The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 46 - You Don't Give Up Your ＂Freedom＂ When You Have Kids

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00:01:34.420 All right. Last week, the Washington Post ran a very glowing article about the child-free movement.

00:01:44.060 And then a couple days ago, the ladies on The View had one of their normally intellectually 1.00

00:01:50.100 stimulating conversations about this, about this movement. And of course, when the term is used,

00:01:57.600 I just need to, I feel like every time, we talked about something similar to this a few weeks ago.

00:02:04.640 And I opened with the same disclaimer I'm going to open with now. But it was to no avail then,

00:02:10.200 and I'm sure it'll be to no avail now. But I just want to clarify, when we talk about the child-free

00:02:15.300 movement or people who consider themselves child-free, people who are advocating for the

00:02:20.700 child-free lifestyle. Now, those are exclusively people who have chosen, they have made it their

00:02:27.800 goal to avoid having kids at all costs, at all costs, up to and including murder. So these are

00:02:35.600 people who have chosen, they've chosen not to have kids because they feel that children would be a

00:02:41.320 terrible burden on their comfortable lifestyles. So that's what we're talking about here. We're

00:02:45.780 not talking about people who can't have kids. That's not at all, in any sense, what we're

00:02:50.580 discussing now. Okay. Now, this kind of attitude, the child-free attitude of the last thing in the

00:02:58.160 world that I ever want is to have a kid, that used to be stigmatized. And now, you know, when they

00:03:03.580 talk about it in the media, when they're talking about it on The View, they act like it still is

00:03:08.420 stigmatized to not have kids. But it's not really anymore. It used to be stigmatized, especially if

00:03:15.900 people who were just openly selfish and self-centered and said, I don't want kids because I want to be

00:03:24.000 able to take vacations and buy a lot of nice stuff. That used to be stigmatized, for good reason.

00:03:29.640 Now, though, the stigma runs very much in the other direction. Like, yeah, you can have a kid.

00:03:36.100 I'm not saying it's stigmatized to have a kid. And it's not necessarily stigmatized to have two kids.

00:03:43.160 Once you get to three, you're pushing it. But if you commit the sin of having five, six, or more kids,

00:03:50.680 then you're going to face a society that will just heap scorn upon you. It's true that women without 1.00

00:04:00.420 kids may sometimes be asked about it. When are you going to have kids? Maybe that's annoying.

00:04:06.640 But they will not face, I'm just telling you, I come from a large family. They will not face

00:04:12.420 anywhere near the same level of open disgust that people have for big families. So it's different

00:04:21.760 than people being bemused or just inquisitive or whatever about the fact that you don't have kids.

00:04:28.360 It's different than that. This is disgust. There are a lot of people out there who are just

00:04:32.820 disgusted by big families. And if you don't believe me, just try sometime, like something

00:04:39.660 from my childhood. I had five siblings, so the six kids in the family. And anytime we went out to eat

00:04:47.940 anywhere, we were walking through the restaurant just to sit down at our table. People looked at us

00:04:54.800 like, I mean, a few times I was really worried that someone was going to pick up a steak knife

00:04:59.000 and just start stabbing all of us. Because the looks of hostility and anger that people have

00:05:05.060 just seeing a big family, it's, until you've experienced it, you don't really understand it.

00:05:11.260 And it is surely a sign of a shallow and really suicidal civilization when large, healthy,

00:05:17.180 nuclear families are treated with contempt. And as the American birth rate continues its decline

00:05:25.680 and younger people categorically decline to have kids, or they put off having kids until they are

00:05:32.920 biologically incapable of having kids without medical intervention, as that's happening, it's 0.98

00:05:37.980 become clear that the child-free mentality is not fringe. It's not some little thing off to the side

00:05:44.660 we don't have to pay attention to. It is becoming rapidly the most acceptable and kind of mainstream

00:05:52.080 approach to life. And for that reason, I think it's worth saying, I think maybe it's worth making

00:06:00.320 a few comments about it. So that's what I'm going to do on the child-free so-called movement.

