No one has to be a parent — but reasons for childlessness can still be immature
I’d be lying if the thought had not flitted across my mind as the night grew old, my daughter still rocking awake in my arms, and a best man’s speech unwritten for the following morning. Perhaps there are some downsides to having kids.
It’s a feeling acknowledged in rueful smiles among most parents I’ve met since becoming a father. Existential bliss aside, the early years of parenting are a trudge through sleep deprivation, contagious illnesses — shitting myself through two bouts of norovirus remains a highlight — and a social calendar centred on soft play rather than the pub.
So I can understand why Jameela Jamil, on the approach to her 40th birthday, has published a punchy essay explaining why she won’t be having kids. “I am asked a minimum of once a week why I don’t want children, and I am maybe writing this just to text it to people rather than having to exhaust myself any longer,” she says.
Such exhaustion is common among progressive activists, perhaps the only group more fatigued than new parents
Such exhaustion is common among progressive activists, perhaps the only group more fatigued than new parents. But it has not stopped Jamil giving a comprehensive list of objections to motherhood. She begins with the fact that pregnancy risks “grave, life altering illness, or death”, before moving through to “the inequity of child bearing and rearing” that is “heaped on women”. Then there is the “absolutely terrible” world outside, with European leaders warning of war with Russia, the new “Big Brother era” of smartphone surveillance, and an online smorgasbord of porn “littered with rape culture”.
“There are just too many people who want to have sex with children,” she adds, which is a point that’s hard to argue with. And who doesn’t frequently “rebuke the poo of others”, whether we are stepping carefully back in public loos or wiping an infant’s bottom?
But while I have sympathy, Jamil nevertheless exhibits many of the worst tendencies of the childfree movement that has gained prominence in recent years. Her hysterical fears, easy prejudices against children, and apparent nihilism come across not as the mature view of a woman approaching her fifth decade, but as petulant, ill-considered and frankly childish.
As jaunty as the essay style is, for much of it it’s plain she isn’t joking. I’m confident she doesn’t care about her bloodline, and is at least ambivalent about the prospect of humanity being “completely forgotten”. Her intolerance towards “malicious double standards and unrealistic expectations of super humandom for women” is evident through the piece, even if you weren’t familiar with her oeuvre as a political activist.
Cynical perhaps, but I think she meant it when she wrote: “I dislike kids”. While this was later amended to merely disliking “the company of children […] out of respect for sensitive parents”, the retreat is unconvincing. The next time Nigel Farage is accused of racism he will want to do better than: “I don’t dislike children, just really dislike being around them.”
That Jamil is one of the woke era’s most obnoxious celebs makes the blindspot around disparaging children all the more bemusing. There are other groups in society who could plausibly be described as “loud”, “messy” and “annoying”, but anyone who said as much would expect Kent Police to be abseiling through the living room window before they’d even had a chance to phone Toby Young for legal advice.
Even as the paranoia around children’s safety ramps ever up, with British schools increasingly resembling Fort Knox, it remains socially acceptable to say you don’t like kids. While the most dehumanising bile against children is reserved for anonymous social media postings, plenty of normies will openly gripe about kids for merely existing in public, spoiling their tranquility in the cafe or rampaging across a park.
Parenthood is also increasingly disparaged, younger generations treating childrearing as a fraught exercise in moral philosophy. How, people like Jamil ask, could you bring a life into such a world? If they’re not conscripted to invade Venezuela they’ll be recruited onto OnlyFans, if they’re not being re-educated in the manner of A Clockwork Orange as their phones force-feed them a diet of misogyny, pornography and pro-natalist propaganda.
Even the less neurotic still view childrearing as one option among many on life’s buffet cart. When feminists like Julie Bindel can describe motherhood as a “lifestyle choice” and “a purely selfish act”, it is hard to maintain that people are being dragooned into raising children. Combined, such views mirror Jamil’s philosophy that “parenthood is largely for people who are desperately broody”.
I believe most people are grateful for having had a chance at life
No parents are perfect; all children will face tragedy in their lives. But at the risk of sounding like an optimist, I believe most people are grateful for having had a chance at life, even if circumstances are less than ideal.
That of course requires adults who embrace responsibility. By Jamil’s own admission, this is her “nightmare”, as seemingly are routines, early mornings or any restrictions on her autonomy. “I am a squeamish, weak, unruly, foul mouthed, anxious, over protective, disorganized, chaotic woman,” she says. “I like who I am and I don’t want to change.”
Not wanting kids is perfectly valid, and most people contribute to society in myriad ways, irrespective of whether they have children. But at the age of 40, a person should be mature enough that they could look after a child if they had to, rather than bragging about being incapable of doing so. The childfree movement could do with growing up.
