Should You Bring a Child Into Today’s Crazy World?

We have climate change, but at least we don’t die of dysentery anymore…

I recently had a conversation with a Gen-Z friend, and the age-old topic of ‘Should I bring a child into today’s world came up?’ That’s a convo that almost inevitably happens if you reach past the age of 25 without a ‘whoopsyfuck’ that inadvertently turns you into a birth giver.

Not me, I never wanted kids. Even as a kid, I knew I didn’t want to spawn more like me. You’re welcome world.

But should others still have crotch trophies?

The argument for bearing loin fruit isn’t very convincing for my arse personally. ‘I need to continue my family lineage’, ok calm down, King Joffrey, this isn’t Game of Thrones. Or, ‘I want someone to take care of me when I’m old’, in which case I have bad news for you, nursing homes are popping for a reason (also, robots are close to being able to do it now).

‘I just want someone to love me unconditionally’, mmhmm, a lot of hump dumplings these days are going no-contact with their birthgivers — get a dog instead. Then there’s ‘But look how cute this polka-dot onesie is!!’. Ok, now we’re getting a bit more biological-clockingly honest.

And the final reason…‘Oops, I’m pregnant…and meh, I’m bored, why not?’

The arguments against creating fuck nuggets are pretty strong. They start with episiotomy and go all the way to, ‘We’re going to boil ourselves to death with climate change while under the poverty-inducing control of ruthless dicktators and oligarchs’.

But back to my friend…

My friend was waxing and waning over the idea of bringing sexually-transmitted dependants into this rope-a-dope world.

They said: ‘What if I bring a kid into a world where all the jobs were replaced by AI and they become our overlords?’

I countered with: ‘But what if robots and AI replace us all and we’re all living on UBI and are free to follow our passions, of butterfly wrangling, or whatever?’

It’s a tough argument to have, given the state of the planet. But not one easily won, since uterus urchins come with that intoxicating new baby smell. Both sides have a point.

Yeah, we might be living in an increasingly lonely society where we navigate life behind glowing screens…but we’re not dying of dysentery on the Oregon Trail.

Yes, we could be on the cusp of WWIII. But they’ve been saying that for eons. We’re a race of apocalyptic thinkers. In my time, I was already supposed to meet my demise by WWIII, Y2K, the Mayan calendar end of times, and a global pandy. Spoilers, but I’m still here, paying rent and taxes while AI entertains me with preposterous cat videos.

In the 17th century, 40% of children died at birth. More died from disease, and even more still from things like dehydration from diarrhea. They still had babies. Granted, they needed them to till the fields, whereas we’re having them for reasons like walking past a cute sparkling unicorn tutu in Walmart.

As of a few months ago, we used gene editing from CRISPR for the first time to cure a rare disease in a baby. That’s a win. But we also have the technology to create ‘designer babies’, and I watched the movie Gattaca enough times to know what a clusterfuck that might be.

If you’re planning on having babies so that you have someone to take care of you in your old age, I’d give a word of warning. Fewer and fewer people are doing that. Not to mention creating a baby as a retirement plan is as morbid as it is ineffective. Especially with how many youngin’s are going ‘no contact’ with their birth givers.

We have however, fubar’d climate change beyond recognition and it’s been confirmed we’re all going to burn one day. So that kinda sucks as an outlook. But until then, we can Amazon Prime same-day-ship truffle oil and a Fleshlight, so life isn’t so bad in the meantime.

We’ve driven the real estate market up so high that fallopian fruit born today won’t be able to break into it, because their salary is $54K and an apartment will cost $3 million. But if you already own a home, you can pass it down to your progeny, who can sell it and live in a van down by the river where the robot overlords can’t find them. Van life is surprisingly easy now, with TikTok algorithms showing you endless videos about how to make endless videos about it to pay for your van lifestyle.

But you don’t have to die of The Black Death anymore.

Albeit tuberculosis is still stubbornly kickin’ around.

Elon Musk is simultaneously trying to single-handedly repopulate the planet and build a dick-shaped space arc to get (us?) off this planet. So he seems to think we’re doomed, but not enough to be cool with a shrinking population. There’s some solace in that if you’re dark enough.

In caveman days, you could’ve been mauled to death by a sabre-toothed cat, and if that didn’t get you, cave-fire-induced black lung would’ve got you before you were 30. Even during ‘the Age of Enlightenment’, you could easily have died from smallpox, typhoid fever, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, or even scurvy. And that’s if you didn’t die from shitty sanitation-induced diarrhea.

So yeah, we have a boiling planet, experts expect another pandemic any day, people are dying of cirrhosis instead of cholera, and AI-infused robots may become our overlords if we don’t blow ourselves up. But there’s always something that could kill us.

We humans, however, are the cockroaches of Earth, and seem to keep surviving.

Even if we descend into societal anarchy one day, the Earth will keep spinning until then. We can go on with our lives just as we always did, because there has always been peril at our doorstep.

If anything, we’re living the best time to have children since child mortality rates are low, we’ve never had more creatures of comfort, and we don’t have to sweep the ashes out of the cave anymore. Now, we have Roombas to sweep up after us. We don’t even have to forage for food anymore; we can have foreign delicacies delivered to us like we’re medieval kings.

And we have devices in the palms of our hands that contain all the knowledge ever gathered by mankind (albeit it’s also somehow making us dumber).

Life is pretty good, all things considered.

Just don’t birth flesh potatoes if your life goal is to own white carpets. Or get a dog, mine just dragged her keister across the carpet for the umpteenth time.

Have you Been Thinking About Becoming a Paid Subscriber for Wilding Out?

If you’ve been feeling an inkling to send a random stranger on the internet money—I encourage you to act on that feeling.

I’d absolutely love your support at any level that’s comfortable for you…

~ $2 per month ~ $3 per month ~ $4 per month ~ $5 per month ~