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The question of whether to have children – assuming it’s biologically possible – feels increasingly complicated as our polycrisis intensifies. More people are openly discussing this once-taboo topic in podcasts, essays and late-night conversations. It’s refreshing, this collective acknowledgment that perhaps the most consequential decision of our lives deserves more thoughtful examination than society typically allows.
When my then-partner and I decided against parenthood a decade ago, it wasn’t a sudden revelation but rather the culmination of months spent reading, reflecting and talking with others. (Including my aunt, whose non-parent path resulted in a life dramatically different from my mother’s.)
My decision clarified how I relate to children. Those who choose childlessness are often misperceived as anti-kids, but I genuinely enjoy their company – I simply didn’t want parenthood’s relentless responsibility. As friends started families, I discovered the ‘fun uncle’ role suited me far better. (Btw, some really great, practical tips on how to engage with kids here.)
I’m content with the choice I made, but I remain curious about how others navigate this decision. In a recent interview, author Jody Day addresses one of the most common concerns for people without children: what does aging for non-parents look like?
“What we worry about is not death, it’s vulnerability. We worry about being that person who is in a hospital, nursing home, or residential facility and having no one to be an advocate. Or we fear being alone in our home, unable to function as well as we’d like, and with no clear idea who or how to ask for help, scared to do so in case we get railroaded into a residential facility.”
Day articulates something profound here – that what we’re really seeking isn’t necessarily offspring, but a network of care as we age. Of course, even having children offers no guarantee of that support. Modern life scatters families across countries and continents, with careers demanding mobility that previous generations couldn’t have imagined.
Community and kinship with others (especially across generations) can – to an extent – replace traditional family structures that even modern family units lack, as Sarah K Peck highlights in her piece:
“The nuclear family – the small unit of just a few humans – is not enough. It’s not working for most of us. It’s up to us to reach out, meet as many people as possible, and build our extended families.” Quoting Kurt Vonnegut: “Marriage is collapsing because our families are too small. A man cannot be a whole society to a woman, and a woman cannot be a whole society to a man. We try, but it is scarcely surprising that so many of us go to pieces.”
What I’ve come to understand is that our choices about parenthood ultimately matter less than our capacity to weave ourselves into the social fabric around us. The nuclear family was never meant to be our entire world. We’re wired for broader connection, for the kind of intergenerational, overlapping relationships that sustained humans for millennia before modern isolation became the norm. Maybe the true challenge of our time isn’t deciding whether to have children, but rediscovering how to live together, creating networks of care that support us through life’s inevitable vulnerabilities. – Kai
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Apps & Sites
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A ‘life management platform’ designed to simplify adulting by consolidating tasks, schedules and household information into a single, intuitive system you share with other members of your household. E.g. keep track of maintenance or cleaning schedules, store manuals and receipts, or keep a list of useful contacts, like the vet or that emergency plumber.
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Minimalist journalling app
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A free passion project by developer Albert Carreras: with habby you get one sentence to record your day, plus simple habbit tracking and goal setting. No cloud, no tracking, all in the device. Did I mention that it’s free?
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The People’s Graphic Design Archive is a crowd-sourced virtual archive of inclusive graphic design history. It includes everything from finished projects to process, photos, correspondence, oral histories, anecdotes, articles, essays and other supporting material. There are over 10,000 items to explore.
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Collaborative story writing
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Love this idea: a beautiful space for writers to collaborate on stories. Two writers take turns crafting chapters of a single story. A space “where the forces of your imagination can freely meet and play with other writers towards the creation of new worlds, unimaginable by a single mind.”
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Web Wanderlust
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Charming discoveries from the internet’s back alleys that you don’t need but might love.
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A site rating horror films on Gore Level, Jumpscare Frequency, Violence Rating, Humor, and more to help you find the perfect scary movie for your tolerance level.
A map of the world’s bikeshare services (short-term bicycle rentals available at a network of unattended locations) representing 9.6+ million bicycles.
How long will your favourite food or beverage stay safe and tasty? What’s the best way to store it?
An interactive illustration five years in the making where you drive a cat tram through picturesque mountain villages. Ding ding!
A site collecting pictures of owls in towels. Because why not.
