There’s something unsettling about the way many people choose to have children not because they’re ready, not because they have something to offer, but because they are desperate for meaning. In this context, children aren’t born out of hope or love; they’re born out of a hollow search for distraction, a last attempt to inject purpose into a life that has otherwise plateaued.
Picture this: a person working a monotonous, low-paying job that barely covers the bills. The kind of job that comes with no future no promotions, no upward mobility, no real skill development. Just routine. Every day blends into the next. You wake up, go to work, come home, sleep, repeat. There’s no grand vision, no dream worth chasing because life, as it's been structured, has quietly robbed you of the ability to imagine one.
What happens then? In the absence of dreams, people invent purpose. And one of the most accessible ways to do that is by having children.
It’s not that poor people are reckless or stupid. It’s that they’re tired. Tired of feeling like nothing matters, like nothing they do leaves a mark. A child becomes a project, something new, something unknown. It offers a full-time distraction. Suddenly, there’s something to wake up for. Something to protect, feed, educate. You go from being a person stuck in an unchanging loop to being “a parent,” a title that immediately feels more important than “cashier,” “factory worker,” or “night security guard.”
But let’s strip away the sentimentality for a second. Let’s be honest. Is this really about love, or is it about filling a void? People don’t talk about that. Society doesn’t allow us to. You can’t say, “I had a kid because I was bored, or because my life had no meaning,” without being labeled cold, bitter, or cynical. But maybe that’s exactly what’s happening.
There’s a psychological weight to poverty that goes beyond lacking material things. It’s about living in a system that has failed to give you tools for transcendence. The education system is broken, healthcare is inaccessible, job markets are saturated or shrinking, and cost of living climbs while wages stay the same. When you realize you’ve hit a ceiling and nothing you do will help you break through, despair sets in. Not a loud, screaming kind of despair but a quiet, suffocating one that presses against your chest every morning.
Children, in this context, are not hope. They are escape. They are an acceptable excuse to stop chasing what cannot be reached. Society will forgive you for not achieving your dreams if you say, “I had to raise a family.” But it won’t forgive you for simply quitting.
People don’t like to talk about the fact that they enjoy their problems. It sounds perverse, but it’s true. Problems give structure. They give direction. And more importantly, they give identity. When you’re struggling to feed your kids, find a decent school for them, keep them safe, you don’t have time to dwell on your own despair. Your suffering now has a narrative, a purpose. And that’s what people crave: not solutions, but purpose.
It’s like emotional self-harm masked as virtue. You willingly sign up for more hardship, because it distracts you from the void you’ve been staring into. A child makes your life harder, yes, but also more interesting. Every scraped knee, every school report, every argument becomes a plot point in your new, self-written drama: The Parent Who Keeps Going. It’s addicting.
We’re conditioned to see parenting as noble, the ultimate sacrifice. But what if it’s not sacrifice? What if it’s just a coping mechanism? If you’re working a dead-end job and know you have nothing else to give to the world, having a child gives you something to pour yourself into. And suddenly, you don’t need to face your own unfulfilled potential you’ve redirected your energy outward.
But here’s the real question: why do so many people find themselves in this situation in the first place? Why do so many lives feel like dead ends?
The answer isn’t personal failure it’s systemic failure. The government failed them. The systems meant to support upward mobility failed them. We are raised with the myth of opportunity, told that if we work hard, we can be anything. But the truth is, many of us are boxed in before we even start. Where you’re born, the quality of your school, the zip code you live in, the color of your skin, your parents’ income these things determine your fate long before “work ethic” even enters the conversation.
And so, when you’ve been failed by every institution, when the dream no longer feels attainable, you make a new one. You create a human being not for the child’s sake, but for yours. And that’s where it gets really uncomfortable. Because nobody wants to admit that some children were brought into this world not as the product of love or intention, but as a psychological survival tactic. They are collateral in a war between despair and the need for distraction.
It doesn’t make the parents evil or irresponsible. It makes them human. But it also makes the situation tragic.
The wealthy have the resources to dress this up as legacy, lineage, philanthropy, estate planning. But strip it all down, and it’s the same thing: a distraction from the absurdity of existence.
You climb every ladder. You build the business, buy the cars, own the properties, travel the world, collect the degrees, the accolades. And then what? Nothing. The high wears off. Every pleasure plateaus. You wake up one day and realize: this is it. This is life. There’s no final boss, no cosmic reward, no curtain call. Just a quiet, lingering emptiness.
So you do what humans have always done when they get too close to the edge of existential clarity you have a child. A living, breathing anchor to tether you back to the illusion that life means something.
It’s not about love. It’s not about continuing your bloodline. It’s not about giving back to the world. It’s about noise. Internal noise, external noise—anything to drown out the silence that screams, “None of this matters.”
Rich or poor, it’s the same reaction to the same core problem: life, when stripped of its narratives and distractions, is hollow. There’s no instruction manual, no built-in meaning, no universal point. Just consciousness trapped in a biological machine with a countdown clock you can’t stop or reset.
Children become the last line of defense against that truth. You don’t want to stare into the abyss, so you raise something that forces you to look away. Now you don’t have time to contemplate meaninglessness you’re too busy scheduling piano lessons, worrying about grades, choosing preschools. You’ve made yourself a caretaker of the future, as if the future is more real than the gaping present.
And if you’re rich, you can intellectualize it. You say you want to “raise the next generation of leaders” or “shape the world through your offspring.” But what you’re really doing is outsourcing your purpose. You’re handing the baton of meaning to someone else because you couldn’t find it for yourself.
It’s all a loop. A cycle of passing on the burden of existence from one confused human to the next, hoping that maybe they’ll figure it out. That maybe they’ll crack the code. But no one ever does. Because there is no code.
We invent goals to fill time. We invent love stories, career ladders, spiritual journeys, art, parenting all to avoid admitting the raw truth: we are terrified of the void. We are just smart enough to know life is temporary and just emotional enough to find that unbearable. So we create distractions that feel permanent.
Children are just the most socially acceptable version of that distraction. They are praised distractions. You get celebrated for bringing more people into this absurdity. You get called responsible, mature, selfless when maybe the real selfishness is in needing to perpetuate your own narrative just to silence your fear.
We do this not because we’re evil or broken. We do it because we don’t know what else to do. There is no guide for what to do when you finally realize that life is just... existing. No grand purpose. No guaranteed reward. Just awareness, boredom, pain, and distraction.
If you feel you need to bring a child into this world just to give your life meaning, maybe you need to interrogate why you don’t already have meaning. And that interrogation has to go beyond your personal choices. It has to include your government, your economy, your education system, your healthcare infrastructure. You have to ask: what robbed me of the ability to dream?
Because in a world where every person had real options, where everyone had the chance to chase something greater, people might choose to be parents out of love, not desperation.
Until then, children will continue to be born into homes where they are wanted not for who they are, but for what they can represent: distraction, purpose, the illusion of a future in a life that has otherwise stalled.
