Why would anyone bring children into this troubled world?

With a multitude of horror stories about pollution, overpopulation, rampant crime and perpetual wars, it might seem crazy for anyone in the world to think seriously about having children of their own these days. This world is no longer fit for babies, one might say, and the pavement that we’ve laid everywhere is too hard for these infants to crawl around on comfortably-- their tender hands and knees might get scratched up.

What kind of person willfully invites a helpless baby into such a brutal environment? Who would do such a thing, and why?

Doomsday 2000

1999 was the year when my daughter was born, and in that year of 1999 there were big scary stories in the news; Y2K was due in a matter of months, and we were all destined for doom-flavored hard times because of it, so they said. Power failures, bread lines and famine, nuclear disasters and an end to life as we knew it was all supposed to happen at the stroke of midnight at the end of that year. It would seem that I had chosen the exact wrong time to bring a child into the world, according to experts.

During the year of 1999 we could taste the doom in the air, but I was actually too busy with a newborn child to go out and get my survival bunker, water filters, guns and gold. While many people were dead serious about the coming Y2K event, I was also already aware that our TVs were expertly spewing fear and mayhem in order to sell something, so I mostly ignored the impending doom. It never happened.

Here We Go Again!

Lately, I hear people once again saying that bringing children into the world at this time would be irresponsible or even cruel, and aside from feeling sorry for the children, why would anyone put themselves through the trouble of making and actually raising children? Childbirth is notoriously painful, pregnancy is known to cause discomfort, disfiguration and fatigue, while children themselves are well known for destroying things and causing catastrophic messes of their own, so why do people continue to put themselves through this agony?

What Were We Thinking?

Humans are creative beings, and we just can't help it. We make stuff constantly, and as a species, we impulsively create new humans all the time-- apparently things never get too gloomy for humans to make babies. Logic's faraway cries are seldom heard over the roar of screaming tots, and as people propagate during the most unexpected times, then according to nature, there's never a bad time to bring new children into the drama.

For anyone thinking about having children, or for those who have just made new ones recently, this is good news. Nature agrees with your choice. Furthermore, there are, from my own experience, many good reasons to bring children into the world at this time on Earth, logical reasons that may seem to go against logic and reason while satisfying nature's curious fascination with procreation.

Some Good Reasons to Make Children

My child survived the Y2K event, and I have lived so that I can pass on the information that I gathered during that time, and to share the things that I have learned since. As it turns out, there are lots of good reasons to bring new babies into the world, aside from simple biological propagation of the species, and in fact there are too many to list. Some of the reasons defy words, and they will obviously not be included here, but I can name several good reasons to bring a child into this world, even this modern world that we live in now.

• 1. A child is the best teacher.

Children can remind us of the time, before we were even eight years old, when there was no past or future, and we might remember to notice that critical moment when what's really happening is the only thing going on. Children are present, and we are too when we are with them, sharing in their fascination with the little things in life. Children force their parents to remember things that had been buried for many years-- a child can guide an adult on a journey of introspection that might not have been taken without such a skilled teacher to show the way.

• 2. Children give adults an excuse to engage in creative play again.

Play is something that is always trying to make it's way into the world, and children are the perfect conduit for that spirit of play to reach us. We parents like to brag that we play with our children, as if we have taken time from our adult lives to entertain a child, while really, we are having a great deal of fun when we play, and we like the fact that we are automatically excused from our childish behavior while we are busy playing with children. Adults need play more than the children do, but a responsible grown-up parent will call it 'work' or 'child-raising', scarcely admitting that it was any fun at all. It's a caution that comes from growing up in a world where grown-ups are not supposed to have fun, and from living in a society where adults certainly shouldn't be boasting about it if they do have some fun in life. The world always needs this creative play though, and children are naturally good at instigating it.

• 3. Children can learn how to cook!

The reasons to have children are numerous, but I am getting hungry, and I've thought of only one more reason that I can list here. I taught my daughter the basics in the kitchen, general safety and utensils, skillet care, batters and beaters, and the little kitchen things that my mother had tricked me into learning so long ago, simply by showing me how I could make my own cookies or cakes.

Not that I tricked my daughter into learning how to cook so that she could make meals for me or anything like that, but now she's often in the kitchen with Google, and she sends me to the grocery store for things like paprika (I had some paprika already, but it was about 20 years old) and Herbes de Provence. Now I walk into my own house and it smells like an Italian ristorante lately as various recipes are tested and tried, and I secretly praise myself for being clever enough to have made such a thing as a child in the first place. Now I realize that I should have waited until after dinner to write this list, because I smell onions and cumin, I'm more than a little curious to see what is happening in my kitchen right now.

In Conclusion

If the news tells us that doom is on the way, remember that they have been wrong every time so far.

If you have been told that children are a burden, or too much work, remember that when a parent says such things as that, they are hiding the truth about the fun they have been having.

If you have a child who asks for cookies or cake, show them how to make cookies and cakes themselves.

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thanks as always for reading along, these are just a few of the good reasons for having children, and nature suggests that no matter how we plan it, having children is something that keeps happening, and needs to keep happening to save the world from the doom, as the world needs more creative play to happen with people of all ages, and if you are lucky like me, these children will hang around long enough to start cooking meals for you

drawings by me, ball point pen and colored pencil on cheap watercolor paper, 2017

@therealpaul