Watch the Insight episode Baby droughtwhich examines why more and more people choose not to have children and what society will look like in forty years as a result
I live in an old house in Canberra, work long hours and at 26 I am one of many young Australians who struggle with the idea of children and a family.
For me, that choice was largely made by circumstances before I was even born.
Growing up in the small NSW river town of Moruya, my neighborhood was filled with families where no two looked alike.
Elvis grew up in Moruya, a regional coastal town on the south coast of New South Wales. Source: Delivered
In the wooden house next door, an elderly single father took on the challenge of raising his school-aged daughter. On the other side lived a young family who were figuring out how to best care for their two sons.
My house consisted of just me and my mother, who raised me as a single parent on a disability pension.
I had no father figure and no role model for a growing family. Being a father myself was not at the forefront of my mind.
My values and aspirations around my family are all products of the different lives I have seen in my community.
A happy family needs time for children
I learned early on that there was no right or easy way to do parenting.
It is lived from day to day, but understood afterwards.
The parents in my community woke up and did the best they could with the day they were given.
People make the family work under difficult circumstances, and they become great parents by giving their most valuable resource: time.
My richest memories were colored by the cheapest paint.
Elvis Gleeson
I had a happy childhood. My richest memories – peeling handprints on the walls, glowing plastic stars taped to the ceiling, notebooks with itemized budgets that I drew in chalk – were colored with the cheapest paint.
And I’ve learned that if you really want something, you make it work.
My mother just wanted to be a good mother. While there were things we could and couldn’t do in our socio-economic circle, she made a lot of time for me and her steady presence was more important.
I reached my teenage years with a simple philosophy: all it took for a happy family was a parent who had time for their child.
Elvis and his mother Irene, upon his graduation from college. Source: Delivered
Building a life in which children do not fit
But any dream of starting a family began to crumble at the foot of adolescence.
Having children was never at the forefront of my mind. At fourteen, without knowing any better, I was already making life choices that would indefinitely interrupt the prospect of having children.
I took advantage of a scholarship opportunity at a private school, which opened up possibilities for a college education and an ambitious career.
Elvis says that not being able to experience a similar childhood to the one he had is a contributing factor to him choosing not to have children. Source: Delivered
But all this came at a price. I worked 60 to 100 hours a week, mostly running a community arts center in addition to jobs in the gig economy.
In the midst of such an overwhelming work life, I realized that there was no real possibility for me to have children.
I just don’t have the stability.
I couldn’t give my children the time my mother gave me.
My mother eventually stopped asking when she would have grandchildren. “Elvy, it’s okay, I know you’re busy,” she would say.
The loss of an aspiration is a slow pain. It only feels sharp in the moments when we realize we’ve become boring.
That moment came to me through a phone call from a friend who said, “I’m going to be a dad!”
He was 25, my only friend who was starting a family, and one of the few who had the resources to make fatherhood sustainable.
The news hit me like a bucket of ice cold water. I visited to see a crib where an Eiffel Tower once stood with artfully stacked VB cans.
I finally realized that I had quietly given up my desire to have children.
I had quietly given up my desire to have children.
Elvis Gleeson
Life is no longer what it used to be
My ideals surrounding family belonged to the long-gone world I knew in the early 2000s.
I accept responsibility for my decisions and do not regret the choices I have made.
But I wish we lived in Australia where family and the pursuit of better living conditions were not a matter of compromise.
I wish I didn’t work the equivalent of two full-time jobs in the dwindling hope that I would ever be able to provide for a family.
Whenever I express this opinion, I am routinely told that I am just another entitled member of Generation Z.
I know my mother had a hard time. My challenges are not harder or easier, they are just different.
So much has changed in my life. I can’t taste the flavor of regional Australia anymore. The laughing kookaburras don’t wake me up.
I wouldn’t even have enough time in two lifetimes to buy my own house, and I don’t have it in me to tell my kids they can’t put their little painted hands on the wall.
Why don’t the rest of my peers and I have a family?
I can’t speak for a generation, but my experience tells me that the answer lies in the structure of factors that shape our dreams.
It’s hard to be hopeful when I was just a few years agoon the only remaining road outside the city.
I feel like I can’t promise a safe upbringing to my child after saying goodbye to my boyfriend in 2021, one of millions in the pandemic’s toll.
Before and after COVID-19, I have seen the loneliness and disconnection that exists between people.
Hundreds of thousands of people and children have died due to unnecessary violence. There are wars. There is climate change.
This was the world of my early twenties.
As a young person, there is a sense of fear about the future.
What would a family actually look like? What will the world look like through the eyes of my children?
As our society continues to teeter in all directions, as the pace of life quickens and nothing anymore means what it once did, my hope of becoming a father diminishes.
Young people are hungry for a future and a country we can believe in. Our pursuit of families is withering as the promised land dries up.
And for more stories, visit – a new podcast series from SBS, presented by Kumi Taguchi. From sex and relationships to health, wealth and grief, Insightful offers deeper dives into the lives and first-person stories of former guests from the critically acclaimed TV show Insight.
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