An article by Grace Emily Stark for the Institute for Family Studies blog describes how Millennials are embracing the “child-free” lifestyle by getting sterilized. Stark chalks it up to a number of different fears, including tokophobia, the cost of raising children or bringing them into “uncertain times.” She writes that after years of enduring the “the risks and side effects” of hormonal birth control, Millennial women are turned off from embracing their fertility. Not to mention how culture incentivizes us to be unattached, unburdened, and autonomous selves while setting relatively low expectations for marriage and family. Stark wonders whether intentional childlessness is the “cause or symptom” of Millennial loneliness, burnout, and depression, given their lower rates of marriage and childbearing relative to previous generations.
A Miseducation in Fertility Management
Though many today publicly profess their desire to be child-free, there are many more for whom the question of becoming a parent is not a question of whether, but of when. Women in particular feel the pressure to weigh their fertility along with other priorities, such as personal financial independence, pursuing an interesting career, or waiting for the right person to come along with whom to raise children. And, despite the availability of reproductive technologies like egg freezing and IVF, there is no promise that a woman who puts off pregnancy until her late thirties or early forties will still have her fertility intact by the time she is ready for and wants a child. Add to this the embrace of contraception as a good by most Millennial women (and men), and the result is a mass suppression of fertility –– and therefore of sex, relationships, and of life itself. When we suppress our natural fertility in the sexual act through the use of contraception, or incite it unnaturally out of the context of marriage and children through artificial reproductive technologies, we are bound to feel hopeless, enslaved to our own whims and the limitlessness of our own appetites, unbounded by healthy limitation. Our fertility should be a reminder of those realities, and not an excuse to deny them.
Collaboration, Not Competition
In a previous blog, we discussed how fertility awareness-based methods (FABM) of family planning encourage men and women to collaborate in the work of bringing forth new life by respecting the woman’s capacity to generate new life within herself and to reflect this in when and how they choose to engage in the sexual act. Therefore, they help train men and women to discern what is most important in life and to direct their efforts accordingly. This might mean abstaining from the sexual act altogether until one is in a position to provide for a child, or trying to become pregnant when a woman is in her fertile phase. Either way, it means working with the body rather than against it to achieve what we want to achieve. In our increasingly competitive, materialistic society, we tend to believe that our options are limitless and that we can have what we want on demand without consequence. Unfortunately, this means we can trick ourselves into “streamlining” fertility so it can fit our schedules, rather than allowing the fact of our fertility to shape the way we arrange our lives. This affects the way men and women interact romantically, as their attempt to integrate two lives becomes a matter of whose interests win the day rather than how each individual can compromise for a common purpose. The time-limited gift of fertility is a reminder that we can’t have everything when we want how we want, and there is immense peace and joy to be found in this.
The Joy of Parenthood
Many of those who declare themselves child-free regard parenthood and its attendant responsibilities as burdensome, and children utterly undesirable. But for a good chunk of those sympathetic to the child-free movement, it is more a matter of fear than anything else. Parenthood can be scary. Being solely responsible for a young person from the very first moment of life can be a terrifying prospect, especially considering the theoretical and actual dangers from which they need to be defended. Many Millennials fear that bringing a child into today’s world is immoral in light of environmental and social uncertainties. But parenthood, as parents know, brings with it unparalleled joys and new hope. Children don’t just represent, but are the hope of the future. As Stark writes,
Getting married and having children is a vote cast in favor of a brighter future; an investment made in bringing about that brighter future. And while creating a better tomorrow is not the sole purview of parents, there is a unique interest in making the world a safer, more loving, fairer place when one’s offspring will inherit it. On the other side of the coin, a society that does not want children is one that has given into the despair that the world is a terrible place and will never get better—a society that believes that people are the problem.
Our blog takes this same hopeful attitude to today’s social landscape, no matter how grave things may seem. We don’t believe that marriage, family, and sexual integrity should be pursued because they are instant solutions to today’s problems, but because they free us to give of ourselves in meaningful ways – which can only be good for us and for society. Undertaken well, they can dispose us to look with anticipation, rather than trepidation, toward the future. Sterilization and other forms of fertility suppression signify a loss of anticipation for the future, and any society which embraces such an outlook will suffer on the whole. Thankfully, if those of us who want to build families can do so well, we have reason to hope that whatever storms may come will help us to grow in love and fidelity, passing on a better world to our children.
