Ew! Kids.

Kings and Queens of Vulgaria

Today, I was just walking into Hobby Lobby, that bastion of Christian far-right white nationalism (I jest), and heard the tale end of a conversation between a southern gal and a southern guy cashier who looked to be the male reincarnation of Twiggy—very slight, exceeding skinny. This is what I heard:

Southern Gal: Kids are so nasty!

Southern Twiggy Guy: I know! (cups his hands around his mouth conspiratorially to whisper) That’s why I don’t want any.

Good Christian woman that I am, I thought to myself, “Don’t think you have to worry about that, buddy.” And I didn’t feel bad about this in the slightest.

Kids? Yuck!

This anti-kid, anti-natalist sentiment has become more and more common over the last twenty or so years, but I don’t think that in the history of the United States, anyone has ever felt quite so emboldened to say these things loudly in a public space as much as they do in our current moment. Such sentiments have generally met with disapproval for most of our history. We have always thought that people who expressed them had something amiss in their character—possibly villainously amiss. (I still think that, by the way.)

So, I can only assume the reason I’m hearing these things from people on the regular is because anti-natalism is experiencing a groundswell of support from more people than you might think. Anti-natalists believe that it’s selfish to have children, because the planet or something. I suppose if you think it’s immoral to have children, and you know that other people think the same way, then it would also be easy to let snide nasty comments about how disgusting kids are slip out now and then.

However, I do want to be fair. While I think the growing anti-kid sentiment is vile, short-sided, yet illuminating in a sad and disturbing way, I think there are some valid reasons why this is happening. Parents should take note of these.

A Lot of Kids are Undisciplined Brats

Well, I said that.

A lot of children are incredibly unpleasant to be around. I meet unpleasant, bratty children all the time. They don’t listen to instructions, they are mean, they are destructive, they are loud when they should be quiet, they throw screeching temper tantrums, they do not respect the boundaries of others, they do not speak respectfully when spoken to, they talk smack, and they have no clue how to sit still and not cause a disturbance in any numbers of situations where life requires it. And none of it is their fault. Their parents have failed them.

Stories abound of flights made miserable by some kids’ back to back temper tantrums, or kicking the backs of the seats of the people in front of them and the parents doing nothing to intervene. I, myself, have experienced this. Public school teachers are quitting in droves because kids are awful and teachers are not allowed to use any meaningful form of discipline with real consequences. You can look up Teacher Therapy on YouTube for more on this.

Why is this? Well, it’s partly because parents have overwhelmingly denied that their children are born sinners: read “sociopaths.” Even Christian parents who should know better.

Yup, I said that.

These little hell raisers cannot magically transform from sociopathic monster to conscientious adult by themselves. That’s what parents are for. And while it’s lovely how compassionate we are becoming these days, this transformation won’t happen by parents being gently "present” while their children have “big feelings.” “Big feelings” is code for temper tantrum. No, this transformation tends to happen most effectively when parents love, nourish, and correct, discipline, and apply punishment for bad behavior. That’s the problem, you see, because words like correction, discipline, and punishment give the current crop of evolved parents hives. Gentle parenting and other garbage parenting styles are all the rage right now. They are the most marvelous birth control methods out there, because they create brats. And nobody wants those.

Yep, I said that, too.

Not long ago, I stumbled upon this wonderful two-part article series by Annie the Nanny. I love how she systematically broke down all the issues (of which there are Legion) with Gentle Parenting as a model. She should know. Gentle Parents come knocking on her door when they have nowhere to turn with their kids’ severe behavioral issues. Part 1 is called Why Gentle Parenting Will Make You and the Kids Miserable, and Part 2 is called Why Gentle Parenting Often Results in a Trainwreck. I highly recommend that you read both. One of the best takeaways from these articles is thus:

Any decent parent understands that a child’s needs are of paramount importance, but can the same be said about their child’s feelings? In gentle parenting, there is really no differentiation between feelings and needs. They are, for all intents and purposes, the same. But are they? The truth is that there is a huge difference between acknowledging and responding to a child’s feelings about having their finger caught in the door and acknowledging and responding in the same way when they scream and have a total fit, perhaps deciding to throw a couple of items off the counter because they can’t have a cookie.

Take it away, Annie! I think she’s marvelous.

All the above aside…

…Anti-natalism is Still Nefarious

Because without kids, we all kind of…die out. Of course, with true, rabid anti-natalism that’s a feature not a bug. We’re killing the planet, don’tcha know? They make it sound so virtuous. “We must refrain from indulging our urges to procreate, so we can save the planet!” But I think it’s just a cover for less responsibility and more self-indulgence. And then, of course, there’s all those people up at the World Economic Forum who can’t stop themselves from uttering the word “depopulation” every other minute. They mean to neuter us all, by George, whether we like it or not.

Ew. Anti-natalists.

When my little brother and I were nasty, disgusting little kids, one of our favorite movies was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. This annoyed our parents and older siblings, and if you’ve seen the movie, you’d know why. But because they loved us, they let us watch it over and over and over again. In case you’ve never seen it, here’s the synopsis: A widower and his two children restore an old car to its former glory and name it Chitty Chitty Bang Bang after the sounds its engine makes. Turns out, this car also has magical abilities. One fateful day, Dad, kids, and Truly Scrumptious (the eligible daughter of the local candy maker whom said widower is a bit sweet on) go for a picnic by the seaside. Little did they know, that the emperor and his two evil emissaries from the villainous kingdom of Vulgaria, have sailed the seas to come and steal the magic car and are just now reaching England’s fair and pleasant lands at the very beach the innocent family sits.

