Are Millennials ‘Childless’ or ‘Child Free’?

To the Editor:

“Why Do Millennials Dread Having Babies?,” by Michal Leibowitz (Opinion guest essay, June 1), left me sad, impatient and energetically questioning her conclusion.

Sad to read that she and others in their 20s and 30s are so fearful of having children. Impatient with her portrait of a mental health culture that seems to her to encourage people to live in a world limited by parental abuse and inadequacy. And energetically questioning her conclusion that such a culture is causing childlessness.

Young people I know are indeed hesitant about having children, but almost exclusively for the reasons Ms. Leibowitz touches on in the beginning of her piece, but does not return to in her analysis. Some worry about their ability to support children financially, and many are deeply concerned about our country’s appetite for authoritarianism and the kind of future that climate change will bring.

It is critical to the psychotherapeutic enterprise to recognize the influences — especially the traumas — that have shaped our feelings and behavior. But responsible therapists also do everything possible to help patients and clients loosen the hold of damaging childhood experience, and wrest from its pain the strength and wisdom to live mindfully and hopefully in the present.

Most of the people I’ve worked with on this issue over 50 years — including women who as children suffered horrendous physical abuse — have said that their therapeutic experience made them far more comfortable with having children. Friends who have worked with other therapists say the same. Some do worry whether they will do a better job than their parents, but just about all welcome the opportunity and the challenge.

James S. Gordon
Washington
The writer is a psychiatrist and the author of “Transforming Trauma: The Path to Hope and Healing.”