Children give their parents hope, joy, and purpose. They display unexpected and sometimes miraculous behavior that can charm even the hardest of hearts. They’re often transparent in the truest sense of the word. Perhaps best of all, they demonstrate powerful imaginative energy that most adults have long forgotten.
Still, there are plenty of reasons to not want kids. They usually end up disappointing their parents in one way or another, and sometimes in a staggering number of ways. Moreover, why should anyone really care how the parents feel? The kids didn’t ask to be brought into the world in the first place.
The arrival of a newborn tends to be chance error as much as anything else. From the moment that wailing baby slides out of the womb, the parents surrender whatever modicum of real freedom they might have hoped for in order to program the next generation to do the same. Meanwhile, at the edge of society, a few outcasts willingly forsake cultural conformity to dodge this problem, knowing that the planet’s population explosion has proven disastrous.
