The Single-child Generation

 I read a BBC report on the single-child generation and the quiet consequences of falling birth rates across the world. It made me pause—and decide to speak in my own voice.

If you’re anything like me, keep reading.

I have written endlessly about the sanctity of life. And yet, in my youth, I made a private vow: I would have only one child, and never more. I kept that promise.

Most children dream of being extraordinary—

of being seen,

of doing what others cannot.

My dream was the opposite.

I wanted to be ordinary.

The stars, however, left a wound on me—one that will accompany me until death. I longed to disappear into the crowd, to do only what others could do, to be the most unremarkable person alive. But every sign in my life pointed stubbornly the other way.

Language is not merely grammar and vocabulary. Language is about relevance. A shared language is not about words—it is about whether those words include you. For years, I convinced myself that those who spoke my language were my people. Every day, that illusion cracked a little more, pushing me farther away.

One day I understood something fundamental:

When they say, “Stand like this,” they don’t mean me.

When they say, “Raise your hands,” they don’t mean me.

When they say, “Run to that point,” they don’t mean me.

When they say, “Do this and your pain will disappear,” they don’t mean me.

When they say, “Sleep like this,” “See like this,” “Avoid this medicine,” “Follow this rule and you’ll be fine”—they don’t mean me.

Because for me, the pain returns anyway.

Because for me, the exception is the rule.

Eventually, I realized something even harder to accept: all of this advice, all of these stories, all of these books and seminars and success manuals—they were written for an ordinary person entangled in life. Not for me.

When books invited readers into shared joys and sorrows, I was not among the invited. When speakers listed the things one “must not do,” they were not speaking to me—I was already living inside those forbidden zones, unable to exit them, constrained by a face and a brain wired without permission.

Nothing was ever about me.

Nothing was ever addressed to me.

Even when it was spoken directly in front of my eyes.

This gene, this soil from which my clay was molded, made me a stranger—even in rooms full of people. At parties, my absence went unnoticed, until I began asking myself:

Why should I live among those whose words never include me?

That is why I decided—without drama, without heroism—that even if a gun were pressed to my temple, I would not pass this gene on. No child deserves to inherit even a fraction of this unbroken suffering. The world does not need more strangers.

This, at the very least, was my way of standing on the side of life.

And I am grateful—deeply grateful—that my child bears no trace of my kind, and instead leans toward a better, freer version of his father.

And if this is hypocrisy,

so be it.