European Leaders Share One Very Consequential Characteristic

Quick:  What do the following people have in common?

Emmanuel Macron, president of France

Angela Merkel, German Chancellor

Theresa May, British prime minister

Paolo Gentiloni, Italian prime minister

Mark Rutte, Prime Minister of the Netherlands

Stefan Löfven, Prime Minister of Sweden

Xavier Bettel, Luxembourg’s Prime Minister

Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland

Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission

If you answered that they are all global leaders who collectively represent an amazing amount of influence over our globe, you’re right. But another characteristic they share is that none of them have children.

In a fascinating Washington Examiner article, James McPherson points out that America’s first President, George Washington, had no children either.  But the sheer number of world leaders who have no kids is a startling pattern… one that has consequences:

One of the benefits of parenthood is the daily confrontation with free will—a human nature. Parents may have their child’s life, career, and happiness planned out, but a child has other ideas -constantly. Love, patience, teaching, negotiating, scolding—nurture—can help direct the child, but the overwhelming otherness of the child is undeniable. They are not blank slates upon whom the parent exercises his will.

Political leaders without this experience of parenthood may be susceptible to the idea that people are blank-slates, interchangeable units of human capital. As a parent and a teacher, I have seen many brilliant and well-meaning parents and colleagues crash their will and intellect against the rock of a child’s independent nature. Now, scale such a hubristic paternalism to a nation. Or a continent.

Contemporary childless leaders, however ascendant they feel today, may be the last gasp of secularism. The future is won by those who show up, and only the religiously orthodox are having children.

Those still swimming in the ancient streams of Faith and Culture in France will have the observant offspring of two rival religions living within the borders of one nation. The second Battle of Tours, (or Vienna, or Lepanto) might be extra bloody due to the policies of today, but the authors of those policies will not be around because they will be dead, and their offspring will not be around, because they do not exist.

The Founding Fathers of the United States established the Constitution to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity”, posterity being their offspring. Looking out for one’s posterity, having a long-term vision, is necessary for the good of society, according to Harvard Political Scientist James Wilson. Do childless political leaders have skin in the game long-term?

In Europe today, those without progeny are enacting policies that impact the posterity of others.

In other words, the entire European continent is being led by leaders with no care for the future. When you don’t have children, the next generation really doesn’t seem all that important.

This explains a lot. 

Image Credit: Wikipedia