Earlier this week, I came across an article by Christine Overall in The New York Times about the ethical considerations that should go into having children.

To me, one of the best passages from the article was this one:

The burden of proof—or at least the burden of justification—should therefore rest primarily on those who choose to have children, not on those who choose to be childless. The choice to have children calls for more careful justification and thought than the choice not to have children because procreation creates a dependent, needy, and vulnerable human being whose future may be at risk.

This basically sums up a half-written blog post that has been rattling around in my head for some time, and Overall’s article inspired me to finally finish it.

There’s really only one difference between Overall’s musings and mine, and that is our approaches. As a professor of philosophy who holds a University Research Chair at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Overall’s article takes a logical, thoughtful, measured look at the implications of having children on parents, society, and the children themselves. As a childfree 30-something who finds it nearly impossible to find someone my age to go to the movies with, my blog post serves as an outlet for a whiny, adolescent-inspired rant.

If you would like to read Overall’s well-reasoned article, click on the link above.

If you would like to peruse my emotionally charged rant, keep reading.

When I was in junior high, I decided not to have kids. My friends did, too. The world was a cruel and punishing place, we said, and to bring another human being into it was simply inhumane.

Ain’t no way, no how we were having kids. It was a matter of principle!

Fast-forward 25 years and only one of us is childfree. The great equalizer that is Facebook tells me this. If I were still in touch with them in any meaningful way in real life, I would ask them three things:

What happened to our iron-clad pact?

Did you spend the last 20 years in the same world I did?

Where is the angst, people?

Now, everyone who has seen “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” knows that, when properly executed, pacts between 13-year-old girls are for realsies. I’m not sure why ours didn’t stick.

It certainly couldn’t be because my friends decided that the world wasn’t so bad after all. They can’t possibly think things have gotten better since 1987, can they?

Ways the world has gotten worse since 1987: AIDS, September 11, global warming, cyberbullying, political partisanship, the Great Recession, Darfur, cell phones that give you brain cancer, Columbine, Hurricane Katrina, that “Dukes of Hazzard” movie with Jessica Simpson. And so on and so forth.

Ways the world has gotten better since 1987: Proof that dark chocolate and red wine are healthy for you.

When I said in 1987 that the world was cruel and punishing, I meant it. I still mean it. Introducing a tiny, helpless someone to this cold hunk of rock still doesn’t seem like the nicest thing to do. I mean, besides the fact you never know when the next tainted beef outbreak will occur, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Lindsay Lohan are on the loose out there, people!