Why Gen Z doesn’t want kids

[Pooky]

I might be wrong, but I have feeling, we are getting out of the mass psychosis. I would just add, it would be nice to return to not wearing phone head-sets on public, greet everyone either with “Good day” or “Hi” and learn to make small talk. Like: “How is the weather?” or “How was your day?” or “Did you see the last fotball match?”.

This is what all we need, to restore normal society functioning again, after it was crypled via the smart-phones and social network madness.

Link to article: https://unherd.com/2024/07/why-gen-z-doesnt-want-kids/

Then, and most shockingly of all, a friend from uni tells me she really just wants to quit her job and have a baby. Notably, she is in the position to: she married our other neighbour in our first-year corridor. I, conversely, went out with a boy from the next block over, a relationship with decidedly less longevity. I splutter, I spit feathers: whaaaat! But women fought for us to… and we must stand on an equal foot… and we must engage with the public sphere… It all fell on deaf ears. She was resolute. Work is hard and boring, she says. “I just want to stay at home.”

Despite my heightened antennae for all things maternal — probably something to do with that dastardly biological clock — the idea of wanting to peace out of the rat race and start a family sends a shiver down my spine. It goes against everything I was taught: at my notoriously gung-ho girls’ school, our headmistress memorably delivered an entire assembly on not having kids too young (and when we do, to give birth standing up). I realise now that much of my twenties has been shaped by slick career-girl editorials in glossy magazines, or countless sitcoms in which protagonists endure messy romances season after season, living as petrified teenage girls. Our culture is shot through with aspirational Peter Pan fantasies about chaotic young adulthood: can you name a song about falling in love? Now, name one about being a mother. We infantilise ourselves constantly: we’re “just girls” who do “girl math” while eating “girl dinner” before a “hot girl walk”.