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What has surprised me about childlessness
There are some perverse outcomes amid all the fun.
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The writer says no one can escape the second-order effects of an ageing population.
ST PHOTO: KUA CHEE SIONG
Janan Ganesh
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Mr J.D. Vance isn’t wrong about all of us. While most childless lives don’t conform to his cliche of atomised self-regard, mine does, more or less. Home is a rented garconniere of almost inhuman silence and orderliness. There being no kindergarten fees or sport utility vehicle to save for, the share of earnings that goes on food and wine would make Churchill tut.
But there are bad things about childlessness, too. Some have come as a surprise to me. Since the world is so exercised about demographic decline, it might be a public service to air them. Let’s scare a few people into the labour ward, shall we?
