Apparently, US chapters of a group called “No Kidding” have increased from 2 to 47 over the past five years. These people express a backlash against children, objecting to the noise, disruption, and inconvenience that children bring to their lives. They feel work place pressure because colleagues with young children get leaves and flexible hours. And they object to paying taxes to support other people’s children. Describing themselves as “child-free,” some use offensive language to express their views, calling parents “breeders”; children “brats” and “sprogs”; and neighborhoods with families “child-infested.”
I can sympathize with aspects of the “child-free” view of life and the world. If you don’t want to have children, your mother shouldn’t nag you to make her a grandmother, and your friends shouldn’t hassle you abut your choice. Nor should doctors subject you to paternalistic lectures if you choose sterilization. It’s easy to agree as well, that there are some times and places---expensive restaurants and operatic performances come to mind---where young children should not be.
But these people are missing something big. I’m not saying they are missing big experiences in life---pregnancy, birth, the first tooth, the toddler’s breathless wonder at bugs and leaves, bed-time stories, the imaginative charm of early drawings, the first day at school, the charming passion of early friendships, the teenage confidences, the high school grad…I’m glad I was lucky enough to have these experiences. But whether others choose to have them is their business, not mine.
When I say this backlash movement misses something big, I mean something else. These people are making a fundamental mistake about society itself. Society is spread over time and requires more than one generation. We just won’t have a society unless some people have and raise children. We won’t have a social world unless some people get pregnant and give birth, and they---many others---go on to love, care for, and educate children. Having children is not a matter of egoistic self-indulgence, but rather a condition of life itself.
In the Middle Ages, fervent Christians thought celibacy a virtue. But the strange consequence of this view is that if everyone practiced this “virtue” there would be no society at all. The nineteenth century Shaker sect disappeared for this reason. It survives in hymns like “It’s a gift to be simple”---now often sung by choirs of non-Shaker children.
Because society needs children, some sharing of the work and costs of raising and educating them is perfectly reasonable. If nobody has children, thirty or forty years from now, there will be no one to provide medical and dental care, hospitals, roads---or even opera and restaurants---for aging people, including those who now label themselves “child-free.” In fact, those people owe a big debt to parents. Some day they are going to need the work and services of these children whose rearing takes so much love and energy and plain hard work.
I promise not to bore you with stories about my children or grandchildren. But please respect parents for their hard work---and please understand that children are necessary for life itself.
(This article was taken from Govier’s textbook, A Practical Study of Argument, sixth edition. She adds the following: Rose Kemp is an Alberta writer. This essay was read on CBC Commentary on July 28, 2000.)
*This is all I could think of, not sure if it is correct or not.
1. Society is spread over time and requires more than one generation (premise)
2. . We won’t have a society unless some people have and raise children. (premise)
3. Society is spread over time and requires more than one generation (premise)
4. Because society needs children, some sharing of the work and costs of raising and educating them is perfectly reasonable (sub-argument)
5. Having children is not a matter of egoistic self-indulgence, but rather a condition of life itself. (conclusion)
Standardizing