Analyzing the Costs and Benefits of a Child in the Post-COVID World

It has already become a cliche to say that the COVID-19 pandemic will be revolutionary for human civilization. Countries keen on securing vaccines and personal protective equipment have worked quietly to roll back globalized supply chains built up over past decades. Differing policies and level of success handling the virus' spread in different countries mean that, at least soon, the physical mingling of a globalized elite will be minimized, as airlines fail and borders shut. What people took for granted as everyday life, such as going to school and commuting to work, will remain somewhat of luxuries that are subject to cancellations and restrictions at any time based on public health concerns.

It must be difficult to grow up as a child now. Cooped up at home and traumatized by neighbors and even family members falling sick and dying from a mysterious disease, the children of COVID will emerge from the pandemic not only feeling less secure about personal and public health, but less confident of government authorities and economic security. The years they missed out on proper schooling in classrooms and proper fraternizing with friends and classmates of the same age during their formative years will leave a permanent scar on their psyche that time will not heal.

Yet for some adults, and perhaps some kids, having a bigger family now has become more attractive, despite all the negative consequences for children living under COVID. The loneliness of quarantines and the ephemeral nature of life demonstrated by so many COVID-related deaths have convinced many of the value of intimate companionship offered by the family and maybe simultaneously solidified their fears of dying alone. For them, COVID has brought out benefits of big families that they might not have considered in the past when they could freely mingle with friends, coworkers, and others.

From an emotional point of view, such arguments for bigger families in the COVID world make sense. Even if family members can do little to help someone with the illness, they can at least be there, and comfort those who are no doubt very anxious about the uncertainty of mortality that comes with the disease. The healthy can remain more mentally sane not just through talking to people regularly but satiate desires for human touch, even of the most mundane sort. Those who quarantine by their lonesome may face more mental trauma than those who are always with others physically.

But look a bit more into the future and the argument for a bigger family is not persuasive. The post-COVID world will be an economically precarious one. Digitization and labor-saving technology, not to mention government policies encouraging social distancing that may persist alongside various variants of the disease, ensure that business, operations, and indeed, employment structures of many industries regularly churn and shift in a more volatile manner. The children of today, already traumatized by the disease, may face further trauma associated with rapid societal and economic changes that many simply cannot keep up.

Unfortunately, their parents can do little to help them by teaching them how things used to be done. The adults of today, so used to the pre-COVID world, will themselves be fighting to stay economically productive and relevant amidst the post-COVID changes. They will need to adapt, just like their children, and may find it even more difficult than their children to simply give up what used to work and take up something brand new. These adults are in no position to teach their children how the world works. Like their children, parents will have to learn how things work in the post-COVID world from scratch.

Such shifts and churns of the post-COVID world are bound to hit some families where it hurts the most, their wallets. Some stable jobs before the pandemic, like in the airline, hotel, and entertainment industries, disappear, being replaced by precarious ones, or worse, nothing. Those who have been comfortable and earning good salaries pre-pandemic for decades may find themselves out of jobs, with little in terms of resources to help them retrain for new jobs that can provide past levels of economic success. For some people that never imagined it a problem, putting food on the table, especially for a big family, may become a struggle.

Of course, societal and economic changes always happen, and there will always be losers who suffer from these changes. But COVID is different in that changes are turbocharged, with the potential to hit many more people faster, harder, longer, and more comprehensively than any past crises in living memory. During this time of true uncertainty, bringing a child into the world should not be a cause for celebration, but an enormous worry. Yes, many will overcome difficulties in the post-COVID world. But many more may become social burdens, incapable of navigating the ever-shifting world shaped by the pandemic. Are parents and society at large ready to handle these children?