by So on Tuesday my brother sent me my sister-in-law’s 12-week scan. You could make out its head (still an it at this stage, and thankfully not a them) but not a lot else. Everything is fine, apparently. I knew that she was pregnant with her second child several weeks ago. When my brother told me, I could think of was Oh no! The idea of bringing any humans kicking and screaming into the 2020s sounds terrifying, let alone two of them. And in the UK, bringing up a child properly is now horrendously expensive. I didn’t see it coming – my brother had made pretty clear noises about his son being a first and last, and my sister-in-law will be three months short of forty when the baby pops out in the winter. The biggest beneficiary of this extra human will be my nephew – I just look at all the kids I teach, and those who have a sibling are generally better adjusted than those who don’t. (Only children are very common in modern Romania.) I’m personally very glad that I have a brother. The first time around they wanted a surprise, but this time they want to know the sex of the baby – they’ll find that out when they get back from New Zealand in September.
Having children, or not, has been in the news of late. Trump’s VP pick, JD Vance, has said the US is run by “childless cat ladies” who are “miserable at their own lives”. He even brought Pete Buttigieg (who isn’t a “cat lady” as far as I’m aware) into the discussion. He said that people without children don’t have a direct stake in the future of the country. If you really believe that, JD, you’re a fucking idiot (as well as being an insulting prick, but we already knew that bit). In 2016, David Cameron quit immediately after the Brexit referendum. In short order the ensuing Conservative leadership contest had been narrowed down to just two: Andrea Leadsom and Theresa May. Leadsom said in a comment to a newspaper that she’d make the better prime minister because she had children and her rival didn’t. This stupid comment basically handed the job to Theresa May. Sadly in the US, that’s not how it works.
