This week, Gavin McInnes posted a piece on The Federalist titled Why Your Top 10 Reasons For Not Having Kids Are Stupid. It would have been more aptly titled “10 Condescending Reasons This Parent Looks Down on People Who Don’t Have Kids.” McInnes does a terrible job making the case for having children—and I say this as a parent myself. But in making his (terrible) case, McInnes also illustrates some central problems in the way conservatives go about attempting to enact social change.

Let’s have a look!

I was so adamant about not having kids as a young man, I tried to get my tubes tied at the tender age of 21. Now that I have three, my only regret is waiting so long. I wish I could have had five. Um. Men don’t get their tubes tied. Women do. Men get theirs snipped, not tied. McInnes appears to have watched his wife go through pregnancy and childbirth three times without learning the first thing about reproductive anatomy. You’ll hear a lot of parents lament that they had too few or didn’t have a boy or had all boys, but you’ll never hear them say, “I wish I hadn’t had a kid.” This actually isn’t true. There are people that have so regretted having kids that they’ve murdered their kids (I’m not linking, because the stories are so horrific). There are plenty others who would never harm their kids but do regret having them—it’s just that they don’t tend to say this publicly because it’s not exactly socially acceptable to do so (and because they don’t want their kids to hear it). But that doesn’t change the fact that they feel that way. Whenever I see couples without kids, I plead with them to change their ways because, almost without exception, the ones who refuse to breed are the ones who would make the best parents. This comes so close to eugenic ideas about “the right kind of people” not reproducing that I almost don’t want to touch it to start with. I will say that the question at issue here isn’t whether someone would be a good parent but rather whether they someone wants to be a parent. There’s a difference. Here are the same ten excuses they always make and why they’re wrong. Oh boy. Here we go!

1. Ew, Diapers? Gross Do you wipe your own ass? This is the same thing, only much smaller. You’ll be surprised how un-gross changing diapers is. I knew our third would be our last, and each diaper change was getting closer to the last I would ever do. I coveted each chocolate-covered nutsack like I was the White House pastry chef, and when the last diaper went into the trash, I cried like a baby. First, unless McInnes defecates very differently from most people, he’s flat wrong about changing a diaper being the same thing as wiping after using the toilet. There’s a whole lot of wiping poop off of skin involved in changing a baby’s diaper, and your head and face are generally directly above the poop while you do the wiping. Okay, second point. I couldn’t determine whether Emily, the woman to whom McInnes is married, is a stay at home mom, but I did find that McInnes has stated on TV that women are happiest when they stay at home with their children. It also appears that McInnes works, which means that he’s only doing supplemental diaper changing, rather than being the primary diaper changer. That does make a difference. Third, if McInnes likes changing diapers, good for him! But you know what? Most people don’t. My husband and I breathed a collective sigh of relief when your younger child was finally potty trained and we could kiss diapers goodbye.

2. I Hate Kids No, you hate other people’s kids. We all do. These are your kids. They don’t just look like you, they are you. Have you noticed that, as you get older, your dad goes from cruel tyrant to just a wrinkled version of you? It’s the same with kids, but in reverse. If my son screws up a drawing, he rips it to pieces and hurls it into the garbage in a rage, where it lands next to the crumpled notes I just threw in there in a similar rage. Um, no. Your kids are not you, and if you are going into parenting thinking they will be, you are in for serious disappointment (and your kids are going to end up needing some therapy). Also? Some people honestly don’t like handling the various developmental stages children go through, and not just in other people’s kids. Kids don’t raise themselves, they have developmental needs that have to be met, and sometimes meeting those needs is simply annoying. Even parents tend to like some stages better than others. It’s not surprising, then, that there would be some people who honestly and truly would prefer not to be around children more than they already are at family gatherings, etc.

