Ep. 46 - You Don't Give Up Your ＂Freedom＂ When You Have Kids
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Summary
The childfree movement is gaining ground in the media and on social media, and I m here to talk about why it s actually not as stigmatized as it used to be, and why the stigma around not having kids should go away.
Transcript
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So some good news for you guys to start the show. First of all, I am in a building. This is not a
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drill. I'm in a building. You know I'm serious and I mean business when I've got a roof and walls
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around me. So that's exciting. Even more exciting, we've taken my Facebook Live videos to podcast
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enabling that on Alexa. Alexa, enable the Matt Walsh show skill. Then you can tell her to play or open
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All right. Last week, the Washington Post ran a very glowing article about the child-free movement.
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And then a couple days ago, the ladies on The View had one of their normally intellectually
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stimulating conversations about this, about this movement. And of course, when the term is used,
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I just need to, I feel like every time, we talked about something similar to this a few weeks ago.
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And I opened with the same disclaimer I'm going to open with now. But it was to no avail then,
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and I'm sure it'll be to no avail now. But I just want to clarify, when we talk about the child-free
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movement or people who consider themselves child-free, people who are advocating for the
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child-free lifestyle. Now, those are exclusively people who have chosen, they have made it their
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goal to avoid having kids at all costs, at all costs, up to and including murder. So these are
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people who have chosen, they've chosen not to have kids because they feel that children would be a
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terrible burden on their comfortable lifestyles. So that's what we're talking about here. We're
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not talking about people who can't have kids. That's not at all, in any sense, what we're
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discussing now. Okay. Now, this kind of attitude, the child-free attitude of the last thing in the
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world that I ever want is to have a kid, that used to be stigmatized. And now, you know, when they
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talk about it in the media, when they're talking about it on The View, they act like it still is
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stigmatized to not have kids. But it's not really anymore. It used to be stigmatized, especially if
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people who were just openly selfish and self-centered and said, I don't want kids because I want to be
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able to take vacations and buy a lot of nice stuff. That used to be stigmatized, for good reason.
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Now, though, the stigma runs very much in the other direction. Like, yeah, you can have a kid.
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I'm not saying it's stigmatized to have a kid. And it's not necessarily stigmatized to have two kids.
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Once you get to three, you're pushing it. But if you commit the sin of having five, six, or more kids,
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then you're going to face a society that will just heap scorn upon you. It's true that women without
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kids may sometimes be asked about it. When are you going to have kids? Maybe that's annoying.
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But they will not face, I'm just telling you, I come from a large family. They will not face
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anywhere near the same level of open disgust that people have for big families. So it's different
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than people being bemused or just inquisitive or whatever about the fact that you don't have kids.
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It's different than that. This is disgust. There are a lot of people out there who are just
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disgusted by big families. And if you don't believe me, just try sometime, like something
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from my childhood. I had five siblings, so the six kids in the family. And anytime we went out to eat
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anywhere, we were walking through the restaurant just to sit down at our table. People looked at us
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like, I mean, a few times I was really worried that someone was going to pick up a steak knife
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and just start stabbing all of us. Because the looks of hostility and anger that people have
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just seeing a big family, it's, until you've experienced it, you don't really understand it.
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And it is surely a sign of a shallow and really suicidal civilization when large, healthy,
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nuclear families are treated with contempt. And as the American birth rate continues its decline
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and younger people categorically decline to have kids, or they put off having kids until they are
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biologically incapable of having kids without medical intervention, as that's happening, it's
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become clear that the child-free mentality is not fringe. It's not some little thing off to the side
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we don't have to pay attention to. It is becoming rapidly the most acceptable and kind of mainstream
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approach to life. And for that reason, I think it's worth saying, I think maybe it's worth making
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a few comments about it. So that's what I'm going to do on the child-free so-called movement.
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First of all, the term child-free is monstrous, actually. It purposely puts children in the same
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category as diseases and parasites. Okay, a woman will say that she's child-free with the same kind of
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like triumphant tone that she might say she's cancer-free. And that's intentional. Now, we've taken
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this term child-free because we consider it to be an improvement over the old term, which was
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childless. And we don't like that term anymore because childless insinuates that a person is
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missing something if she has no children. But the thing is, a married couple that chooses to reject,
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chooses to reject the life-giving potential in their union is missing something. We use the term
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childless for a reason because they are missing, by choice, one of the fundamental things that gives
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marriage its purpose and its meaning. Just think about it this way. You could never speak about any
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other group of humans on the planet the way that we speak about children. Children are the only ones
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who we feel perfectly entitled to expressly dislike and even say we don't like them. It's not uncommon
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to hear people say, well, I don't like kids, or even I hate kids. There was an article written a
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couple of years ago. I forget in what publication. I want to say Salon. If it's not Salon, I don't mean
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to... You can understand why I assume that it is. I think it was Salon ran an article and the title was
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something like, I hate your kids and I'm not sorry, something like that. And it was a woman confessing
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that she just hates kids. It's somewhat uncommon to hear people say it like that in public, but
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that's not an uncommon thing to hear, just in society. Someone who just hates kids, hates being
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around them. So it's suddenly acceptable to have a prejudice against an entire group of people.
