What turns out not to be the top thing to do while living in a collapsing empire on a rapidly warming planet during a global plague? Having a baby!
According to the latest data comparing birth rates from December 2019 to December 2020, COVID caused a baby bust, not boom. The authors of the report I read joked that not even a lockdown could convince Americans to procreate.
The research made the rounds on Twitter, where the commenters reacted how you might expect. We have no money! We have no jobs! We have no health care! We are LITERALLY dying! And so is the planet!
Per usual, some even compared having children to an indefensible moral choice.
That’s when I decided to bite.
The study had come as a surprise to me. Maybe it’s my age, but there’s been a mini baby boom among my friends, and it has been a light in my life this past year. In fact, a beautiful girl had been born just that morning, causing me to weep fat, hot tears over Instagram Stories as I watched her older sister holding the sleeping newborn to her chest, looking like she might pass out from excitement and joy.
Besides, I still think having a baby is one of the best quarantine hobbies you could have. So much more responsive than a houseplant! Even more fun than a puppy!
“You don’t need children to find purpose,” I said to the rabble. “But if you want to have children, don’t let anxiety about the future hold you back. Then fear wins. Babies are hope. I choose to believe.”
“Maybe for YOU they are hope,” a commenter with a username comprised mostly of emojis replied. “Anxiety over the future is just as good a reason as any to choose not to have kids!!!”
My Twitter app, so often silent, began to ping with notification: likes for the commenter. Baby’s first Internet drama! I thought with delight.
“Fair!” I said, patting myself on the back for my generous response. “I was just hoping to stand up for the pregnant and new parents out there. The prevailing wisdom seems to be, ‘Things are bad and babies make it worse.’ When, in my experience, things are bad and babies make it better.”
“Um, that’s really naïve?” said a squid. “You can’t just have a baby every time you have financial or relationship problems. That’s too much pressure to put on a baby!”
For God’s sake — I meant things as in *gestures vaguely at the world*, not personal problems… but before I could poise my fingers to reply, a user who called herself a faerie posted, “Yeah, postpartum depression, profound sleep deprivation, the physical toll of pregnancy and childbirth, and complete lack of social support network during a pandemic sounds like a real vacation.”
Again the likes poured in.
Sigh.
I deleted my tweets, feeling sad.
I felt sad in big and vague ways, like the empty feeling you get when you’ve spent too much time looking at screens.
I felt sad in small and specific ways. I felt sad for everyone who wishes they could have a baby but can’t. I felt sad for people who were pregnant and scared. I felt sad for people who would postpone the children they dearly wanted, waiting for the perfect moment until, maybe, it was too late. I felt sad for parents who were pressed to their limits with childcare with no support, and who thought about how much easier it would have been on their own.
I recently read a beautiful and devastating account of a climate scientist who, so consumed by the severity of the crisis, had become a John the Baptist, raving constantly about the looming collapse of civilization, alienating his colleagues, his wife, and his children.
The story posed the question: What happens when you let in the full catastrophe? Our minds are hard-wired for self-protection. And there are still dishes to be done. Meals to be cooked. Diapers to be changed.
So most of us plug our ears and shut out the parts we can’t believe in order to get by.
The alternative is to be hysterical.
As the series “All Work, No Pay” in The Cut and “Primal Scream” in the New York Times show, the pandemic has pushed mothers to the brink. Single mothers. Mothers with disabled children. Mothers of color.
I’m not blind to the enormity of the challenge.
For every upside for pregnant people these days, like more flexible work arrangements that allow them to take care of their bodies, there are downsides, like financial situations that are more precarious than ever. I grieve for those who never got to have a carefree celebration of their happy news. Who are just now starting to grapple with the complexities of career and childcare.
Beyond the anecdotal evidence, the data shows much the same trade-off. Infant survival rates are way up in part because babies, and pregnant people, stay healthier at home. But depression and anxiety in new and expectant mothers is also on the rise.
It can all seem like too much.
But once your baby arrives, you don’t even remember what it was like before. Their souls on Earth burn big and bright as flames, enough to see your way by.
The future? Who can say?
Either way, I’d rather there be babies in it.
Saturday was a gray, blustery day, but Julia still wanted to go outside. “WALK!” she demanded, bringing her “dada” his “shooz”. So we bundled her up against the elements to go to the park. The rain pelted our glasses. We trudged along behind her, a flash of pink in her fuzzy bear coat, running through the field in the fog. She was just happy to be there.