WE ARE NOT FUTURELESS

So, for young couples now, having a child, the idea of starting a family has, in one generation, gone from being a normal, accepted thing, to an unaffordable luxury. While we are all obediently grateful we don’t live in slum built on a toxic wasteland, I think it is still fair to be affronted that neoliberalism has pauperised us all to the point where living in a van or relying on foodbanks has become normalised.

And still we are not doing anything to prevent climate change. Which either begs the question of course whether really anyone should have children at all, given what it costs the environment, or whether we should be living and loving as much as we can while we can.

Me, I was lucky. I had my kids before I knew what we had done to the planet, before it became unaffordable to buy a house in london. So I guess I can afford the luxury of some humour. And so.

For those thinking of starting a family, be warned:

1. The first two years you don't sleep, merely stumble through a mess of excrement and wailing, your clothes covered in milk and sick. All you get in return is a wriggling miracle of human perfection that you can't believe is part of you.

2. The next three years, you get asked "why?" 200 times a day until you want to scream. All you get in return is innocent, adorable uncomplicated love and to spend the weekends being a child alongside them.

3. Then there is the interminable frustration of the school run, playground politics, hideous helicopter parents, jaded teachers, endless Disney. All you get in return is to share the growth and wonder of the funniest, most beautiful little person you ever met

4. Secondary school passes in a welter of hormones and anguish and worry. All you get in return is to watch your beautiful child slowly begin to learn to be an adult, to explore and be fascinated by the great hopeful adventure of life, and to make you more proud than you thought possible.

5. Then they leave you, they go off and start to build their own life, and you cry your eyes out like a lovelorn teenager because you can't have any of those amazing minutes, hours, days, weeks, years back. It's gone, the deepest, greatest love story of your life. Well, not quite. Because what you get, what you got, in return is the feeling that you have loved and still love deeper than you ever thought possible.

Personally I feel greenwashing will win out until it is too late. All I can offer is to suggest perhaps as some kind of answer, is to live and love all you can while you can. Because, if we have love, perhaps then we may still find a way, we may still have a future.