Nobody Wants to Have Kids Anymore, and I Don’t Blame Them
The village is gone.
I still think about that video of Dave Hollis, a self-help author who made his 3-year daughter wait over an hour for pancakes while he live-streamed advice about how to lead a more mindful life.
Actually, I think about it a lot.
It’s not just that he embarrassed himself, or that it was the third or fourth time the Hollis brand had revealed the utter hypocrisy and privilege that courses through the veins of the self-help industry. It was the cringeful reminder that once you’re a parent, your life isn’t yours anymore. It doesn’t matter what you want. For the rest of your time on earth, and especially for the following 18 years or so, someone else matters more than you do. Someone else’s needs come first, and it’s not just every now and then. It’s literally all the time. It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t relent. Someone else’s life now has a profound impact on yours, in ways you can’t control.
It’s heavy.
There was a time in my 20s when I thought I’d remain single and childfree until I died. I didn’t fully comprehend all the angles and dark alleyways of parenthood, but I saw enough. I looked at my friends in graduate school who were already married with kids. I saw the bags under their eyes and the spitup on their shirts…
