"And it also made me realize the impact children have on people's lives when in contact with them. I hear a lot of things about over-population and some of the negative response to people having children is simply baffling to me. I think life without children wouldn't be a life at all. In a world that is getting scarce of resources and is saturated with pollution and greed, children can make families and communities rethink their values. They make us think "Yeah but, what about the children?" They make us better people in a way. They make us grow healthy food to feed them and they force us to provide better shelter and infrastructure to help them thrive because they have a longer way to go than we do. Because we look at them and we think that they could probably have it better than we did if we just make a little effort.

...

Since our kids left a week ago, we've gone a bit lazy. We stopped caring for others and only have ourselves to look out for. When my kids enter a room, they make people smile and bring a tiny ray of sunshine into their lives. Children are natural conveyors of life. They make us look into the future, they make us hope, they make us better people. And I don't think that refusing to put a child into this polluted, half-collapsed, degenerated world is a solution. It would be a suicide to stay away from the only thing that keeps us going: a true sense of hope. When you see yourself growing and evolving into another, smaller, hopefully better version of yourself it forces you to make more humane and sustainable decisions. It makes you a better human being."

A little note from some Canadians living a self sufficient life in the boonies of Quebec.