Is Self Extinction our Answer?

Something impresses me today and that is our inability to say NO to our children. It used to be that when a child came with any absurd proposal to his parents, the parents themselves would filter that proposal by simply saying NO to it. Yet, nowadays when we are too consumed with our daily chores and ambitions to raise our children properly, we find ourselves feeling guilty of the fact and inundating them with material gifts and facilities to compensate for our absence. Naturally, as a result of our complacency, our children grow to become selfish and tyrannical; sometimes becoming frustrated and delivering themselves into the use of drugs, the practice of violence and utter hopelessness that affects our world. Their destructive approach to frustration is, first and foremost, the product of all the NO's we have not said to them that they would not learn that the world goes beyond their needs and wants.

Ironically, instead of arguing this point as it should, post-modern couples argue instead that the cruel world that our parents created through us, their offspring, is far too hazardous for new children. I have heard countless times that "it is an irresponsibility to put a child in this world" or that "it is a selfish act to have children". Such defeatism is the product of nothing but fear and is itself the selfishness it pretends to avoid.I for one wish to share with my children the wonder that is to be alive. The beauty that the world insists to offer us despite our many faults to it. The summer sunsets and the winter frost, the sound of rainfall and of the waves, the flowers and the creatures that I have had a joy to know. How can I deny posterity to the sensation of love and love's first kiss, the experience of an adventure, the thrill that is learning nature's secrets and man's minds. I firmly believe that these things far outweigh the murders on TV, street violence, the wars and the poverty of so many; each and all ugly reflections of the evil that is human greed.

No. Denial to generate new life will not solve our responsibility to our children, which goes beyond making them content and goes well into making them truly capable of happiness. As with all things, we must take responsibility for our actions and we must have faith in that there is more than our own competence to thank for the successes necessary to bring new hope to our battered reality. Hope lies not in our extinction, but in our good conduct in upbringing the next generation that they become reflections of our love for them.