3. I Just Don’t See the Appeal Do me a favor. Smell a baby’s breath and get back to me. What?! It’s smell a baby’s head, not smell a baby’s breath! Baby’s breath smells like breastmilk, or slightly sour breastmilk, or slightly digested and spit back up breastmilk. Babies’ heads, on the other hand, do tend to have a very satisfying smell. But you know what? Babies only stay babies for about a year, give or take a few months! Then they become full blown kids and their hair smells just like adult people hair, and you have to keep right on raising them.

4. Only Egomaniacs Have Kids “Are you so obsessed with yourself you need to make more of you?” a friend recently asked so I’d stop hassling him about being childless. You can phrase it any way you want, but the biological imperative is the most intrinsically human thing you can possibly do. It’s the meaning of life. As far as it being selfish, trust me, you are way too busy running around praising, reprimanding, hugging, and giving time-outs to gloat at your prodigy. That’s something only the childless have time to think about. Hang on. If the biological imperative is “the most intrinsically human thing you can possibly do,” why do other animal species have it as well? As for the selfish issue, given that McInnes thinks his kids are him, I’m going to go with yes, for him, having kids was at least partially selfish. And notice that he doesn’t actually take issue with his friend’s question about being so obsessed with himself that he needs to make more of him. Instead, he appears to affirm it. I would also take issue with the idea that people without kids de facto have more time than parents. I have friends without kids who are just as busy as I am, and friends who have kids who are less busy. It varies. He’s also flat-out wrong here—plenty of parents find more than enough time to got over their children. I try not to do that because I don’t want my kids to ever feel like I’m finding my value or worth in them, but plenty of other parents do.

5. I’m Too Selfish This is the opposite of the egomaniac excuse, and it’s often followed by, “I can barely feed myself.” Don’t fret, virtue signalers. You will be able to summon the strength to prevent your child from starving to death. It’s an instinct that goes back at least a quarter of a million years. Besides, they scream so unbelievably loud at night, you can’t possibly ignore them. After that, they learn to walk and develop incredible strategies to avoid being ignored, like growing big eyes and saying the darndest things such as “The Bob Marley has begun” and “Scientists say, when you read a book to love, you just fall apart.” The question is not whether those who would prefer not to have kids could theoretically summon up the energy to feed their kids etc., it’s whether they want to put themselves in a situation where they have to do so. Raising children is an incredible amount of work, and it intrudes just about everywhere. You just started a book? Too bad, your kid needs a cup of water! You just sat down to fold the laundry? Too bad, your kids are fighting in the other room and you need to go arbitrate! You were enjoying a romantic moment with your husband? Too bad, your baby is awake and you need to go breastfeed! I can’t go out the way I might have before, I can’t get together with friends the way I would have before, I can’t even go to the grocery store the way I would have before. Literally everything changes, and I can perfectly understand why some people don’t want that. And in most cases, it has nothing to do with thinking you wouldn’t be able to do it. And let’s talk about the screaming at night part for a moment. McInnes mentions it as though it’s a good thing, but he doesn’t consider the flip side—the lack of sleep many parents have to suffer through. The primary reason my husband doesn’t want another kid is that he likes to be able to sleep at night. He’s a light sleeper, so even though I breastfed and got up with both babies, he woke up every single time, and he doesn’t function well being sleep deprived.

6. The World Is Overpopulated Er, I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a eugenics nut, but it’s about quality, not quantity. Yes, India has dead bodies floating down the river. Your local public school having yet another kid named Cody is not going to cause global warming. These kinds of myths gain traction because of the death of math. We want to save all the kittens and rescue all the pups and kill all the babies, because we think there are a finite number of each. There are seven billion of us. Your gestures aren’t “thinking globally.” They’re not thinking at all. If you go on to the beach and wash one grain of sand, you’re not “doing your part.” You’re wasting your time. We live in the safest, healthiest, and most prosperous nation ever. If anyone should feel good about creating more people here, it’s you. And if you don’t, someone else will. I’m not actually sure what McInnes is saying here, because he talks in circles and tangles. But let’s start at the beginning. If you have to start a sentence with “I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a eugenics nut,” you probably shouldn’t finish the sentence. That quality v. quantity comment is disgusting. McInnes is also arguing with a strawman—no one thinks that if they and they alone don’t have kids, they’ll stop global warming. Some people, though, would rather not contribute more to what they see as an overconsumption of resources. Also? His link at the end is to an article about immigration driving our population growth, because apparently he just has to toot the eugenics horn one more time. And if you can figure out what he meant about the death of math and there being a finite number of each, feel free to him in in the comments! By my read, he appears to be saying that the population is going to grow regardless, so it makes no sense to try to stop it, just like the number of kittens will (supposedly?) always grow, so you can never save them all (I think?).

