Tanwa A. | Flight Notes

Here's what I think happened. Prior to the Baby Boomers, people had lots of kids because there was no birth control. As such, the dominant culture (primarily religion) explained why children were worth the inevitable toil, but also encouraged parents to make it easy on themselves with such patent irrationalities as "children should be seen and not heard" and "because I said so." Then, the Boomers were hit with a bunch of new narratives. First, they had birth control, so free love became part of the rebellion against static old-world vibes. Second, their reaction against their parents included getting free of the burdens of a big family living in cramped conditions, no privacy, no ability to rock out or smoke weed or just be your own person. Third, they got hit with the population and environmental doomerism, and they got hit hard. Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlich, Jane Goodall, Club of Rome, etc etc. All of these created a dominant cultural narrative that lots of kids is bad. Have two at max, to replace yourselves, and otherwise think about preserving the Earth. In the process, a key piece of cultural knowledge was lost, or perhaps overlooked, and that is the joy of having lots of kids. I have five, and I can't tell you how amazing it is. That's part of the problem, it's hard to put it in words. Yesterday morning I had a peak experience, probably the happiest I've ever been. My parents and my brother's family were visiting, and the 7 grandkids were playing, and I was chatting with my brother and my wife in the other room, and I just couldn't get over how happy I was. I think part of it is that, without a lot of kids, one tends to focus on hobbies, or career, or other pursuits to fill out life. There's nothing wrong with this, except that it often falls flat. Or, there's lots of down time. If fishing is your passion, you still spend lots of time not fishing. If you fancy yourself a writer, every moment is an opportunity to feel guilty for not writing. But with lots of kids, even if you're getting nothing done, you are bearing witness to constant growth that is all your doing. And you constantly have amazing things to do - play a game of chess with the 6 year old and he gets familiar with how the knight moves, and then he can play with his grandfather who's been dying to be able to beat someone. And then the 2 year old comes and hugs your leg while you're making waffles for the 4 year old. I mean, these little moments are nearly ceaseless. Now, in the before times, I'm sure there were ceaseless little joys like this. But the context was quite different, and I bet the joys were muted. Kids got sick, often desperately so, and even if they weren't dying, you could never be completely at ease. Today, childhood diseases are vastly safer. There wasn't always abundant food, heat, clothes. There were constant discomforts. You couldn't order same-day delivery of diapers. And of course, women were expected to shoulder the burden without having an outlet for other interests. But today, we have Amazon, the nation of China willing to make cheap toys and baby wipes, vaccines, minivans, drive through French fries, iPads, etc. Having lots of kids has never been easier. "But it's too expensive!" No, it's not. It's too expensive if you want to maintain your post-college lifestyle of eating out, going to craft breweries, vacationing, and living in Brooklyn. But if you prioritize the joy of having lots of kids, you can support them by living in the suburbs, getting a reliable job, not eating out, not spending money on your lifestyle. It's absolutely possible, it just takes a serious rearranging of your priorities. Which takes me back to my point about cultural narratives - if the benefits of having lots of kids was more prominent, people would more commonly aspire to it, would get a real major in college (or maybe skip it altogether), get a reliable, high-paying job in their early 20s, look for a life-partner early instead of a dating partner, save, and strive for making a big family instead of climbing various career or status ladders. And, AND - the basic stuff begins to really matter. You gotta figure out how to get along with your wife, cause you're both in deep. You gotta sand off your rough edges and figure out how to make it work. And you can't be diddling around with insignificant stuff because your life is on serious mode, not demo mode. And you gotta be liked and trusted by your kids so they can help you out as they get older, or at least not try to actively make your life miserable. I don't know how to change the cultural narrative. And I'm sure many people might hate having lots of kids. Maybe I'm wrong. But my personal experience is one of surprise at never being told by anyone when I was growing up that having a lot of kids is a recipe for a great life. It seems so obvious to me now, and yet whenever ppl find out I have five kids, they make some kind of face or say some kind of thing that essentially amounts to "Ugh." Many are genuinely surprised that I think the future is worth living. (Unbelievable, but true. Imagine if our distant ancestors thought the plagues and famines just made life not worth living.) I get the idea that we need to revive religion as it is quite an effective pro-human, pro-child narrative that considers people to be the very standard of what is valuable. Despite my deep atheism, I feel more aligned with religious families. But I can't stomach ignoring the God stuff. But also, I can't stomach the Godless religion, that's just phony nonsense. At least the God-fearing are serious.