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Imagine an op-ed titled “Why I Hate Black People.” Imagine a TikTok confessional where a young woman lists, with practiced disdain, the reasons she finds deaf people insufferable or embarrassing in public. Both scenarios would demand a metaphorical public crucifixion, and that is the correct response.

Now swap in “children” for either of those groups, and you’ve described an ordinary Tuesday on the internet.

A culture that prides itself on rooting out bigotry seemingly left one arena available for public contempt. Ironically, they are the smallest, weakest, most innocent, and least able to defend themselves. We have built an entire vocabulary for these supposedly despicable creatures. We have lovely new nicknames for them, such as “crotch goblin” or “semen demon.” These are some of the commonly used slurs designed to dehumanize children. Terms such as “child-free by choice” and “DINK” (dual income, no kids) have also been invented to tout one’s self-righteous status for choosing not to procreate.

This is actual bigotry. It meets every textbook definition. It dehumanizes a class of people on the basis of an immutable characteristic — a characteristic, incidentally, that every person sneering at it once possessed.

The 28-year-old who calls children “parasites” was, 28 years ago, a parasite by her own definition. Someone fed her, changed her, and taught her to read. She might even spend hours in therapy waxing on about how her imperfect parents ruined her life through those very sacrifices. This is the same type of person who finds herself annoyed by the number of children walking around Disney World.

We have taken the cultural sneer and codified it into law. The same civilization that demonizes children on social media insists the most defenseless among us can be killed at will. The unborn can be eliminated for any reason or none. They call that freedom of choice. Over 63 million American children have been killed in the womb since the Roe v. Wade decision. Worldwide, the running total is in the billions. There has never been a more thorough campaign of violence against any class of human beings in history, and we have rebranded it as “reproductive health.”

Just recently, the Supreme Court allowed the abortion pill to keep flowing through the mail. In Louisiana v. FDA, the court left intact the Food and Drug Administration rules permitting mifepristone, the chemical agent now responsible for the majority of American abortions, to be prescribed over a telehealth call and dropped into a mailbox like a birthday card. When a civilization is shipping chemical death to young women’s doorsteps in unmarked envelopes, the mask has fallen entirely.

Some celebrate plummeting birth rates as ecological progress. They think it would be unforgivable to bring life into the world in its current form. What a staggeringly unsustainable point of view. People obviously had children throughout every era of human existence, or we would not be here today.

Others simply do not care; they cannot see anything in their life past their next drink. They cheer for airlines that promise child-free cabins. They treat a baby crying on a flight as a moral failing on the parents’ part. But a crying child is something far more important: a tiny human, brand-new to the world, doing the only thing she knows how to do.

We have built a culture that worships the unbothered self: autonomous, frictionless, infinitely optimized. Children are inconvenient to that god. They cry when you are tired. They need things when you are busy. They cannot be muted, blocked, or scheduled. They demand from you the one thing the modern American refuses to surrender: autonomy. So we have decided, quietly and then loudly, that the problem is them.

The demographers can show you the curve. Births are collapsing across the developed world. South Korea’s fertility rate has fallen below 0.8. Japan loses a city’s worth of people every year. Europe is graying into a museum, and the United States is not far behind. Humanity has a catastrophic population problem in addition to its spiritual rot.

By contrast, Scripture paints a very different picture. “Children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward” (Psalm 127:3). When the disciples tried to enforce a child-free zone around Jesus, he rebuked them sharply. “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:14).

Charlie Kirk famously argued, “More people should get married young and have more kids than they can afford.” The idea of having more children than you can afford comes with a built-in subtext. It forces people to live for more than themselves. Having children gives someone a purpose outside themselves. The divine command to “be fruitful and multiply” drives people to love harder, earn more, and stop being so selfish. It also allows the legacy of humanity to continue well beyond any one lifetime.

Maybe you had an awful childhood filled with parental abuse. This is all too common in modern society. Your upbringing could have been filled with trauma you rightfully wouldn’t wish upon others. You have the opportunity to be the generational change your family line needs. Abusive views on children win when they are not intentionally and forcefully refused and replaced. Have children, love them, protect them, and give them the life you wish you had been given.

One who intentionally chooses not to have children, or who discourages others from doing so, is making a choice that defies history. Every single one of your ancestors, back to Adam, brought life into this world and continued doing so — hence you being on this planet now. The proud DINK believes she has chosen the better path. In reality, she has chosen hedonism.

A society that cannot tolerate its own young is a society that has lost the plot of its own existence. Every cathedral, every constitution, every poem worth reading was made by adults who were once helpless infants — adults who, at some point in their helplessness, were loved by someone who decided their existence was worth the inconvenience. Strip that out, and there is nothing left to inherit and no one to inherit it.

We need to look at the children in our pews and our stores and our parks and our family rooms and remember that they are not interruptions to our personal convenience. They are people. They are a blessing. They are the future.

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