7. My Parents Were Horrible and I Don’t Want to Repeat That Yeah, your lineage has been polluted by the crappy parent gene, and you’re doing the world a service by cutting it off. In fact, the opposite is true. My experience has been that the children of negligent parents know exactly how damaging that is and are the least likely to reproduce it (“my experience” is code for “white middle class” and is relevant here because that’s likely who is reading this article—sorry). Have you been around the dads without dads? The biggest problem with them is they dote on their children too much. It’s true, in my experience, that if someone is cognizant that their childhood was abusive, they’re likely to try to raise their own children differently. Of course, McInnes seems to assume that people who had abusive parents will be aware that what they experienced was abuse (when we know this is not always the case). Still, that can perhaps be excused because he’s writing to people who don’t want to have kids because they recognize that their parents were abusive and don’t want to repeat that. The bigger problem is what McInnes is missing: That there are plenty of people who simply don’t want to take any chances after their abusive past—and I get that—and plenty of people who would find the simple fact of being a parent triggery after their own upbringing.

8. It’s No Big Deal If I Don’t Really? How could it possibly be a bigger deal? Besides the part where our entire civilization is choosing to stop reproducing, what about you? Cavemen fought saber-toothed tigers. Your ancestors survived the plague. World war after world war went by, and your relatives made it through, and you’re going to throw that all away with a shrug? You’re ending that incredible journey through history because you like watching Netflix in the daytime? Oh lord. For one thing, there’s the assumption that everyone who doesn’t have kids watches Netflix all day—um, no—but can we talk about the fact that McInnes links to an article titled What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster? The book’s Amazon description claims that in the U.S. “the people who do still want to have children feel like second-class citizens” (I assure you this is not the case) and ends with this statement: “Because if America wants to continue to lead the world, we need to have more babies.” Remember that whole eugenics horn McInnes was tooting earlier? I think I hear it again. Actually, I have a question—whatever happened to McInnes statement (vis a vis concerns about overpopulation) that if you don’t have kids, someone else will? Wouldn’t that statement tend to suggest that there is no individual mandate to reproduce for the good of the country? And if children are so important, how’s about investing more resources in early childhood interventions, social services, childcare, and education? Which leads us to:

