of the environment. Isn't that the point of new life though; to introduce new hope and new energy to the world in which it exists?
