Childless By Choice Carries Consequences

On our Ask the Rabbi feature, we recently answered a very sad question from a lady who suffered greatly from being childless. Yet there are others who are not only childless by choice but proudly and defiantly so. I have written in the past about how babies give birth to fathers even more than men create babies. In other words, having a child changes a man or woman even more than marriage does. One of the most significant changes is that a person with a baby tends to think more seriously about the future. Friends who were into extreme sports all report having lost their enthusiasm for courting death upon becoming parents.
An influential 20th century economist was John Maynard Keynes. One of his destructive ideas was that the free market was a doomed idea and that what really worked well was large scale governmental spending with accompanying deficits. Of course this is a great idea–for the generation happily spending themselves into trillion dollar debts. For their children however, it is a really bad idea. But wait! John Maynard Keynes never had any children. See the connection?
Now let’s look at Europe: France’s new president Emanuel Macron has no children. (His wife is 64). Germany’s Angela Merkel has no children either. Neither does Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte. While we’re at it Luxembourg’s prime minister Xavier Bettel is childless as is Sweden’s prime minister, Stefan Lofven. Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon has no children and there are a number of others but you get the idea. This is one of the reasons that I have been predicting the early demise of the European Economic Union. Its leaders are all one generation thinkers. What say you?