Saying ‘You Shouldn’t Have Kids If You Can’t Provide for Them’ Is Too Simplistic an Argument

Are children the latest luxury item?

In a previous essay, I outlined how using your kids as unpaid help is an example of of parentification. A form of emotional abuse or neglect where a child becomes the caregiver to their parent or sibling. With researchers finding that while it can result in both positive and negative outcomes in individuals. There is a link between parentification, substance abuse and eating disorders.

With other research finding that in addition to upending the development process of the child, this role reversals can leave deep emotional scars and mental health issues well into adulthood.

However, the more I sat with the topic the more I began to see the bigger issue. While I do believe you shouldn’t have kids if you haven’t got the means to provide for them. It is a very condescending idea due to capitalism.

Are Children The Latest Luxury Item?

The annual Liverpool Victoria cost of child report calculated the cost of raising a child- from birth to 21 years old- to be on average £231.863. Making it more expensive than the average semi-detached house.

They found that due to the cost of childcare and babysitting, the most expensive years were between ages one and four. Childcare costs increased by 4.3% and they found on a separate research project that 6 in 10 ask their family and relatives to help.

It has been said it takes a village to raise a child. However, in our modern capitalist society does it also now take wealth?

Across the pond, research points to a similar trend. The costs of having a child between 2000 and 2010 have increased by 40%. With the average American family spending from birth till 17, on average $233.610 on child costs (college not included). Not to mention there is a cost to giving birth.

So it is no wonder why parents are having to look inward for help. It has been said it takes a village to raise a child. However, in our modern capitalist society does it also now take wealth?

As someone who doesn’t want children, it is very easy for me to say ‘just don’t have them.’ I don’t gush or get broody when around them. If a doctor was to tell me I was interfile, I would accept my diagnosis happily. However, there are those who go through painstaking lengths for a child. From putting their relationships, emotional wellbeing and even finances in jeopardy.

Shouldn’t my rage be directed our capitalist world that has monetised reproduction? I may not want them, but is it fair for those who do, but can’t afford them, to simply not be allowed?

We should instead realise everyone deserves the chance to be a parent (if they chose to) but ask why society isn’t taking more responsibility in assisting them? It is not the people’s fault the system they live in is inefficient and unable to sufficiently support them.

Reproduction and parenthood are often at the centre of, or deeply politicised in, most dystopian fictions. But we need to realise the reality of what is currently happening. Government sterilisation of those without the means to provide for children may sound far fetched now. But I am sure people reading the ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by Margaret Atwood in 1985 thought the same thing until the recent backtracking of abortion laws.

With the; privatisation of health, the digitalisation of childhood and the increase in babysitting and college costs. Who is to say, after years of seeing children raised in poverty/ adults negatively affected by their childhood. We wouldn’t see setting a reproductive benchmark, as the right thing to do for ‘the good of the children’?

While I am sure my parents did the best they could do, their best was not good enough. However, I do not put the blame solely on them. We need to watch our language in these discussions. Because the monetisation of reproduction is an issue with possibly catastrophic ramifications.

Instead of saying people shouldn’t have children if they can’t provide or support them properly. We should instead realise everyone deserves the chance to be a parent (if they chose to) but ask why society isn’t taking more responsibility in assisting them?

It is not the people’s fault the system they live in is inefficient and unable to sufficiently support them.

ZUVA is an award-winning Leeds based spoken word artist, poet and freelance writer. Click here to join her weekly mail list to get her — Comprehensive Guide for True Beginners — Things I Wish I Knew Before Publishing My First Piece. It contains over 16 articles by 12 different authors on everything you need to know before publishing your first piece here.

She is the editor of An Injustice! A intersectional millennial publication. Check here for now to join!

More examples of her work;