I think the thoughts of my youth went through a pretty normal progression, at least in terms of my attitude toward children. Admittedly, my thoughts were on one extreme of normal, but still, within the range of normal attitudes.

Now, I was a bit unusual in that I was an only child, and my only close relatives were two cousins very close in age to myself, one the same age, one two years younger. So, as a child I had almost no direct exposure to babies, and, as a result, really had little interest in children. I was also odd in that I was something of a solitary child, and so, until around 10 or 11, usually had very few friends, spent most of my time around adults and enjoyed mostly solitary pass times, such as reading and writing. But, as I got older, I developed a more sociable demeanor, and, by 14 or 15 was not only sociable, but something of a gadfly. It isn't relevant here to go into detail, but le tus just say by the time I dropped out of high school at 16 to go to college*, I was no longer anything like the introvert child I had been**.

But back to my topic. In my teen years, as is true of many teens, I could not imagine myself having children. I was happy being on my own, could maybe, with some effort, imagine marriage, but could certainly not picture children. I was a bit unusual in keeping this idea so long into my twenties, but not that strange.I knew many my age who were equally certain they would never procreate.

And, as with many of them, my thoughts began to slowly change. Unlike most, it was not due to friends and family getting married an having children, as I was not very close with any family other than my mother and father, and my friends were less likely to marry than I was. No, my change came out of the blue, but it came. Gradually, I found myself questioning the certainty that I would never have children.

And then, as I grew older, I came to believe that I not only would have children, but looked forward to it, and, after having my son, came to realize how important children can be. And, having discovered that, find it difficult to even comprehend the mind set of my earlier incarnation, which thought of children as an impediment.

And that, historically, has been the pattern of maturation. Youth either begin with the internalized societal expectation, that is, they already expect they will have children from the moment they discover where children originate, or else they rebel for a time, and then come back to the norm. And, looked at objectively, the two routes make complete sense. The first appeals to those who are submissive, and thus follow expectations without question, and those who are wise enough even in youth to value traditions. On the other hand, for those who are not blindly obedient, but too arrogant to accept that tradition may have value (such as yours truly in his teen years), the appeal of independence, of freedom, seems to call out for a life free of obligations, such as children. However, over time, as one comes to realize that our interactions with others matter a lot more than simple self-gratification, the role of children subtly changes from "burden" to "blessing", and, eventually, most of those who chose rebellion return tot he fold, and by late adulthood almost everyone has come to accept tradition.

Or that would have been the case, were it not for the generational inversion we suffered between the 1950's and the present.

As I described many, many times, for almost two centuries the romantic philosophy had gradually been wearing away at our society. Or, to be accurate, a variety of philosophical influences which received their most explicit expression in Romanticism had been at work. A variety of anti-reason, anti-tradition, emotion-driven philosophies glorying in novelty as the highest good and youth as the best exemplar of all that was worthwhile had been slowly working their way into the thoughts of the intellectuals, and, through many circumstances had come to dominate the popular culture sometime between the 1950's and 1970's. And so, rather than valuing age, experience and tradition, the popular culture came to value youth above all. And, as I said in "The Adoration of Youth":

Historically youth was seen as a period of high spirits and misbehavior, which one would then overcome and join the adult world. One would then adopt adult attitudes and behaviors. Childhood was something one might sometimes remember fondly, but was something one was to outgrow, and society in general was oriented towards the elders, not the young.

At some point, maybe beginning in the 1950's or a bit later, the western world and especially the United States began to idolize the young. Rather than seeing the young as silly, immature people who needed to be molded and guided, the adults began to look to the young for guidance in how to behave. The preferences of the young began to set the course for society, and what appealed to the young became the standard by which everything was judged.

The result should have been obvious to anyone, the culture became more and more immature. But not just immature, we also became less and less restrained. The young always try to push the envelope. In the past, every generation of youth was absorbed into the society of the elders, and the envelope each generation pushed was the same. Now, with the youth defining the standards, the standards became more lax with each generation, and the youth had to go to ever greater extremes to push the envelope. And, as the adults were now following the young, they too became ever more excessive, standards grew lower and lower, and society in general took on the character of a locker room or a gathering of pre-pubescent boys. It became a world of "torture porn", celebrity sex videos, and internet porn.

In other words, the values of the young became the values of all.

And that explains our modern view of children. Or explains half of it. As I said, our culture has come to elevate the values of youth, rather than maturity, and so has inverted the process whereby children rebel and then, over time, return to the fold. Instead, we now have children who rebel, and adults who then adopt those values. And so, our adults have come to place a premium on self-gratification and "independence", in the sense of lack of human connections or obligations. And so the juvenile opposition to children, seen as burdens, has come to be seen as the "enlightened" adult position. Of course a variety of rationalizations have sprung up, mostly centered on Zero Population Growth theories, arguing that children are a burden not just to parents but "Gaia"*** as well, and that reducing the number of births is a moral obligation. But I am convinced, while such theories would have arisen whether or not we venerated youth, their popularity and influence largely rests upon our cultural values. And so, had we not become infatuated with the values of youth, likely the ZPG crowd would not have the influence they do in our culture, our foreign policy and elsewhere.

