Children Aren't A Burden

Finding the 'upward spiral' in parenthood

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Children Aren't A Burden

When my wife was pregnant two years ago, we were surprised by the willingness with which parents would speak cynically about their kids. Things like:

“Good luck getting a good night sleep ever again...”

“Enjoy your free time while you have it...”

This wasn’t everyone's immediate reaction. But it became enough of a pattern to start causing us concern, both as new parents and as curious observers.

In the months leading up to our daughter’s birth, we were thrilled, nervous, and introspective. We knew life was about to change. But we couldn’t shake these reactions from other strangers—from other parents. Why was their first impulse upon our news to make it about them and their “missing” lives?

I remember walking up and down our street the day our daughter was born. My wife paused her waddling, took a deep breath, and looked at me: “She’s definately coming today.” I filled the tub with warm water that had replaced our dining room table. The house was clean and candlelit. For the first ninety minutes of her labor, it was just the two of us. I held her, rubbed her back, and applied pressure on her hips to ease the pain. When the midwife arrived, my wife moved to the tub and eventually delivered our daughter on our plastic-covered mattress just after midnight.

The midwife handed her to me first. She was screaming and slimy and kicking erratically. I brought her to my chest and held her for the first seconds of her life. Her cries fell to a whimper, and she looked at me. It was like a veil had opened between myself and eternity. Something small and pure and good. That was the moment my life started over.

Over the next month, I made simple meals, kept the house clean, and managed the influx of family. My wife recovered and adjusted to her new routine: breastfeeding, sleep, post-partum recovery, and changing dirty diapers. The adjustment phase. Typical new parent paranoia (I can’t tell you how many times we woke up in the middle of the night to make sure our perfectly healthy baby was still breathing). But we both “got it”; we became used to the unexpected month-to-month changes, learned to trust our natural instincts as parents, and created household systems to manage day-to-day life.

Each month, our lives became easier, and the initial “burden” of caring for a newborn was shadowed in the light of a new and curious life. I am not going to pretend I know what it’s like to have a rowdy six-year-old or a preteen—I don’t. Our daughter turned one last October, and right now, she is our only child. Nor will I pretend that we’re perfect parents—we’re not

Being a parent is, at times, frustrating. But life, with or without children, guarantees that we carry a burden. If children are such a negative burden, as we’ve been told, what is the alternative that we seek? What happens to our souls and society when we demonize and avoid the burdens that buttress our sense of meaning and fulfillment? The snarky remarks from other parents and eye-rolls we get when our daughter is slowly crossing the street are not signs of “busy people” unable to contain a passing annoyance. They are a real manifestation of something much more insidious. Like most forms of selfish cognitive dissonance, by attempting to always “place ourselves first,” we sever our own power.

The Start of the “Me” Generation

We live in a cult of “me.” Individual desires and impulses have replaced any sense of personal or communal responsibility. This has become so ingrained in our personal and collective psyche that we struggle to recognize it. As a “words guy,” I look toward language as a marker for sense-making. Tell me, which of the following words are often heard through our progenitors of culture: liberated, honor, untamed, self-respect, unconstrained, accountability, freedom, duty?

Much of this current psychological shift was spurned by a sense of “reawakening” amongst baby boomers in the shadow of the Vietnam War, spreading into all aspects of Western life. The inherent necessity of the family became devalued. Our religious and cultural traditions were cast aside for an assortment of beliefs that reflected a universal brotherhood of man. Drugs became a vehicle of self-realization instead of a social taboo. The homemaker was cast aside in favor of the ambitious career woman. State welfare programs incentivized single-parent households. Both the Reconstruction and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal pale in comparison. This period in American history laid the groundwork for a child-averse society. Living life to start a family and nurture the next generation became secondary to the goals of self-realization. Of course, it’s not black or white. Broad trends make sweeping changes. When a culture hits a certain inflection point, it’s hard to revert to old norms or ways of thinking.

What Is A Burden?

In recognizing this pattern, it’s obvious where we’ve chosen to prioritize our moral concerns. To bring back an old phrase: think of the children! Seriously though. How are kids doing today? Not well. You can guess what I mean if you’re reading this (or you have eyes). Education outcomes, physical health, mental health, economic prospects, drug use, social media, the list goes on and on and on. These are not burdens that children have placed on themselves. The responsibility lies at the feet of adults. But we have yet to reach that aforementioned inflection point. We either don’t care enough, or we don’t see any problems. For every person blowing the whistle and doing their small part to change these outcomes, others deflect their empathy elsewhere—towards the real crisis: the environment, social justice, overseas wars, etc. And why shouldn’t they?

