Can you prevent a childless old age?

A thought experiment in how to raise kids who want kids

Noted grandma Olenna Tyrell. Credit: HBO

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What do you do if your adult kids don’t want to have kids of their own?

That’s the question the New York Times recently explored, noting the grief people in their golden years experience when their adult children opt against having kids. The people in the article are grandparent age, but will apparently never end up being grandparents.

This strikes me as heartbreaking. But it also left me wondering: Can this fate be avoided? The people in the article are in their 50s and 60s and their kids are adults. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those adult offspring do eventually end up having kids (I did!), but either way, those beds are probably made.

On the other hand, if you’re currently the parent of younger kids, or will be someday, are there things you can do to minimize the odds of ending up in this situation?

This idea raises a few touchy subjects, which I’m mostly hoping to sidestep here. One is the question of whether or not it’s “good” to have kids, or if one “should” procreate. Suffice it to say that with the caveat that there are many individual exceptions, I think having kids is a generally positive thing to be encouraged.

Secondly, there’s the question of whether parents should pressure their kids into specific life paths. Many of the commenters on that Times article seem to think the answer is “no.” That strikes me as intellectually inconsistent — parents routinely push their kids to go to college, or into certain careers, etc. — and I’ll love my kids either way. But when I’m long gone and my kids are old, I hope they have future generations of family to bring them cookies or work in their yard (things I did with my grandparents). And so I’d like to guide them onto a path that makes that future, if not guaranteed, at least possible.

In any case, the question remains: If you think having kids is good, and if there’s still plenty of time before you have grown-up children, and if you want to fill your elder years with a big family village, what should you do now?¹

I think the Times article offers some hints, and the high-level takeaway is that there seem to be a series of uniquely modern obstructions preventing many younger folks from having kids. Of course I’m not going to solve this entire issue right now in a blog post, but the Times piece offers an opportunity to conduct a thought experiment in how to resist these obstructions via parenting.

Let’s break it down.

Have a big family

The people interviewed for the Times piece all have relatively small families ranging from between one and three kids. I have three kids myself, so I understand the appeal. But the flip side is that with more kids, you get more outcomes. Among the adult 10 siblings in my family, half have kids and half currently don’t. If my parents only had one or two kids, there’s a chance they might have ended up only with members of the no-kid contingent.

This is a simple idea to understand, but hard to deploy. I myself am at a stage in life where it’s basically too late to use this observation. But if I could go back in time I would stress to my younger self that life quality at 65 depends on decisions you make at 25.

Don’t catastrophize

Multiple people in the Times article mention not having kids due to concerns about the state of the world. One mentions climate change. Another cites “school safety,” among other things. This is a pretty common concern among some would-be parents.

To be sure, there are many challenging things going on right now. But this is not the worst time to be alive. Imagine being alive in, for example, 1918 as the world wrapped up the apocalyptic World War I and welcomed the also apocalyptic Spanish Flu pandemic. A decade later, the Great Depression started, followed not long after by World War II. Even when I was born, in the 1980s, the threat of nuclear annihilation loomed larger than it does today. And that doesn’t get into still-worse chapters of history such as the Black Plague or 536 AD, the so-called worst year ever.

I’m reminded here of the writer Freddie deBoer’s point, made just yesterday, “there's a certain narcissism in thinking that you live in the worst of times.”

It seems, based on the Times article, that many people have forgotten this message and are letting concerns about Big Issues influence their individual choices. In that light, then, my hope is that I can help my kids avoid a catastrophizing world view.² Does that mean they’ll have kids? I don’t know. But at least the delusion that they’re living at the end of history will hopefully not be one of the things obstructing them.

Instill an internal locus

This doesn’t directly come up in the Times article, but is related to catastrophizing. The idea is that people with an “internal locus” tend to see themselves as masters of their own fate, while those with an “external locus” view themselves as more passive. It seems to me that at least some of the younger adults mentioned in the Times article who have opted against having kids have adopted an external locus worldview.

I’ve written about this concept several times before, arguing that it’s better to adopt — and teach one’s kids — to have an internal locus, and my theory is that this probably ends up being a factor in childbearing decisions. Obviously, people with an internal locus can and do still choose not to have kids. But at least that’s a proactive choice, not a decision they feel was foisted upon them.

Beware financial precarity

Some of the people in the Times story mention financial instability as a reason they aren’t having kids. This is a very real issue for many people, and a perceived issue³ for even more. I can relate because financial concerns were among the things that prompted me to delay having kids.

No parent can entirely clear all the financial roadblocks their kids might face, nor would that be wise. But I do think that we millennial parents have an opportunity to improve on the financial guidance that we collectively received. Too many people in my generation, for example, took on large amounts of student loan debt without a good plan for paying it back. Many people had no clear path into the professional workforce. These kinds of things are needless millstones that parents could easily help their kids avoid, regardless of income level. I avoided debt not because my parents paid my way, but because they encouraged me to live within my means by going to an affordable college. And my first recollection of hearing my mom talk about the school I should attend comes from when I was 4 years old.

In other words, if I want my kids to eventually have kids of their own, I’m going to be more frank with them about things like opportunity cost, networking, and social class than people were with my generation. And I’ll do it at an early age.

Avoid the “capstone” mentality

While I was writing this piece, I opened TikTok and the first video I saw was a woman discussing the Times article. Her stance reminded me a lot of my own views before I had kids, but one comment in particular stood out: “I truly, truly do not believe it’s selfish to not want to bring a child into the world in, like, less than ideal circumstances. I know people do it all the time, I know that we’ve done it for generations. But I really and truly and fully believe it should not have to be hard.”

Look, I get it. I’ve been there. The problem is that if you wait for “ideal circumstances” or for the day when having a kid won’t be “hard,” you will wait forever.

The comment reminded me of Brad Wilcox’s writing about marriage, and how for many people it has shifted from a “cornerstone” to a “capstone” activity. That means marriage used to be a foundational moment near the beginning of adulthood, but gradually became a thing you do when you finally have all your ducks in a row.

The TikTok video highlights the way the same attitude shift has happened regarding childbearing.

I suspect it’s impossible to persuade young adults who already have the capstone mentality to give it up. I certainly wouldn’t have. (The reality of biology is what ultimately pushed my wife and I to start having kids.)

But I wonder if there are ways to help my own kids, who are still very young, resist the idea that you can only procreate under forever-elusive “ideal circumstances.”

At the end of the day I have no idea if my kids will have kids someday or not. I’ll love them regardless. But I do think they’re more likely to be happy, supported, less lonely, and more if they have kids. And so I’ll continue to look for ways to help them understand that idea.

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1. This post is intentionally and explicitly arguing to a newer parent/future parent audience. The target audience here is not A) today’s would-be grandparents, or B) adults of child-bearing age who have opted against having kids. Most of the online discourse I’m seeing on this topic involves younger adults stating reasons that they or their friends are not having kids. Some of the points I’m seeing are persuasive, others less so. But either way, that is not the audience for this particular blog post. The issue is “how do you increase your odds of becoming a grandparent decades before you’re old.” It’s not “why you should have kids.” I’m treating the people in the Times article as a cautionary tale that is already basically over. It’s the people in the middle, those who have or will have young kids, who have time to change course.

2. We even got to practice this recently with our 6 year old, who got the impression from some of her school mates that the fate of the world depended on the outcome of this month’s election.

3. I say “perceived” because millennials poised to be the richest generation in history and now have wealth surpassing that of previous generations as the same age. But of course economic data is cold comfort for individuals who are struggling.