Anyway, the cannons start firing and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang flies the hapless innocents into the air and out of danger…only to land in Vulgaria, itself! Vulgaria is eerily quiet, the sounds of children playing and laughing absent. Children are not allowed in Vulgaria, you see, because the Queen is terrified of them in much the same way as one might be terrified of a cockroach or a rat.

She and the emperor have appointed a child catcher to lure any stray children into his prison cart with lollypops, then deposit them into the dungeon beneath the castle. See the child catcher below:

What an ugly mug.

Anyway, while the children are languishing underneath the castle on moldy bread and water, the adults up above live a never-ending party. Jewels, spectacular feasts, outlandish gowns, bizarre hair, and dances that gesture to the macabre…

…and the longer I recall this imaginary society, the more it kind of sounds like Hollywood. Anyway.

As you might expect, the two children are taken by the child catcher. Dad and Truly Scrumptious find a way into the dungeon and hatch a wild plot to spring all the children out and put down the evil reign of the king and queen of Vulgaria. I do remember, as a kid, the sense of vindication as dirty little urchins busted out of jail and swarmed the castle to the horror of all the hoity-toity elites. And oh, the poetic justice of watching the child catcher get surrounded by his victims and then tangled up in his own nets he used to catch them! It was sublime.

Dad, kids, and Truly Scrumptious climb aboard Chitty Chitty Bang Bang who flies them home. Dad gets the girl, and they all live happily ever after.

I know this is all quite long-winded. But I have to recount this in order to say, that for the last while, every time I hear some girl boss declaring her emancipation from child bearing and her relish for infertile sex, this movie immediately springs to mind.

“I do not want children,” she declares with the resoluteness of a GI Joe planting the flag on Iwo Jima under heavy gun fire.

And I say, “I as you wish, my Queen.”

Anti-natalists are Kings and Queens of Vulgaria. It doesn’t matter how much they dress up these silly ideas with the appearance of virtue, it’s villainous.

Best case scenario, they have a fatal and unpardonable attachment to doom’s day scenarios. I say unpardonable because they deny themselves hope by denying the birth of hope through their bodies. Because that’s what children are. They are hope. Some child they were too despondent to have, might be the one to discover a new way to harness energy that no one’s thought of yet which might be the replacement to fossil fuels.

Worst case scenario, these anti-natalist are the uppity sort that like to hang out in Davos, Switzerland trying to finesse new and ingenious ways to make us peasants toe the line. They like control. They want to control the world. And they want to decrease the population by a lot. They haven’t made a secret of this. You can watch their forums. You can read their books. They are obsessed with depopulation. Question is, what lengths would they go to in order to make that happen in the short amount of time they say it needs to happen?

And to the girl bosses and the weak men out there who don’t want children, I just want to ask you if it makes you the slightest bit uneasy that your desires seem to align so perfectly with the plans of the world’s super villains like Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates? Do you ever wonder if, maybe you’ve been brainwashed? Do you ever wonder if you’re just a useful idiot? Because I certainly do. I wonder about you a lot.

“Now, just a minute!” you say. “You just got done talking about how terrible kids are these days. Now you’re acting like they’re all innocent and wonderful. Which way is it?”

It’s both. Children are adorable little monsters. They are innocent, in the sense that they are inexperienced in evil deeds. They do not have the capability or opportunity to pull off a mass murder. However, if you’ve never looked into the eyes of a child throwing a temper tantrum and got scared by what you saw there…well, maybe you’re more naive than the child. Because I have seen a mighty, angry will there which would do serious bodily harm if it were housed in a body strong enough to accomplish that.

At the same time, children are utterly delightful, especially when things are going the way they want them to go.

“Then why do you call children hope?”

They are the embodiment of hope. Absolutely.

I am an aunt of fifteen kids, two of which are not born yet. My first niece was born when I was twelve and I had the unique opportunity to spend a lot of time with my nieces and nephews since I was still underage and didn’t have a lot of major life responsibilities. I spent a lot of time babysitting them, playing with them, making doll clothes for them, telling them stories, playing “tickle monster,” and lots of other fun stuff. But I saw them clearly. I couldn’t pretend they were little angels because I saw plenty of their ugly, too.

I’ll tell you what has been one of the greatest privileges of my life: watching them become blessings.

Many of my nieces and nephews are now adults. One’s a nurse. One is an engineer. One is a reseller online. Two of them raise dahlias and puppies. One working a job that requires early mornings and manual labor. He is saving his money instead of blowing it on fluff because he wants to get married, provide for, and raise a family someday. Two are farmer boys working the soil with their dad. I watched all of these individuals go from adorable sociopathic monsters to conscientious adults. But more than that, I watched them meet the Savior and repent of their sins. I see how they read and study their Bibles. I see how the Holy Spirit speaks to them through the Word and how they listen to Him. This is because of the grace of God, first. But second, because they all had parents who wanted them, disciplined them and discipled them in the way they should go.

Children can be a blessing and not a curse. They are worth it.

Unlike Twiggy guy, I do want children. So does my husband. That’s been the case since day one of our marriage. But we don’t always get what we want, do we? The reason we have none is because God has not given them, not because we don’t want them.

To those who insist they do not want children, please don’t let fear rob you of the opportunity to bring hope into the world. After a certain biological point, you can’t change your mind, and that childlessness will be permanent.

Then again, if you really think children are nothing but nasty impositions, maybe it’s all for the best? All hail, Vulgaria.

That’s all for now. Until next time, folks…