The ‘Frictionless’ Future Of Choosing The Child-Free Life Isn’t All Smooth Sailing

There are certain things we just expect human beings to do, features of ordinary life, such as having friends, growing up, getting a job, and becoming responsible adults.

But one of those expectations — having children — is in startling decline. On social media, young couples openly boast about trading childbearing for the opportunity to travel. In a now-deleted tweet, Louisville’s main venue, the KFC Yum! Center, advertised its concert offerings set against the “drag” of caring for little ones: “9 Months from now you could be at a concert or changing a diaper.” Think of the subtle cues that such messaging conveys: children prevent adults from living a truly fulfilled life. It would be easy to blame the Left for its anti-family propaganda, but if we are honest, this is not a problem that can be blamed on progressivism alone: our entire cultural imagination has been reshaped around a conception of the good life incompatible with children.

More people are now paying attention to what scholars call a “birth dearth.” Elon Musk mentions it frequently. According to the Financial Times, in more than two-thirds of countries, the fertility rate is now below the “replacement” rate. In 2024, the U.S. fertility rate dropped to an all-time low. According to a 2024 Pew survey, of the 47% of adults under 50 who expressed a preference for not having children, 44% in that group attributed the sentiment to a “focus on other things such as their career or interests.”

The West, in general, and America, in particular, are in the grips of a fertility crisis. The settled expectation that young adults would marry and have children is in retreat, replaced by a vision of an unbothered, hassle-free life shorn of diaper changes and the daily demands of interruption and discipline.

But to forgo children is to abandon an essential component of the well-lived life. The call to procreate is so central to our nature as human beings that Genesis 1 opens with the command to be fruitful and multiply. Absent a call to celibacy, not to marry and have children, according to Scripture, is to repudiate a central calling of the human species — to bring forth children for the continuity of civilization. Is it any wonder, then, that Scripture declares children a “heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate” (Ps. 127:3-5). Scripture’s vision of children is one of joy and abundance — heritage, reward, and arrows in the hand of a warrior.

But here is the truth we need to sit with: the cost of having children is worth the presence of children. It is hard to convey this truth apart from the experience of having your own children, of resting in the quiet contentment that comes from seeing your child smile or accomplish a feat they thought themselves incapable of. But when these experiences occur, every parent knows: there is no price too high for the wonder of watching children do the most ordinary things.

I am dumbstruck at how our society thinks of children as a costly, time-consuming drag. What this reveals is not only an anti-natalist worldview. It reveals a much greater reality — an impoverished imagination. The imagination of modern man envisions the good life as unencumbered, marked by flexibility, mobility, and detachment. But consider what we lose with the absence of children:

No vacation can hold your hand in hospice.

The Ritz-Carlton cannot give you grandchildren.

Concerts cannot give you the beautiful ache of watching children grow.

No amount of mimosas at brunch can walk with you through a diagnosis.

No double income fills the empty chairs at your dinner table.

It is into this void that Christians and conservatives can speak a better word to our society. As the New York Times’ Ross Douthat recently mentioned, at a time when modern progressivism cannot persuade human beings to do the most elemental thing civilization requires — to marry and have children — conservatives have an opportunity to offer an alternative vision — one that celebrates the beauty of children, the goodness of small acts of obligation and care, and the quiet satisfaction that outlasts any vacation or designer clothing.

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Andrew T. Walker is associate professor of Christian Ethics and Public Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and managing editor of WORLD Opinions. He is a fellow at The Ethics and Public Policy Center.