www-nytimes-com-7wlxcp.txt (10576B)
1 [1]Opinion|There’s a Link Between Therapy Culture and Childlessness 2 [2][3] 3 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/opinion/ 4 therapy-estrangement-childless-millennials.html 5 6 • Share full article 7 • 8 • 9 • 1.7k 10 [8]1651 11 12 You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When 13 we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. 14 A pair of figures peer over a body of water in which is reflected the figure of 15 a parent and child. 16 Credit...Dadu Shin 17 [9]Skip to content[10]Skip to site index 18 [11] 19 20 [12]OpinionGuest Essay 21 22 There’s a Link Between Therapy Culture and Childlessness 23 24 Credit...Dadu Shin 25 26 Supported by 27 28 [13]SKIP ADVERTISEMENT 29 Listen to this article · 17:55 min [15]Learn more 30 31 • Share full article 32 • 33 • 34 • 1.7k 35 [20]1651 36 37 Michal Leibowitz 38 39 By Michal Leibowitz 40 41 Ms. Leibowitz is a staff editor for Times Opinion. 42 43 • May 30, 2025 44 45 They mess you up, your mum and dad. 46 They may not mean to, but they do. 47 They fill you with the faults they had 48 And add some extra, just for you. 49 50 How many times had I read [21]a version of these lines or heard them recited? 51 The opening stanza of Philip Larkin’s poem “This Be the Verse” is a favorite of 52 fictional [22]shrinks and [23]wise folk. I can say the words by heart. But it 53 was only last year, my stomach already stretching with new life, that I reread 54 the poem and found myself focusing on the third stanza, which offers the 55 logical conclusion of the earlier two: 56 57 Man hands on misery to man. 58 It deepens like a coastal shelf. 59 Get out as early as you can, 60 And don’t have any kids yourself. 61 62 There are few decisions more fraught for members of my generations — the cusp 63 of millennial and Gen Z — than whether or not to become a parent. In 2023 the 64 U.S. fertility rate fell to a record low. Some of the decline can be explained 65 by [24]a delay in having children or a decrease in the number of children, 66 rather than people forgoing child rearing entirely. But it still seems [25] 67 increasingly likely that millennials will have the highest rate of 68 childlessness of any generational cohort in American history. 69 70 There are plenty of plausible explanations for the trend. People aren’t having 71 kids because it’s too expensive. They’re not having kids because they can’t 72 find the right partner. They’re not having kids because they want to prioritize 73 their careers, because of climate change, because the idea of bringing a child 74 onto this broken planet is too depressing. They’re swearing off parenthood 75 because of the [26]overturning of Roe v. Wade or because they’re perennially 76 commitmentphobic or because popular culture has made motherhood seem [27]so 77 daunting, its burdens so deeply unpleasant, that you have to have a touch of 78 masochism to even consider it. Maybe women, in particular, are having fewer 79 children simply because they can. 80 81 I suspect there’s some truth in all of these explanations. But I think there’s 82 another reason, too, one that’s often been overlooked. Over the past few 83 decades, Americans have redefined “harm,” “abuse,” “neglect” and “trauma,” 84 expanding those categories to include emotional and relational struggles that 85 were previously considered unavoidable parts of life. Adult children seem 86 increasingly likely to publicly, even righteously, cut off contact with a 87 parent, sometimes citing emotional, physical or sexual abuse they experienced 88 in childhood and sometimes things like clashing values, [28]parental toxicity 89 or feeling misunderstood or unsupported. 90 91 This cultural shift has contributed to a new, nearly impossible standard for 92 parenting. Not only must parents provide shelter, food, safety and love, but 93 we, their children, also expect them to get us started on successful careers 94 and even to hold themselves accountable for our mental health and happiness 95 well into our adult years. 96 97 So I want to suggest that there’s another reason my generation dreads 98 parenthood: We’ve held our own parents to unreachable standards, standards that 99 deep down, maybe, we know we ourselves would struggle to meet. 100 101 I: They Mess You Up 102 103 I turned 14 in 2010, right when self-harm rates for U.S. girls began [29] 104 ticking up. I was part of a generation of teenage girls who came of age with 105 the internet — with Tumblr, blogs, Snapchat and YouTube. With smartphones. With 106 the compelling urge to self-punish or annihilate. 107 108 We are having trouble retrieving the article content. 109 110 Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings. 111 112 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 113 114 Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode 115 please exit and [30]log into your Times account, or [31]subscribe for all of 116 The Times. 117 118 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 119 120 Thank you for your patience while we verify access. 121 122 Already a subscriber? [32]Log in. 123 124 Want all of The Times? 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