Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

An Advantage of Childlessness

Our parents and relatives cared about us enough to judge us, sometimes justly, sometimes unjustly. They understood us and they didn't. Their intentions were mainly good, but their misunderstanding was a burden. They were wrapped up in their own lives and troubles; ours were relatively unreal to them. "What do you have to worry about?" a parent may say to a child drifting in the horse latitudes of teenage alienation, aimlessness, and cognitive dissonance. With their passing our burden of their misunderstanding was lifted. And they too were lifted — beyond the reach of our critical judgments. 

Childlessness has this advantage: there is no one left to judge us. We are free. I am not an anti-natalist. I am merely pointing out an advantage to having reached a temporal 'space' in which some of us are safe from being boxed-in by the judgments of  well-meaning but uncomprehending kith and kin.  


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