I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Alfonso Cuarón’s “Children of Men.” Set in a dystopian future where infertility has given the human race a literal expiration date, the movie is about what happens to a society when the future fades out of sight and people embrace nihilism.

Children, the movie seems to suggest, are the raison d’etre of our constant struggle to make life better. Even if you don’t have kids of your own — as many of my generational peers do not and will not — it’s possible to be humbled by having kids around. Knowing that there are always more little humans on the way can inspire people to think beyond themselves and do things that benefit humanity. It can be a tonic for loneliness, depression and other afflictions that ail us.

Try to imagine a world without laughter echoing from playgrounds. I can’t think of a time in my life where this soundtrack wasn’t playing somewhere — I can’t imagine life without it.

Except now, as a resident of Boston, I have to.

A new study by The Boston Foundation offers a chilling vision of Boston’s future, so far as kids and families are concerned. As the Boston Globe housing reporter Tim Logan wrote, “Boston has grown by about 100,000 people [in the last two decades]. But it has about 10,000 fewer school age kids. Where have all the children gone?” The answer, according to the study, is that families with kids are being pushed out of Boston, into less expensive (but still gentrifying) suburbs, at such a seismic rate that in the near future, children might not have a place here.

This might sound hyperbolic, but it’s the simple conclusion of The Boston Foundation’s report, and it’s substantiated by data.

School enrollment rates in Boston have plummeted since the mid-20th century. Roughly 20,000 students — mostly from low-income households — have been lost. But the total number of children living in Boston, irrespective of their school enrollment, is far more disturbing. Of the 700,000 or so people living in the city, only 75,000 of them are between 5 and 17 years old. That’s barely 10%, and it’s a staggering 43% drop from the number of children living in Boston 50 years ago, in 1970.

Lately, there’s been so much reporting about the forces driving thousands of Boston residents into the suburbs. But let’s remind ourselves of the obvious: the housing we’re building is mostly designed for well-off young professionals, public housing and even housing vouchers have been painfully under-used in recent decades, and the decision-making class of Boston can’t seem to reconcile its fealty to the markets, with the idea that cities should be more than giant business districts.

Consider the Seaport, a new neighborhood with plenty of mixology bars and co-working spaces, but not many of the things that families with children need, such as public parks, libraries or even a grocery store. As the Globe’s Spotlight team reminded us in 2017, the Seaport project was a chance to create a neighborhood for all Bostonians, including children. Some $18 billion in taxpayer money was funneled into the Seaport, on the premise that the new neighborhood would be a hub for innovation and an economic development boon for all of Boston. Instead, it’s become home to luxury apartments and one of the wealthiest and whitest neighborhoods in the city.

There are several local examples of the development and gentrification that’s turning Boston into a childless city, while also hurting surrounding communities too. There's the fact that many of the new apartments and condos built recently are either sitting empty, or being used as havens for investors.