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Why is that okay? I know people think, well, it's okay to not like kids. It's actually not okay.
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Because you know why it's not okay? Because it wouldn't be okay to feel that way about any other
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group, would it? Whatever your demographic group is, what if somebody said, what if you're a middle-aged
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woman and somebody said, I don't like middle-aged women. I just don't like them. Don't want to be
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around them. Don't like them. That's all. How would that make you feel? Was that an okay thing to think?
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Now, if you think it, you think it. But it's not, you shouldn't think it. There's something wrong
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with you, if you think it. Again, these are the kind of statements that in the past, people would
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be ashamed to say. They would never say that. And they'd be shamed for saying it, and deservedly so.
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We're not supposed to hate people for who they are. Whatever happened to that? Or express our desires
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to be free from them. I mean, what if you said you were moving to a certain neighborhood because you
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want to be free from X group of people? Now, if you were to put kids into that X group, then everyone's
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fine with it. But if you were to put any other category of person into that group, that would
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generally be frowned upon. For good reason. It should be. So we, that's the way we feel about
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most people. We say you can't just hate whole groups of people. But we've made children an exception
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to that rule. And that doesn't make any sense. If anything, children should be the only non-exceptions
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to that rule. Because I can think of plenty of valid reasons to dislike most of the adults
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I have encountered in my life. And I'm sure people that have encountered me could say the
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exact same thing. There's plenty of reasons to not like me. There's plenty of reasons that
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for me to not like most of the people that I've encountered that are adults. But kids, you
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know, kids are innocent. Kids are energetic. They're fun. They're unconditionally loving.
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Kids have unconditional love. What's not to like about it? If you don't like that, there's something
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wrong. It's not something you shouldn't not like that. Basically, kids have all the qualities
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that we have unnaturally infused into dogs. That's essentially what's happening. We have
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kids and dogs have traded places in our culture. Do you realize that? That now we've taken all the
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qualities of children and we've given them to dogs. And we've taken the qualities of dogs and given
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them to children. And now we treat children the way people used to treat dogs, which is a lot of
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people didn't like dogs, don't want to be around them. They're animals. Get them out of here. I don't
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want them inside. I don't want them on a plane with me. I don't want them in a restaurant. Like they're
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dogs. They're animals. It's a beast. Please get it away. You know, I don't want to. And it would be
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okay to say, I hate dogs. I just don't want to be around them. They're gross. I don't like them.
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Now you can say that about kids, but you can't say, oh, you said about dogs. Dogs are saintly.
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They're saints. Dogs are, they're unconditionally loving. No, they're not. They don't have any love.
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They're not capable of it. Love is a willful choice. Dogs don't make willful choices. They don't have a
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conscience. You need that to have love. You need to be a human to love. Kids really have that. And anyone
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who's a parent, you've seen this, especially in your younger kids, that they really just love you
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deeply. And it's not just that they don't see the flaws in you. Now that's part of it. I mean,
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they do kind of see you as a superhero. My kids think that I can pick up our house. My kids literally
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think I can pick up our house above my head and walk down the block with it. That's what they think.
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And they might think that because I told them. I don't know. I don't remember. But so they do kind of
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see as a superhero. But they also, I think they do also see your flaws. And sometimes they'll point
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them out kind of innocently. They're very honest about it. But they love you in spite of it. They
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don't, it's like they don't, it's the most nonjudgmental thing. If a kid ever comes up to
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you and just points out something wrong with you, they don't mean any offense by it. They're just,
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they're just noticing it, but they love you anyway. It's no big deal. Nothing personal.
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That's why we should all like kids. So second thing. So that's the first thing.
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It's really not okay to be prejudiced against kids. And one other point on that, especially when
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you consider what we do to kids in this society, kids are also the only human, talk about, talk
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about prejudice. If you want the real evidence of that, they're the only humans in our society who
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you can legally kill. And we've killed 60 million of them. So before you laugh at the idea that we're
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prejudiced against kids, we've got a mass grave filled with 60 million dead bodies of children.
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So yes, we do, we are prejudiced against children in our culture. Second thing, there's no freedom
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in being child free. Okay. Now there are things that my wife and I have trouble doing now because we
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have kids. Of course, like we can't leave the house without spending 45 minutes looking for
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somebody's shoes. And that's a whole other thing. I don't want to get off on, on, on that tangent,
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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
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up on shoes. I'm about to tell my kids, we're not doing shoes anymore. There's not gonna be any more
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shoes in this house. No more shoes. I'm going to have a no shoe policy. And now because they can't,
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I'm telling you the moment a kid walks in within 10 seconds of a kid walking, getting inside the house,
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the shoes will be off and one of them will be lost. Just gone. Anyway, I say all that lovingly
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though. It's, it's, um, so that's one thing, you know, that's a, you can't just leave the house.