00:06:05.660 First of all, the term child-free is monstrous, actually. It purposely puts children in the same

00:06:18.580 category as diseases and parasites. Okay, a woman will say that she's child-free with the same kind of

00:06:27.420 like triumphant tone that she might say she's cancer-free. And that's intentional. Now, we've taken

00:06:35.000 this term child-free because we consider it to be an improvement over the old term, which was

00:06:39.220 childless. And we don't like that term anymore because childless insinuates that a person is

00:06:44.840 missing something if she has no children. But the thing is, a married couple that chooses to reject, 0.99

00:06:53.120 chooses to reject the life-giving potential in their union is missing something. We use the term

00:07:00.540 childless for a reason because they are missing, by choice, one of the fundamental things that gives

00:07:08.840 marriage its purpose and its meaning. Just think about it this way. You could never speak about any

00:07:17.980 other group of humans on the planet the way that we speak about children. Children are the only ones

00:07:24.160 who we feel perfectly entitled to expressly dislike and even say we don't like them. It's not uncommon

00:07:33.480 to hear people say, well, I don't like kids, or even I hate kids. There was an article written a

00:07:39.720 couple of years ago. I forget in what publication. I want to say Salon. If it's not Salon, I don't mean

00:07:47.120 to... You can understand why I assume that it is. I think it was Salon ran an article and the title was

00:07:52.820 something like, I hate your kids and I'm not sorry, something like that. And it was a woman confessing 0.99

00:07:58.240 that she just hates kids. It's somewhat uncommon to hear people say it like that in public, but

00:08:05.260 that's not an uncommon thing to hear, just in society. Someone who just hates kids, hates being

00:08:12.680 around them. So it's suddenly acceptable to have a prejudice against an entire group of people.

00:08:19.920 Why is that okay? I know people think, well, it's okay to not like kids. It's actually not okay.

00:08:27.840 Because you know why it's not okay? Because it wouldn't be okay to feel that way about any other

00:08:31.500 group, would it? Whatever your demographic group is, what if somebody said, what if you're a middle-aged

00:08:38.040 woman and somebody said, I don't like middle-aged women. I just don't like them. Don't want to be 1.00

00:08:42.700 around them. Don't like them. That's all. How would that make you feel? Was that an okay thing to think?

00:08:48.400 Now, if you think it, you think it. But it's not, you shouldn't think it. There's something wrong

00:08:52.400 with you, if you think it. Again, these are the kind of statements that in the past, people would

00:08:58.240 be ashamed to say. They would never say that. And they'd be shamed for saying it, and deservedly so.

00:09:03.880 We're not supposed to hate people for who they are. Whatever happened to that? Or express our desires

00:09:09.580 to be free from them. I mean, what if you said you were moving to a certain neighborhood because you

00:09:14.080 want to be free from X group of people? Now, if you were to put kids into that X group, then everyone's 0.89

00:09:20.500 fine with it. But if you were to put any other category of person into that group, that would

00:09:26.680 generally be frowned upon. For good reason. It should be. So we, that's the way we feel about

00:09:33.920 most people. We say you can't just hate whole groups of people. But we've made children an exception

00:09:40.740 to that rule. And that doesn't make any sense. If anything, children should be the only non-exceptions

00:09:45.920 to that rule. Because I can think of plenty of valid reasons to dislike most of the adults

00:09:53.240 I have encountered in my life. And I'm sure people that have encountered me could say the

00:09:56.200 exact same thing. There's plenty of reasons to not like me. There's plenty of reasons that

00:10:00.020 for me to not like most of the people that I've encountered that are adults. But kids, you

00:10:06.180 know, kids are innocent. Kids are energetic. They're fun. They're unconditionally loving.

00:10:12.920 Kids have unconditional love. What's not to like about it? If you don't like that, there's something

00:10:20.180 wrong. It's not something you shouldn't not like that. Basically, kids have all the qualities

00:10:28.400 that we have unnaturally infused into dogs. That's essentially what's happening. We have

00:10:35.080 kids and dogs have traded places in our culture. Do you realize that? That now we've taken all the

00:10:42.120 qualities of children and we've given them to dogs. And we've taken the qualities of dogs and given

00:10:46.800 them to children. And now we treat children the way people used to treat dogs, which is a lot of

00:10:52.400 people didn't like dogs, don't want to be around them. They're animals. Get them out of here. I don't

00:10:55.500 want them inside. I don't want them on a plane with me. I don't want them in a restaurant. Like they're

00:10:59.280 dogs. They're animals. It's a beast. Please get it away. You know, I don't want to. And it would be

00:11:03.200 okay to say, I hate dogs. I just don't want to be around them. They're gross. I don't like them.

00:11:07.820 Now you can say that about kids, but you can't say, oh, you said about dogs. Dogs are saintly.

