Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids

by Meghan Daum

I picture my life without children as a hole dug in sand and then filled with water. Into every void rushes something. Nature abhors a vacuum.

You will have one thing or another depending on what choice you make. Or you will have both things in limited amounts, and that might turn out to be perfect, just exactly the life you want.” * * *

Let’s be honest: we are unnatural—as unnatural as clothing or medicine or agriculture or art, or walking upright. By not having progeny we are depriving ourselves of the illusion of continuity, and have to invest ourselves more deeply in other, more austere illusions: that our lives matter for their own sakes, or that we’ll secure a kind of immortality through art or ideas or acts of decency, by teaching or helping others or changing the world. Maybe we’re an evolutionary adaptation; spreading memes instead of genes is a more efficient means of reproduction, less destructive to the environment.