And we can see this in the other aspect of our cultural perspective on children, the habit of having children later in life.

Yes, our adults have come to adopt the values of youth, but there is one difference. The values of youth used to have a time limit. You only accepted the values of youth during your youth, and so their weakness as a life-long value system never became obvious, the hollowness of a sybaritic life was not obvious, because few would try to consistently apply it for life. But now that we have adults adopting the values of youth as the guiding philosophy of their lives, the emptiness is becoming evident, and so we see adults, having discovered how lonely they are after a life chasing pleasure, reverting to traditional views on children and starting families later in life.

Which shows how much our ZPG philosophy is a creature of our cultural values, and how little of it is "scientific". After all, if these adults had a real philosophic commitment to ZPG, they would not be chasing after families in their late 30's and early 40's. Instead they would accept loneliness as the price of a moral life. But it is not a philosophy, it is a justification for self-gratification, and so they abandon it once the gratification no longer works.

I only bring all of this up as it is an interesting example of the way in which our fascination with youth has changed our culture. In "How Fast Things Change" I said that this fixation, on its own, would not lead to the demise of our society, and it won't. But it also will help to destroy us, and this is one of the ways. A nation does not need a massive birth rate to thrive, and can survive quite well near replacement level, but it does need to at least replace its population if it intends to survive long term. And by making this less likely, our cultural obsession with avoiding procreation and our pretension that avoiding children is the "smart" position is likely to lead to a birth rate below replacement levels, which can be dangerous for any culture.

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* I don't think I explained this, so to give a brief recounting: I was offered early admission to a university. I had attended private school through 10th grade, and they would have let me go, but I had chosen to transfer to the local public school for 11th grade, and that school set up an impossible situation. The university needed a waiver from the school. The school would give the waiver, but needed a schedule of classes. The university said they couldn't schedule classes until I was admitted, which required a waiver. I saw how that would work out, so dropped out of high school and went to community college for a year, until I could get a GED and go to the university which wanted me. It worked out for the best, as I met my wife at the comunity college. We even dated for a week, before she mysteriously broke up with me. (We met again 7 years later, which is what directly preceded us eventually getting married.)

** As some may have gathered from past posts, I wasn't exactly an ordinary teen, I was a strange punk rocker, who eventually became, for a time, a doctrinaire anarcho-community, then Objectivist. I also drank like a fish and was a bit promiscuous. I would probably cringe if my son were to follow the course I did. But, then again, that is, traditionally, what parents are supposed to do. Hoping our children don't do the stupid things we did is the traditional course. Doing the stupids things our children are doing is the modern pattern, which is much more frightening. (See  "The Adoration of Youth"and "How Fast Things Change")

*** I wrote before about the annoying change in Greek to English transliteration in footnotes and postscripts to my posts "Protectionism", "For Those Who Would Sit It Out", "A Thought on Iran" and "Bad Economics Part 6". And this is another perfect example. For centuries the Latin version "Gaea" was considered perfectly acceptable, and was useful as it made clear the identity between the Greek word and the Latin. But, apparently, someone decided that "AE" was "less Greek" than "AI" and so, as "Achilles" became "Akhilleus" and "Hector" became "Hektor", we were forced to abandon the perfectly workable Latin version and were all forced to write "Gaia". Except to give those "in the know" a reason to sneer at the "old fashioned" who continued to use the Latin version, can anyone explain why this is an improvement? (For the record, I will accept "Hercules" being "Heracles" or even "Herakles" for purposes of Greek texts, as his name was changed slightly between Greek and Latin, though I think even that is somewhat pointless, but is there really any reaosn to changed "Hector" to "Hektor", as English pronunciation rules make no distinction between the two?)

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POSTSCRIPT

I wrote many posts on the topic of the veneration of youth and the consequences of the same. For those interested, I recommend reading "Frightened for our Future", "The Adoration of Youth", "I Blame the Romantics", "Revisiting an Old Topic", "The Sky Is Falling! Again! Really! We Mean It This Time!", "Tired and Annoying Theme", "IMDB Makes My Case", "A Thought On the Watchmen", "Graphic Novels, Comic Books and Cultural Barometers", "An Interesting Article", "In Defense of Standards", "Addenda to "In Defense of Standards"",  "Shame and Behavior", "Our Rude Behavior", "Social Controls", "Bad Economics Part 9", "Changing Incentives" and "How Fast Things Change". It may also be beneficial to read about the related intellectual movement, the Rousseau-inspired veneration of the primitive and strange. I wrote on that topic in "The Dishonesty of Avatar", "Rousseau's Foolish Legacy", "Happiness", "Opinion Masquerading as Fact", "A Western Evil?" and "A Great Quote".