If young people don’t want to have children, let them be

What decides that an entire generation has come of age?

Is it when most of them graduate from school, get jobs and start populating the earth with a generation younger than theirs?

Perhaps.

But those events don’t always happen in that order for most young people across all generations.

Sometimes they don’t even happen at all.

It makes it hard, then, to say that a generation has come of age if those are the stages of their lives that are the determiners.

I have a theory of my own.

I think that what determines whether a generation has come of age is the collective criticism they receive from the older generations.

That is almost always something that happens at the same period of time for most of the younger generations.

And there is almost always something that older generations want to complain about or criticise them for.

I say it is the ultimate rite of passage.

If it isn’t about the way they dress, it’s about the way they act or their ‘absurd’ mannerisms.

A common one you may have come across by now is how younger generations like Gen Zs and Millennials are faring in the current workplace and the subsequent criticism they get from Baby Boomers.

I would like to think that the criticism comes from a point of concern. The same concern an older sibling or parents have for their children and their futures.

The saying that ‘Children are our future’ suddenly begins to ring true for everyone.

The thing about coming of age is that you are now an adult and the choices you make can have lasting consequences.

But then again, adults can be trusted to make good choices that have positive consequences. Right?

The latest thing that older generations have been yelling the ears off (on the Internet at least) of younger generations is their decision to have or not to have children.

Let’s face it, younger and younger people today do not want to have children.

For many Millennials and Gen Zs, a dream come true is getting a house big enough for their dog to have space to run around.

And have you seen how many have been keeping dogs in the last five years? Pets are the new children.

If they do want to have children, they want an average of 1.2 children.

I don’t blame them either because times are getting harder and harder, and you want just enough children that you can handle in these hard economic times.

Personally, and I may be biased because I am part of these young generations, I don’t see what the fuss is all about.

If young people don’t want to have kids anymore, then it’s fine.

We don’t need to be in a rush to fill the earth anymore.

Do you know that currently, there are 9 billion people on this earth competing for resources that are becoming more and more scarce every day because of climate change?

Not to mention the fact that climate change and global warming is our fault as well, and 9 billion of us won’t make it any easier.

So instead, we should try to be more understanding.

Some in this generation are not cut out to be parents, and a lot of that is because of how they were raised by the older generations.