9. It’s Too Expensive So is eating out in New York if you do it wrong. You can have a dinner for $4 or you can have one for $400. Public school is free, and there are still plenty of areas where they’re just as good as private. Bicycles are cheap, toys are cheaper, second-hand clothes are everywhere, and kids don’t really care if they’re in an apartment or a mansion. College and piano lessons are all frills kids don’t require. In the ’70s, we didn’t have any of that stuff, and we loved it. Having a kid is exactly as expensive as you want it to be. Public school may be free, but you know what isn’t? Daycare, preschool, and after school care. After school care is nothing to sneeze at, either—it’s hella expensive, as I’m fast learning. And also? While today’s children are often over scheduled, piano lessons and other classes or sports, etc., are indeed important—they help children exercise their brains in important ways and provide children with important teamwork-building skills and extracurriculars to put on their transcripts. And college isn’t exactly a “frill” these days—it’s mandatory for many career paths, and parents generally do what they can to save for their kids’ college because the alternative is watching their kids take on a mountain of debt. Let’s leave aside paying for food, clothing, a slightly bigger house, and toys, etc., for a moment. Let’s assume your kid eats ramen, wears clothes from the charity basket, sleeps in the living room, and only plays with gifts, not to mention having no music lessons or ballet classes. Even in this scenario, you still have to pay for childcare. That’s going to run you $10,000 in most places, and will only decline slightly as the child hits age 3 or 4. If you live in the city, it may run you twice that much. By the time your kid starts school you’ll be out $50,000, if you’re lucky. And guess what? You’re paying this even if one of the parents stays home, because that parent is forfeiting an income (or potential income) to do so. I grew up with a stay at home mom and used to tell people exactly what McInnes says above. That was before I realized that she gave up decades of a good salary to raise my siblings and I, and that was before I became a working mother and had to shop for daycares. Some families are able to make arrangements for relatives to watch the children, or for a friend down the street to do so, but that is not guaranteed. I know someone who is pregnant and just found out she’s having twins and is having to scramble to figure out how she’s going to pay for childcare. It’s true that children don’t have to have everything. It’s not true that “having a kid is exactly as expensive as you want it to be.” If that were true, I wouldn’t have forked over my entire salary on daycare for several years running.

10. We’re Not Ready Women are convinced they can cram a career in before their ovaries dry up, but did you notice you started menstruating at 14? Twenty-four is already ten years past that date. At 34, you’ve basically told your womb to pack it in. I’ve heard doctors get in trouble for saying this to their patients, but for the umpteenth time: The hour glass of your fertility turns upside down at 30, and five years later it’s all but drained. Anecdotal evidence to the contrary is dangerous to cling to. I don’t know how many couples my age have realized it’s too late way after their best-before date and have spent tens of thousands of dollars attempting to reverse the clock. When they do manage to pull it off, they have to worry about health issues and autism, not to mention how brutal it is to get no sleep when you’re over 40.

That comment about starting to menstruate at 14 is disgusting. Maternal mortality is incredibly high for girls who get pregnant—the fact that their menstruating doesn’t mean their bodies are physically prepared to handle pregnancy. The entire way McInnes frames this section makes my skin crawl. It’s like he thinks women aren’t already well aware that they have ticking biological clocks. Perhaps rather than attempting to scare women into having kids earlier, he should recognize the reasons why many women feel they need to focus on their careers first and attempt to mitigate the pressures women face through better maternal leave and childcare policies. But then, McInnes is on record telling a career woman she’d be happier having kids and staying home with them, so I don’t see that happening.

Actually though, I think I’ve just put my finger on something. When conservatives look at declining (white middle class) birth rates, they rarely take the time to truly ask why these rates are declining. McInnes thinks he’s doing so, and addressing the reasons people are choosing not to have kids, but he’s not—note that he literally does not mention childcare or maternity leave. He doesn’t address the pressures women face when trying to juggle a career and children. Instead, he thinks people are choosing not to have kids because they’re selfish and because they don’t like changing diapers.

It is not the case that declining birth rates can be explained solely by lack of affordable childcare or paid maternity leave. It is, however, the case that better policies in these areas (and in the workplace) would make women interested in childbearing feel more able to do so, and it would make people consider more seriously having more than one or two children. But McInnes doesn’t want to address the societal factors leading to lower birth rates. Instead he addresses the problem as an individual failure. Conservatives do this for many many many subjects—think of declining marriage rates, for instance.

McInnes is right that global population is projected to peak and then decline, by the way, but you know what? That’s actually a good thing. Hopefully in the future we can work toward a more equitable world where everyone has the resources they need to lead a healthy, happy, and productive life. And that’s another thing McInnes is missing—people who don’t have children frequently invest in other people’s children, or take other steps to make the world a better place through friendships, volunteer work, and so forth. This isn’t some one-dimensional world where parents are investing in the country’s future while non-parents aren’t.