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You gotta find the shoes. You gotta go through the whole thing, but that's just a fact of life.
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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
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date and we can do all those things, but it takes planning. It takes extra money. You got to get a
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babysitter, all that stuff. So, but that's just a fact of life. That's, that's a minor challenge.
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That's a, that's a hurdle to get over. That's not slavery. The way people talk about, oh, I don't
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have kids. I'm free. Well, what do you think? You think I'm enslaved? What do you think? You think
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I'm in jail or something? It can't be considered an encroachment on my freedom to have kids unless
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freedom is defined as the ability to live however you want without inconvenience. If that's free,
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if, if freedom is just really boiled down to freedom from inconvenience, then yeah, I guess
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that's, then I guess I am a slave. Uh, but that idea of freedom is how you get a brave new world
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or America circa 2018. You could live in a, in a, in a totalitarian state and still have that kind of
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freedom. As long as the totalitarian dictator keeps you basically comfortable, then by that logic,
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you're free. But if we understand freedom as the ability to live as God intends us to live
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with our inherent human dignity, preserved and protected, then our freedom is actually enhanced
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when we have kids because we're doing what we're made to do. We're growing, we're changing, we're,
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we, we are becoming something. We're embracing our new identity and identity with greater responsibilities,
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yes, but also a greater capacity and potential for love and joy. The thing is, I am free to do all the
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things that a person without kids can do. There's, there's nothing, there is nothing that a child-free
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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,
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I can do everything they can do. There, there is no activity or experience that's open to them and is
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completely fundamentally closed off for me. I could, now it might take some extra effort. It might cost
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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
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it. I'm not precluded from it, but a child-free person is actually precluded from the joys and
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experiences of parenthood. So when you're, when you're, when you want to be child-free, it means
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that you can do everything that a person with kids can do. You can just do some of it a little
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bit easier. Whereas when you have kids, there's a whole new life that's opened up to you, a whole
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new identity opened up to you that is not opened up to people who decide not to have kids. So who
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really is the most free? Third thing about the child-free movement is that it is a, um, it is a
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celebration of narcissism. The people who advocate this lifestyle, they're also advocating a philosophy
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and it's a really terrible philosophy because they are advancing the notion that the key to happiness
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is, is located within our own egos. And so what they're suggesting is that the happiest person is
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the person who is most empowered to kind of indulge and entertain themselves. Person who, who wants to be
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child-free, um, their greatest aim is to keep themselves to themselves, accumulating. Their goal
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is just to accumulate wealth, pleasure, experiences, purely just for their own sake and for no other
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reason. I don't think that's the path to happiness. I think that's the quickest path to despair. And I also
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think that the people who advocate for this path know that it brings to despair because they are in
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despair themselves. The truth is this joy is found through work and love and sacrifice. It cannot be
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found anywhere else. Nobody has ever found it anywhere else. Many people have theorized philosophically
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that you could find it somewhere else. Many people have set out on the mission, on the journey,
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the perilous journey to try to find it somewhere else, but none of them have accomplished the task.
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It's like the fountain of youth or any other mythical treasure that people go out seeking. Uh, this,
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this, this joy, this fulfillment, true happiness that can be found in selfishness. That is the ultimate
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fountain of youth, the ultimate mythical reward that people literally kill themselves trying to find.
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And they never will. All they find out, all they find out there in, in, in that wasteland of materialism
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and self-indulgence is more of the despair that drove them there in the first place. So they try to
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bypass sacrifice and suffering and work to get to joy. But then they discover in the end that they
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bypassed joy at the same time. But what do they do? What do they do? They still come back and tell us
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that, Hey guys, I found the joy. It's over here. Come with me. And they encourage everyone to follow
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them out there into the desert because misery loves company, I guess. But we shouldn't listen to that.
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You don't give up your freedom when you have kids. You may be giving a lot of time. You're giving money.
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You're making sacrifices. You're embracing a life that's going to be in many ways harder,
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but you're not really giving up anything meaningful and you're gaining so much more. As I said, you're
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gaining yourself. You're gaining an entire new identity. There are only a few moments in our life
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when we really become something else than what we were before. There are only a few moments when we
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really change fundamentally to our core. One of those is marriage. One of them is parenthood.
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And that's a beautiful thing. And that's what we should be talking about in our society.
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And that's what we should be celebrating, especially as the birth rate declines and we kind of just
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fall headlong into self-appointed extinction. I think it becomes even more necessary to have a message
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like this. All right, guys, have a great weekend. Thanks for watching.