The lack of children and the possibility of children are the MacGuffins in Children of Men inspiring all the action, but the movie significantly never tells us why children stopped being born, or how they might become possible again. The children-as-MacGuffin is simply a dramatic device to avoid actual politics while showing how the world is slipping away from civility and coexistence. The film is not really about children; it is about men and women, and civilization, and the way that fear can be used to justify a police state.