00:11:12.840 They're saints. Dogs are, they're unconditionally loving. No, they're not. They don't have any love.

00:11:18.640 They're not capable of it. Love is a willful choice. Dogs don't make willful choices. They don't have a

00:11:24.680 conscience. You need that to have love. You need to be a human to love. Kids really have that. And anyone

00:11:32.240 who's a parent, you've seen this, especially in your younger kids, that they really just love you

00:11:37.720 deeply. And it's not just that they don't see the flaws in you. Now that's part of it. I mean,

00:11:44.600 they do kind of see you as a superhero. My kids think that I can pick up our house. My kids literally

00:11:49.300 think I can pick up our house above my head and walk down the block with it. That's what they think.

00:11:54.580 And they might think that because I told them. I don't know. I don't remember. But so they do kind of

00:11:59.360 see as a superhero. But they also, I think they do also see your flaws. And sometimes they'll point

00:12:05.240 them out kind of innocently. They're very honest about it. But they love you in spite of it. They

00:12:11.180 don't, it's like they don't, it's the most nonjudgmental thing. If a kid ever comes up to

00:12:15.220 you and just points out something wrong with you, they don't mean any offense by it. They're just,

00:12:19.580 they're just noticing it, but they love you anyway. It's no big deal. Nothing personal.

00:12:23.160 That's why we should all like kids. So second thing. So that's the first thing.

00:12:31.440 It's really not okay to be prejudiced against kids. And one other point on that, especially when

00:12:36.880 you consider what we do to kids in this society, kids are also the only human, talk about, talk

00:12:42.100 about prejudice. If you want the real evidence of that, they're the only humans in our society who

00:12:46.960 you can legally kill. And we've killed 60 million of them. So before you laugh at the idea that we're 0.99

00:12:52.140 prejudiced against kids, we've got a mass grave filled with 60 million dead bodies of children.

00:12:59.420 So yes, we do, we are prejudiced against children in our culture. Second thing, there's no freedom

00:13:05.080 in being child free. Okay. Now there are things that my wife and I have trouble doing now because we

00:13:15.460 have kids. Of course, like we can't leave the house without spending 45 minutes looking for

00:13:20.460 somebody's shoes. And that's a whole other thing. I don't want to get off on, on, on that tangent,

00:13:24.740 but that's the shoe thing. I just, I'm at the point now as a, as a dad, well, I just want to give

00:13:31.780 up on shoes. I'm about to tell my kids, we're not doing shoes anymore. There's not gonna be any more

00:13:37.040 shoes in this house. No more shoes. I'm going to have a no shoe policy. And now because they can't,

00:13:42.940 I'm telling you the moment a kid walks in within 10 seconds of a kid walking, getting inside the house,

00:13:49.740 the shoes will be off and one of them will be lost. Just gone. Anyway, I say all that lovingly

00:13:56.400 though. It's, it's, um, so that's one thing, you know, that's a, you can't just leave the house.

00:14:02.780 You gotta find the shoes. You gotta go through the whole thing, but that's just a fact of life.

00:14:07.660 And my, you know, my wife and I, we can't just up and go to a movie anytime we want. We can't go on a

00:14:12.400 date and we can do all those things, but it takes planning. It takes extra money. You got to get a

00:14:17.020 babysitter, all that stuff. So, but that's just a fact of life. That's, that's a minor challenge.

00:14:23.240 That's a, that's a hurdle to get over. That's not slavery. The way people talk about, oh, I don't

00:14:28.700 have kids. I'm free. Well, what do you think? You think I'm enslaved? What do you think? You think

00:14:34.760 I'm in jail or something? It can't be considered an encroachment on my freedom to have kids unless

00:14:42.620 freedom is defined as the ability to live however you want without inconvenience. If that's free,

00:14:51.040 if, if freedom is just really boiled down to freedom from inconvenience, then yeah, I guess

00:14:56.200 that's, then I guess I am a slave. Uh, but that idea of freedom is how you get a brave new world

00:15:03.880 or America circa 2018. You could live in a, in a, in a totalitarian state and still have that kind of

00:15:13.040 freedom. As long as the totalitarian dictator keeps you basically comfortable, then by that logic,

00:15:20.120 you're free. But if we understand freedom as the ability to live as God intends us to live

00:15:28.420 with our inherent human dignity, preserved and protected, then our freedom is actually enhanced

00:15:36.140 when we have kids because we're doing what we're made to do. We're growing, we're changing, we're,