This is not a judgment of someone who doesn’t have a child (either willingly or unwillingly). It’s simple game theory. As a younger, childless man, I cared little about education reforms, vaccination schedules, and social media's effect on children. My moral compass was turned toward the wider world: Occupy Wall Street! Free Tibet! Legalize Marijuana! But a nation—a culture—lives and dies at the feet of its children.

Raising a family is low on many people's priority lists, partially because many assume that America has failed to uphold its end of the bargain. There is never a “perfect time” to start a family. Yet we’ve been psy-opped into thinking that modern America, is somehow incomparably worse than any other time in history.

When I was finishing my degree in 2019, I heard the following statements from young (and older) classmates:

“How could you bring a child into the world when we’re destroying the planet?”

“The American nuclear family upholds white supremacy.”

“It’s immoral to focus on one child when you can work to help thousands.”

A heatmap showing directed empathy based on political leanings

These were extreme opinions espoused mostly by kids who had just graduated high school. But they exist on a widespread and variable spectrum. Many young parents still feel as though their kids are a roadblock for their “potential.” But the opposite is true. Children are how you fulfill your potential and how your potential endures.

The argument I’m making isn’t aimed specifically toward “leftists.” Granted, they are an easy target because they shout their revulsion of normalcy from the rooftops and expect us all to take them seriously (we should). The thread I’m asking you to visualize with me is deeper, more concerning, and more evil than we care to admit. We’ve become deeply skeptical and dismissive of humanity in general.

Children are the gateway to an “upward spiral.” With or without kids, routine traps us all. We have to work, eat, and take care of ourselves. Many who swear off having children to maximize “freedom” end up trapped in predictable and self-defeating habits: the same bars, the same short relationships, etc. You start to notice a pattern. These are often the same people who view all responsibility as a form of oppression. They've internalized the modern gospel of endless self-actualization, treating life as an extended adolescence where the highest virtue is the pursuit of personal comfort. The irony is painful to witness. While they “live life to the fullest,” their existence becomes increasingly shallow and repetitive. The Netflix binges blend together. The Uber Eats orders pile up. The Instagram posts of their latest vacation become indistinguishable from the last. They're chasing a mirage of freedom that leaves them more enslaved than any parent changing diapers at 3 AM.

What they fail to grasp is that true freedom isn't the absence of responsibility—it's the willing acceptance of meaningful burdens. When you hold your child for the first time, you're not losing your identity; you're finally discovering what it means to be fully human. The sleepless nights, the endless diaper changes, the financial sacrifices aren't constraints on your freedom. They're the very things that give your freedom purpose.

Our ancestors intuitively understood this. They didn't view children as lifestyle accessories or obstacles to self-fulfillment. They saw them as a sacred duty, a bridge between past and future, a chance to participate in something larger than their own fleeting desires. The modern mindset has inverted this entirely, treating children as either a burden to be avoided or a project to be optimized for maximum personal clout.

The real tragedy isn't just the declining birth rates or the growing number of people choosing pets over parenthood. It's the spiritual poverty that these choices reveal. We've created a culture that views sacrifice as foolish, duty as oppressive, and responsibility as a form of bondage. And in doing so, we've cut ourselves off from the very things that make life worth living.

Cynical parents warning you about lost sleep and sacrificed freedom are telling on themselves. They've absorbed the toxic individualism of our age so completely that they can't see their children as anything but an impediment to their personal happiness. They've missed the profound truth that in losing yourself in service to others—especially your children—you find yourself in ways that no amount of “self-care” or “personal growth” can provide.

This isn't a call for everyone to have children (if you’re in a place to, you should). But it is a plea to recognize what we lose when we frame parenthood primarily in terms of burden and sacrifice. We lose the understanding that some burdens are blessings, that some sacrifices ennoble us, and that some responsibilities free us from self-obsession.

My daughter is going to be two this year. Each morning when she wakes up, babbling and full of wonder at another day, I'm reminded that the “burden” of parenthood is actually the greatest privilege we can be given. It's a chance to participate in creation, to guide another soul through the mysteries of existence, and to rediscover the world through fresh eyes.

Perhaps that's what our child-averse culture fears most—not the sleepless nights, but the confrontation with something larger than ourselves. Something that demands we grow beyond our carefully curated comfort zones and face the magnificent, terrifying responsibility of helping shape another human soul.

The question isn't whether we can afford the burden of children. The question is whether we can afford to lose touch with what makes us most fully human—the willing acceptance of sacred responsibility and the joy of sacrifice in service to something greater than ourselves. Children force you to grow. They force you to bear the burden of your inadequacies.

As always, thanks for reading.

-Joe