Terror attacks. Natural disasters. Climate change. And there’s always a war. It can be scary to consider what the present, let alone the future, holds for our kids.
I don’t think there’s a dad who hasn’t wondered ‘what kind of world am I bringing a child into?’ I know I did — and the thing is, looking at it generationally, I was bringing kids into a relatively stable world.
Sure, it was post 9/11 — terrorism was supposed to be a constant and horrible threat. Plus the environment is apparently turning to shit so fast that we’ll either be baked to death or become some sort of human-plastic hybrid in the next 20 years.
There’s a sense of what I think we should call “breeder’s guilt”. While we’re happy to become dads (because that’s a biological imperative that’s built into the DNA of the vast majority of the population), we all know that the world we live in is a shit show right now … so is it right to bring a new life into a future we know nothing about?
The world at war
Pretty much every generation over the past 200 years has had a bit of a shit time of things — some, arguably, worse than others.
If you’re just becoming a dad now (unless you’re Mick Jagger, to whom time and sperm motility doesn’t seem to matter), your old man was either born during WWII, or you had a grandfather who found himself somewhere in Europe or Africa fighting the Nazis or closer to home against the Japanese.
If you’re younger than me (which is a safe bet), your old man might have survived a trip to Vietnam, well before Ho Chi Minh managed to give the USA the spanking of a lifetime.
Or there’s a good chance that your folks brought you to Australia, or made their way here, in search of a better life in the “Lucky Country”.
Hell … you might have even served already in the military yourself. Iraq. Afghanistan. Or you might have gotten lucky. Like I did.
My dad was born at the tail end of WWII. I was born at the tail end of the Vietnam War. The last member of my family who was in the military was my grandfather — and I don’t know if he ever saw active duty.
But I’ve met a lot of men who have fought. Some of them had kids … and those who did, that I’ve spoken to about this, have asked the same thing — ‘What kind of world am I bringing a child into?’
It’s not just the fighters
The other side of my family, on the mother of my sons’ side, are from eastern Europe.
Those who survived WWII have seen shit the likes of which I can’t even begin to imagine — and my two sons have a great-aunt who was born in a Nazi concentration camp.
She and her folks arrived in Australia as refugees, with the equivalent of about $8 in their pocket. And they toughed it out, built themselves a new life, had another daughter — and my sons were gifted a grandmother.
To think about what they went through, and yet still there was the desire to breed and have children despite the horrors around them, tells a story.
Fast forward
I’d thought quite a lot about whether or not I wanted to have kids, despite living what was essentially an idyllic life in Australia — thousands of miles away from countries where military rule, civil unrest and daily murders were a problem.
I haven’t lived through a ‘major’ war. I’ve seen a few of them on TV, and I’ve never picked up a gun or volunteered to fight for my country. Make of that what you will.
But I was very much alive and present when global terrorism became a thing. I remember when 9/11 happened. I was listening to the car radio when I heard that there’d been some sort of accident in New York, and a plane had hit a building.
By the time I’d parked the car, gotten inside and turned on the TV I figured something wasn’t right. When the second plane hit the second tower, I knew things had changed forever.
Since that day, the “threat of terrorism” has been drilled into everyone — even the luckiest of us who get to live in Australia, so far removed from where the vast majority of it is taking place.
But even then, I thought to myself “If this is the way the world’s going to be, is it the right thing to do to have a child?”
It’s not all about car bombs and gunfire
I know, I know … bringing up 9/11 is a pretty extreme example. But to be honest, I’d been thinking about whether it was a responsible thing to do to bring a baby into a world that seemed like it was rapidly unravelling.
Climate change was well on the radar by the time I started to breed.
As were the growing social problems of increasingly strong illicit drugs, rampant alcoholism, domestic violence and the rest of world’s small-scale social dramas that constantly threaten to derail any family they can reach.
My own battles with all of those are well-documented. But, here I am — a father of two kids, staring into the future of a world that I thought I understood, and quietly shitting myself because I don’t know how far south any of this is going to go before we figure out how to fix it.
There are two things I will never regret
I’ve done a lot of stupid shit in my lifetime. Hell, I’m still doing a couple of them right now.
But despite my own stupidity, and despite the fact that I look at the world I’m living in and almost constantly wonder what the everlasting f*ck is actually going on, I can understand what it was that drove the generations before us to keep having kids.
No matter how shitty things are, we’re driven to breed. And I don’t mean to make light of the challenges that I believe that we’re all facing — locally, or globally — but the drive to have kids will always be there. Which comes with the “breeder’s guilt” that a number of dads will experience.
Whether you’re bringing a child into a warzone, a famine, or a life in suburban Australia that you’re not sure you’re quite prepared to deal with … the feeling is the same.
And that’s the thing we all need to tap into.
I know I’ve let my kids down over the years. I’m far from the perfect dad, but as crazy or f*cked up as the world around us gets, I know one thing for sure. I did the right thing by becoming a father, and I will do the very best that I can to make sure that was the best decision I’ve ever made.
So what does the future hold for my kids?
My eldest is getting to the age where he’s beginning to pick up on things that are a little above his pay grade. Which is made easier because his dad has either got the TV or radio tuned to news services every waking hour.
He’s asked me some difficult questions about some difficult topics, and I’ve done my best to answer them without scaring the shit out of him about what life might be like when it’s his turn to become a dad.
The truth is that I have absolutely no idea what the future holds.
So the best I can do is raise him to be resilient. Both my boys are tough little buggers, so I’m sure they’ll be able to cope, provided I do the right thing, and I teach them as best as I can.
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