The Southern Baptist Convention – the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, and one that is largely in the Trump camp – is holding their annual meeting this week. Per this report by the Associated Press, they are condemning gambling, pornography, women pastors, and marriage equality.
In other news, water is wet and Texas is hot.
What is different this time is a resolution condemning “willful childlessness which contributes to a declining fertility rate.”
Willful childlessness – what a phrase.
What an arrogant, presumptive, offensive phrase.
I know they’re mainly talking about – and at – women (more on that later) but I take this personally… and you should too, even if you aren’t a woman, and even if you are a good and willing parent.
I am willfully childless
I never wanted children.
I don’t like children. I didn’t like children when I was a child – I couldn’t wait to grow up. I don’t like them any more now.
I don’t hate children. I remember being a child and I remember how badly adults treated me (dismissively, restrictively, intimidatingly) – and those were the “good” adults. I try to do better with the children I encounter, to treat them with dignity and respect. I appreciate my brief interactions with thoughtful and inquisitive children… and I especially appreciate that those interactions are brief. I do my best to tolerate children who are not thoughtful, because it’s not their fault they’re children. I save my anger for parents who put children in places where they aren’t capable of handling themselves, who have no idea how to parent or the desire to try.
I would have been a reluctant, unenthusiastic parent. I would have done the best I could because that’s the right thing to do, but I would have resented every moment of it. Short of something tragic, I can’t imagine anything that would make my life more miserable than having children around me all the time.
[And if your idea of fatherhood is the Elon Musk model of “make a bunch of genetic copies of yourself and then ignore them unless you need to use them as a prop” you’re a bad person who should never be allowed to reproduce.]
If you like children and you like having children, I’m happy for you. I am willfully childless and that was absolutely the right decision for me.
And for my wife? She has two older brothers who both had multiple early failed marriages with children. She was a teenage mother without ever giving birth. By the time we met, the glamor of motherhood was long gone. We discussed children before we got married and decided “maybe someday.” “Someday” never came and we’re both good with it.
And now the Southern Baptist Convention wants to condemn us and millions like us – including some in their own denomination – for being “willfully childless”?
As in so many other areas of life, the SBC needs to stop pretending they know what’s best for everyone and concentrate on cleaning up their own house.
The world doesn’t need more children
Childlessness was the right decision for me because I didn’t want children. But childlessness was also the right decision because the world doesn’t need more children.
The second half of the resolution complains about a “declining fertility rate.” This is only half true. Yes, birthrates in Europe, North America, and East Asia are below replacement level – the rate needed to maintain a stable population. But world population is still growing because fertility rates are still high in other parts of the world, especially in Africa.
Of course, those babies aren’t the right color for some folks. “Replacement theory” is still very much alive with the far right, especially the MAGA right.
For much of the 20th century, we thought we were headed for an overpopulation disaster. China’s one child policy attempted to address that (something China is now trying to reverse) but the West found something better and more effective: empowering women. It turns out that when women get to choose how many children they have – or if they have them – they tend to have fewer.
In a just world, that would be the end of the debate. People who can become pregnant and have children choose to have fewer children, so the world has fewer children. The rest of us adjust… like we’ve been adjusting to an exploding population for the past century or so.
Fewer children and an aging population does present a challenge for caring for the elderly – something that’s in the front of my mind as I near retirement. I have a plan, and I suggest you have one as well, even if you’re much younger. Having recently lived through my mother’s final years, I’m not particularly enamored with our current system. We can do better.
What is certain is that the human population cannot continue to grow indefinitely. That’s a question the “pro-natalists” refuse to contemplate. At some point, the slope of the curve has to at least flatten. Better it flattens and declines organically than because of true overpopulation.
Trying to reverse fundamental rights
The actuarial problem of a falling birth rate is only part of why the SBC is condemning “willful childlessness.” The other part is their desire to undo over a century’s worth of progress by the women’s movement and the sexual revolution.
It isn’t so much that empowered women and LGBTQ people are having fewer children, it’s that they’re upending what the SBC sees as the “divinely created order.” They think their God wants men in charge of running the world, women responsible for childcare and housework and anything else men don’t want to do, and LGBTQ people back in the closet.
And frighteningly, they believe this idea is “binding on all persons, in all times, everywhere.”
Don’t want to have children? Too bad. Our God says you have to have them.
Have dreams for your life that don’t involve children? Too bad. Our God says this is your only purpose.
Don’t want to have the kind of sex that makes children? Too bad. Our God says that’s the only kind of sex that’s permissible.
Find yourself inadvertently or unwillingly pregnant, or in a pregnancy that might destroy your life? Too bad. Our God says you have to carry it to term. Of course, after that you’re on your own.
And because some people can’t think strategically and won’t vote for imperfect candidates – when they bother to vote at all – the SBC and their allies and enablers have more power than they’ve had in 50 years and they’re gunning for more.
Your body, your life, your choice
There are plenty of Christians who do not share this arrogant and abusive line of thinking. I’ll let them address this from their perspective.
I’m a Pagan. My Gods have asked many things of me – reproducing is not one of them. Since I will not be an ancestor of blood, they have impressed on me the importance of being a good ancestor of spirit, and of leaving this world a better place than I found it.
Those ignorant of Paganism often talk of “fertility religions” but my Gods have emphasized the need to not overrun the carrying capacity of the Earth. The human species is in no danger of dying out from lack of reproduction, and we are already crowding other species into extinction.
I am willfully childless and I’m proud of it. The Earth doesn’t need more humans so I didn’t make more. Mainly I didn’t want children and so I didn’t have any.
If you made a different decision and you’re happy with it, I’m happy for you. I’m always glad when someone who shares my values chooses to reproduce.
If you made a different decision and you’re not happy with it, or if you wanted children but couldn’t have them, I’m sorry. I wish you well as you do the best you can.
If a different decision was forced on you or coerced out of you, I’m angry. I want to help build a society where that never happens again.
The choice to have children or to not have children is one of the most personal decisions any of us can make. It must always remain with the individual, and never with the church or the state.
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