Is the world too broken for children, or do you just hate them?
Illustration by Sona Eidnani.
In conversations with my peers about children, it has become more and more common for people to plan for a child-free lifestyle. While I’m supportive of their decisions, it irks me how violently people need to assert that those who decide to have children are inherently selfish, moronic, or stupid. While I don’t want to argue about the morality of human reproduction, it has become clear that the issue doesn’t lie with the current era; but the fact that people openly hate kids.
There has never been a perfect time to have children. Our history is filled with conflict: plagues, wars, slavery, and more. Yet, people have chosen to continue to reproduce for various reasons, despite the external calamities. In my opinion, arguing whether or not 2025 is the best or worst time to have children is a futile battle, because every era has had its own crises. People will continue to have kids anyway. The real issue isn’t whether or not the world is falling apart—it’s that we’ve created a society that resents and isolates children, instead of supporting them.
At some point, it became socially acceptable to blatantly declare yourself as a child hater. I agree that some of the arguments against human reproduction hold somewhat true. Yes, there are over eight billion of us, and climate change is driving everything into extinction. Not everyone is fed, and the political state of our world is not remotely close to “perfect” for bringing children into this world. Nevertheless, these issues have little to do with the matter of reproduction and children itself; conversely, they can all be tied back to late-stage capitalism.
“Children should be seen and not heard” is a common saying from the Victorian era that represents the child-hating perspective. But it seems there are more and more people today who legitimately believe this — it’s not new information that many completely despise seeing children on airplanes, in restaurants, and in parks. While I agree that there should be adult-only spaces, the sentiment that we should separate families in order to not discomfort certain people is discrimination.
I don’t want to be misinterpreted. If you do not wish to have children, good for you. But the unearned bigotry against children needs to stop; they are people too. In fact, most of the reasons people find children and parents easy to hate are similar to common ableist and discriminatory speech. Disliking children because they are loud, dependent, or requiring accommodations mirrors the same biases used to justify the mistreatment of disabled people, the elderly, and other minority groups.
The language surrounding this vulnerable group has become increasingly alarming. People online refer to both children and pregnant people as “disgusting,” and they call children “crotch goblins,” or “failed pull-outs.” I find this absolutely dehumanizing, reflecting a broader cultural disdain for vulnerability and dependence. It is one thing to choose not to engage with children, but expressing hatred to a group of people simply for existing is always wrong.
The real issue to attend to is our capitalist and individualistic society, which pushes vulnerable people to the sidelines. There are limited resources available not because we can’t accommodate our people, but because some people are hoarders. There is no issue with humanity surpassing eight billion people; our skewed destruction and distribution of resources is the problem.
We continue to lose third spaces like libraries, parks, community centres — as well as the community aspect that made humans thrive in the first place. We have lost “the village” to raise our children with. No matter how much people try to disguise their resentment towards children as “caring for the future,” the truth is that people don’t want kids to be part of communities anymore. It is children who will end up paying the price for this attitude as well. Until this mentality changes, I think I will have to agree with the children haters: this really is the worst time to have kids.
