White Plague and Millennials
I have a group of close friends that regularly hangs out on weekends. We share a similar taste in movies, food, music and don’t shy away from ideological discussions that rarely end in a full-blown conflict, a refreshing difference compared to what’s going own elsewhere. Usually in July, we drive down to the Adriatic coast for a swim, a few drinks on a sunny day and it’s always memorable. Time spent with good people is never wasted. We’re all in that dreadful “millennial” bracket and though our attitudes have acquired a bit of that cynical lining that comes with age, we’re still looking for that needle of good in the haystack of bad.
There’s a particular trait we all share: we’re all childless and unmarried, though only a few are single. It feels similar to the Seinfeld’s TV gang: usually occupying the same place at the same bar, talking about life and the beautiful bullshit we have to deal with in order to make it work. I wouldn’t call it an intention, rather a coincidence. Some don’t feel the need for a romantic relationship, some have commitment issues, others are fine with the way things are and there are those in long-distance relationship. At our age, most of our parents already had a career and a family, until the war turned everything upside down. Guess what? We don’t make a big deal of it and it’s rarely mentioned. It could be either a hot potato or just tiresome.
I don’t pick and choose my company according to their marital status, that would be stupid. People with kids are simply too busy with everything going on in their lives to give you as much time as others and that’s a natural thing to expect. Anything different would be bad parenting. Your priorities do change, but you still need human contact with someone you’re not married or related to. It’s what they call a chosen family. Each one of us needs a bubble like this because it gives us something more to look forward to. Someone you don’t need to apologize to for your imperfections.
But when you look at it from the boomer perspective, we’re just tossing our future away. They think we’re selfish and spoiled, unable to get out of our comfort zone. Hey, grow the fuck up. Be a husband and a father, get a dog and a god damn Volvo. What, you don’t have a licence? I don’t believe this. What the hell is going on in that head of yours? Who is going to take care of you? What about this? What about that? This is how a conversation with them would sound like. We’re deep in issues like overpopulation and environmental crisis nowadays. They’ll dismiss it as an excuse to avoid the elephant in the room. And that’s where you hit the dead end with them.
It’s true, though. The average age in certain populations like Japan or western Europe is rapidly climbing and were it not for the immigrants with their large families, some cities would look like open-air nursing homes. Young people feel a cultural and social pressure to procreate in order to maintain their communities with all the commodities they need. While I see a point in all this, neither the problem nor the solution are simple.
If you were so adamant to keep your communities growing, you’d be more welcoming to people from other cultural backgrounds, like Asians or Arabs because they’ll be filling all the empty space in the workforce once your own children leave in the pursuit of happinness elsewhere. Instead, you’re allowing extremists to stir up a witch-hunt against people who allegedly endanger our European traditions and values. Wake up: if things continue snowballing the way they do right now, you’ll be begging them to come since someone needs to deal with your messy adult diapers after all.
Life is unpredictable. There are things we can consciously choose or avoid and those we all deal with, notwithstanding your marital status. Linguistics is not really so important in this sense. Whether child-free or childless, the outcome is the same. The lack of a nursery in your house doesn’t necessarily imply a lack of fulfillment as well. Parenthood should be a natural instinct, not a social milestone, and in this new world, with a variety of lifestyles and beliefs, it’s increasingly difficult to find what you’re looking for. No wonder having a love life is increasingly hard to deal with.
Why even settle for just one? Binary perception will always be prevalent, but in romantic relationships, new concepts are gaining momentum. Instagram is famous for hashtags. A particular one caught my attention the other day: #throuple. It’s a love triangle where the size of the matress can be a challenge if you insist on sharing the same bed. Like three pieces of sushi in an already overcrowded bowl. Their photos are always about fun, passion, vacation. It probably looks like a sweaty human centipede when they decide to get nasty. Now I have to try to unsee it. Nah, I can’t.
Not my cup of tea though. When you consider complications of old-fashioned relationships, one more spoon on the table is too much to handle. On one hand, that’s a different story hardly affected by the aforementioned procreation pressures. On the other, you have the privilege of a wider DNA pool should you decide to give it a go. We need to make one thing clear : you don’t have to rent your uterus to contribute to solving the issue of white plague. Yes, that’s the name for it: white plague. In other words, a combination of increased emigration and declining birth rates.
Men used to go abroad for work, leave their wives and kids at home, and build a new house when they return. Not anymore. In this context, statistics are both cruel and simple. Countries like Latvia and Lithuania are expected to lose 30 % of their total population between 2020 and 2100. It means the census will most probably fall under one million people. Like it or not, the cultural landscape of Europe will change because the wealthy classes will depend on the influx of their favourite scapegoats. In fact, you’ll be the new minority, depending on them to keep enjoying your life.
When we talk about this in countries with a sizeable population like America, it’s less obvious. But when you take a look at some European countries that lose the equivalent of a mid-size city each year, you can no longer ignore it to focus on pollution instead. Slowly you notice something that makes tree-hugging much less important. In my building, there’s a declining number of residents. Several young families moved out, but there’s a dear old lady that likes to treat me with her home-made cookies. They’re as hard as pebbles but you don’t want to hurt her feelings.
Overpopulation is a hot global issue. But when you got even gay people saying they’re wasting their juice, it no longer sounds like a joke. I know few peers with more than two children. We’re constantly bombarded with dark warnings about environmental disasters. Yet we can’t stop deforestation and depopulation on our own. It will have to be a joint effort. Before talking about an unsustainable planet, we need to talk about ghost towns with nothing left to sustain. As close as outside the suburbs, you’ll see a different picture. Or to be more precise, the haunting absence of one.