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Books & Accessories
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Private power, public consequences
A book from 2023 that couldn’t be more relevant today: In Tyranny, Inc., Sohrab Ahmari argues that the real threat to American freedom today comes not from government overreach but from unchecked corporate power, which imposes its own form of coercion in everyday life. “The corporate titans and mega-donors who aligned themselves with this vision [of deregulated big business] knew exactly what they were getting: perfect conditions for what Sohrab Ahmari calls ‘private tyranny’.”
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Thriving without children
A warm, wise guide for those facing involuntary childlessness, offering validation, empathy and a path forward through grief toward a meaningful life. Jody Day gently dismantles societal myths and shows it’s possible to build a joyful future – even if it’s not the one you imagined. “Although most people think that those without children either ‘couldn’t’ or ‘didn’t want’ to be parents, the truth is much more complex.”
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Overheard on the Socials
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What we learned from COVID? That oil is worthless in a society without consumption. That healthcare has to be public because health is public. That 50% of jobs can be done from home while the other 50% deserve more than they’re being paid. That we live in a society not an economy.
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Food for Thought
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A great interview with Jody Day (see her book above) – an advocate for those without kids. She encourages us to confront our fears about vulnerability as we age and to embrace the value of our lives, regardless of parenthood. A great way to emphasise the importance of building intergenerational relationships. “Most of the things we need to thrive in life have become products. So we don’t just go talk to a wise person we know and trust, we go see a therapist. We might have once gone to see a priest. We can get our shopping delivered, so we’re not even interacting with the people where we buy our food. We might not have to go to the post office or the bookstore anymore. We can schedule our rubbish collection online. So many things that used to bring us into daily encounters have gone.”
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Douglas Rushkoff argues (in an essay that could be three) that instead of being overwhelmed by fast-changing news and events, we should focus on real human connections and care in our everyday lives. I loved this bit: “I find myself slowing changing from an agent of change to an agent of care. I’m less confident in the impact my activism might have on policy than I am about the impact my care may have on other human beings, as well as how they might trickle up to the systems that need changing.” I believe many of us would benefit from realigning our thinking from global activist (‘agent of change’) to engaged local citizen (‘agent of care’).
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Saffron Huang explores the connections between acupuncture, a form of traditional Chinese medicine, and modern machine learning. While acupuncture is effective for many conditions, its underlying theory is complex and not fully understood. I learned a lot about accupuncture and Randomised Controlled Trials (RCT), and was only mildly annoyed by the fact that she uses the end of the piece to pitch her startup. “There’s little evidence so far for the theory underpinning acupuncture, but there is decent empirical evidence for acupuncture itself. This is surprisingly similar to AI. We don’t really understand it, the theory is slim and unsatisfying, but it indisputably ‘works’ in many ways.”
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Aesthetically Pleasing
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I’m really enjoying the illustration work by David Mascha, a Vienna-based visual artist and type designer known for his vibrant use of colours and intricate geometric forms. Friends of DD enjoy a 15% discount on items in his shop.
Become a Friend to access specials like this.
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The design of the new Swiss passport reveals its beauty with many intricate details under UV light. “The Swiss passport is more than a formal administrative document. It is the expression of Helvetic identity and a brand ambassador for Switzerland abroad. It is a celebration of Swissness and a showcase of technological know-how. In addition to increasing security and being counterfeit-proof, the design needed to explore these aspects to create a document the holder can trust, identify with and be proud of.” (via)
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This beautiful home in Byron Bay, Australia, was built in the early ’90s and is proof of what’s possible with local, affordable and recycled materials – including disused power poles as structural columns – on a shoestring budget.
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Font of the week: Interlaken is a modern display and branding typeface for designing logotypes, posters and headlines.
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Notable Numbers
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By 2030, Coca-Cola products will account for an estimated 1.33 billion pounds (602,000 metric tonnes) of plastic waste entering the world’s oceans and waterways each year, according to a stark new analysis by Oceana. That’s enough plastic to fill the stomachs of 18 million whales.
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Surprise, surprise! There is a record number of billionaires in the world, and they’re richer than ever. Forbes’ 39th annual billionaires list revealed that there are now 3,028 billionaires around the world, with a staggering estimated collective wealth of $16.1 trillion.
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The Wikimedia Foundation announced that relentless AI scraping is putting strain on their servers. Automated bots seeking AI model training data for LLMs have been vacuuming up terabytes of data, growing the foundation’s bandwidth used for downloading multimedia content by 50% since January 2024.
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The Week in a GIF
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