Why Are the Childless So Angry?

Are you worried about the epidemic of childlessness among the educated elites of Europe and North America? Do you cudgel your brain wondering why your liberal friends are so often childless, or as we might say, exhibiting advanced symptoms of Child Deficit Disorder?

Clearly, one of the accompanying syndromes is Unprovoked Liberal Outrage.

Why else would the childless respond with such rage to an advice column by Slate’s Dear Prudence, Emily Yoffe. After all, what is so exceptional about saying to a childless woman in her 30s, about to get married, and intending to remain childless,

You are about to get married, and as life's circumstances change, it is worth re-examining your goals, especially this one (and yes, I know, I am offending all happy childless people).

No! How dare she!

I expected my answer would annoy people, but I was surprised by the fury of the response. You would think my reply was the equivalent of running around the streets with a turkey baster full of sperm, impregnating happy childless women.

The point is: Why should those childless people care? It’s just a life-style choice, isn’t it? Different people have different values, right? You can choose your own life path, and you can share your ideas about life paths with other people, agreed?

When people disagree violently in this way, then they are telling you that you have threatened their world view or, dare we say, their religious beliefs. They are communicating rather clearly that childlessness is not just a life-style but something more. Or at least they are telling the world that the question of children is a very sore spot for them. Yoffe says it delicately.

What is going on when there is so much scorn for parenthood — the way a society perpetuates itself?

Because what could be more important than “the way a society perpetuates itself?”

Or to make things a bit personal, what could be more important than the way you perpetuate yourself. Some people have given a name to this business of self-perpetuation. They call it immortality.

Other people call it Beautiful Bouncing Babies. But what do they know?

After all, how many babies have you seen bouncing lately (Britney’s excepted)?