A frumpy feminist named Lindsey Harrington gives her excuses on why she is an old maid in "The Glorious Freedom of a Child-Free Life." There is a funny thing about this article. Harrington relates how she first began considering going child-free her whole life after meeting "Mandy, a Toronto filmmaker who moved to Newfoundland for cheap oceanside real estate" who regaled the author with her (Mandy's) "much less conventional existence, hitchhiking to Mexico with her blue heeler and eating fire in a travelling circus." Yet, having decided to follow in Mandy's footsteps, the article is completely devoid of any of the life experiences for which the author supposedly gave up children. Perhaps she mentions some in her book, from which this is excerpted, but the article seems bereft of details of her supposedly better life.
The other odd thing about the article is the author's cluelessness. Harrington acknowledges the demographic decline as a result of childlessness, writing:
... Despite Canada’s comparatively rich social safety net and support programs, we have one of the lowest birth rates in the world: 1.25 children per woman in 2024. More of us are choosing differently. In this age of climate catastrophe, economic disparity and social unrest, not having children feels like the logical and ethical choice. As fascism, housing prices and sea levels rise, the future for any theoretical children looks bleak. It seems more and more possible you could end up raising them in some Cormac McCarthy–esque dystopia.
Yet she ends with this idiotic observation: "We might be the first generation to widely question motherhood, but we won’t be the last." Yet, as far as Harrington's family line is concerned, she will be the last. And so it will be for many other families and nations. But perhaps it is for the best when it comes to people like Harrington: evolution in action, so to speak.
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