I Mum didn’t want it. Now that I’m single with two boys, I can’t imagine anything else. But more and more in the few. Madeleine L’Engle took the way of reigning from her parents: “It is not the time to be born, with a country betrayed by war and hatred.”
Thus opens the song Periculum Nativity; Christmas1973. Perhaps that year was made especially sad for the child, but regardless of the massacres of 1973 – and every year, really – there is a perennial dilemma, this should be – a parent. There is never a good time to have a baby.
More and more they seem to agree. Fertility is in free fall throughout the developed world. Australia’s highest fertility rate 1.5 children the woman trends in the line, in the middle, across OECD which fall below the surrogacy rate of 2.1, by which ratio the population can naturally replenish itself.
Explanations for the decline in fertility abound, ranging from the surprising – women’s greater educational opportunities – to the worrying – rising housing costs and climate change fears. These combos keep us mostly awake at night. The 2024 Australia’s youth survey mission found that around 17,000 young Australians ranked the cost of living (56%) and climate change (27%) as their top two national issues. If we’re going to be children, the kids are telling us they’re not right.
He also points his finger at the dynamics of the genre, from the rise of the manosphere to the phenomenon. the highest male.
These are the presenting symptoms, however, working against any hope for new causes. But under it sounds all our despair about life recently called “enshittocene”. We seem to have decided that, apart from our belief, we see this kind of filth of the present and the future.
What then do we want to bring into the world?
And yet a new world always emerges from the collapse of the old. Take 1973, the year L’Engle declared bad for kids. It was uniformly terrible.
This year the White Australia project was consigned to the dustbin of history. Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the Sydney Opera House, a triumph of visionary art and public design. William Goldman’s Princess Bride was popularized as Sula by Toni Morrison.
Born in that year: Google co-founder Sergey Brin, cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, Australian national treasure Cathy Freeman and Poh Ling Yeow. Born offbeat auteur Yorgos Lanthimos, along with director Rian Johnson of Knife Out hunger There are also future generations of multimillion-dollar entertainment companies: Stephenie Meyer, creator of Twilight, and Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios.
I don’t know what some people are like in real life. But you are a reminder of uniqueness and particularity that As opposed to any individual – or innate, we say – we conceive in the abstract.
As is my friend Aaron, also part of the race of 1973. One of Aaron’s (many) eccentricities is his sunbed for – of all things – spotting any and every board game geek in his orbit and among them in what has now become. quarterly day nerdy fun for middle-aged people, complete with childcare. A born networker and natural host, Aaron’s spontaneous community building may not change the world, but just a small, random way to enrich the lives of those around him.
No one could know when Aaron or anyone else was born, what their life would be like – and he could still play. There is never a good time to have a child, but a child can still influence the times in which they live because one’s life is inextricably linked with the lives of others.
The Nativity story taps into these instincts. At the nativity, the cattle are standing around, and Mary and Joseph are nearby, but all eyes are on the baby Jesus. It is an old myth, now even made by strangers, that children are not necessary for the lives we conceive for ourselves. But this story holds that a God born in human flesh, a God whom the ancient believers called Love Himself, does not remain aloof, but leans into the human struggle. As L’Engle ends the poem: “Love still takes the risk of birth.”
They are left wondering as I believe: if God took the leap, perhaps I can too. The world is always falling apart, but love is also born in ruins. That does not mean that the belief in birth will rise again. And the child of Christmas has a way of making any other child, since – and any other case of reckless hope – he feels less of a leap of faith.