00:15:43.700 we, we are becoming something. We're embracing our new identity and identity with greater responsibilities,

00:15:50.300 yes, but also a greater capacity and potential for love and joy. The thing is, I am free to do all the

00:16:01.020 things that a person without kids can do. There's, there's nothing, there is nothing that a child-free

00:16:05.760 person can do that I can't do. I can do all that. I can go on a vacation. I can go out to eat. I can do,

00:16:11.680 I can do everything they can do. There, there is no activity or experience that's open to them and is

00:16:19.700 completely fundamentally closed off for me. I could, now it might take some extra effort. It might cost

00:16:26.660 a little bit more money. Uh, I might really have to make it a priority if I want to do it, but I can do

00:16:32.340 it. I'm not precluded from it, but a child-free person is actually precluded from the joys and

00:16:41.140 experiences of parenthood. So when you're, when you're, when you want to be child-free, it means

00:16:47.620 that you can do everything that a person with kids can do. You can just do some of it a little

00:16:52.680 bit easier. Whereas when you have kids, there's a whole new life that's opened up to you, a whole

00:16:58.480 new identity opened up to you that is not opened up to people who decide not to have kids. So who

00:17:07.000 really is the most free? Third thing about the child-free movement is that it is a, um, it is a

00:17:13.140 celebration of narcissism. The people who advocate this lifestyle, they're also advocating a philosophy

00:17:18.520 and it's a really terrible philosophy because they are advancing the notion that the key to happiness

00:17:24.980 is, is located within our own egos. And so what they're suggesting is that the happiest person is

00:17:32.320 the person who is most empowered to kind of indulge and entertain themselves. Person who, who wants to be

00:17:38.380 child-free, um, their greatest aim is to keep themselves to themselves, accumulating. Their goal

00:17:47.600 is just to accumulate wealth, pleasure, experiences, purely just for their own sake and for no other

00:17:55.680 reason. I don't think that's the path to happiness. I think that's the quickest path to despair. And I also

00:18:01.780 think that the people who advocate for this path know that it brings to despair because they are in

00:18:07.240 despair themselves. The truth is this joy is found through work and love and sacrifice. It cannot be

00:18:16.040 found anywhere else. Nobody has ever found it anywhere else. Many people have theorized philosophically

00:18:23.940 that you could find it somewhere else. Many people have set out on the mission, on the journey,

00:18:30.120 the perilous journey to try to find it somewhere else, but none of them have accomplished the task.

00:18:37.240 It's like the fountain of youth or any other mythical treasure that people go out seeking. Uh, this,

00:18:43.920 this, this joy, this fulfillment, true happiness that can be found in selfishness. That is the ultimate

00:18:51.220 fountain of youth, the ultimate mythical reward that people literally kill themselves trying to find.

00:18:59.960 And they never will. All they find out, all they find out there in, in, in that wasteland of materialism

00:19:07.460 and self-indulgence is more of the despair that drove them there in the first place. So they try to

00:19:14.460 bypass sacrifice and suffering and work to get to joy. But then they discover in the end that they

00:19:21.400 bypassed joy at the same time. But what do they do? What do they do? They still come back and tell us

00:19:27.160 that, Hey guys, I found the joy. It's over here. Come with me. And they encourage everyone to follow

00:19:33.140 them out there into the desert because misery loves company, I guess. But we shouldn't listen to that.

00:19:39.920 You don't give up your freedom when you have kids. You may be giving a lot of time. You're giving money.

00:19:45.840 You're making sacrifices. You're embracing a life that's going to be in many ways harder,

00:19:53.260 but you're not really giving up anything meaningful and you're gaining so much more. As I said, you're

00:19:59.100 gaining yourself. You're gaining an entire new identity. There are only a few moments in our life

00:20:08.460 when we really become something else than what we were before. There are only a few moments when we

00:20:15.980 really change fundamentally to our core. One of those is marriage. One of them is parenthood.

00:20:23.380 And that's a beautiful thing. And that's what we should be talking about in our society.

00:20:26.100 And that's what we should be celebrating, especially as the birth rate declines and we kind of just

00:20:31.020 fall headlong into self-appointed extinction. I think it becomes even more necessary to have a message

00:20:37.580 like this. All right, guys, have a great weekend. Thanks for watching.

The Matt Walsh Show - June 08, 2018

Ep. 46 - You Don't Give Up Your ＂Freedom＂ When You Have Kids

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