Watch Insight episode Baby Drought, exploring why more are choosing not to have children and what society will look like in 40 years as a result, on
I live in an old Canberra share house, work long hours and at 26, I'm one of many young Australians who struggle with the idea of kids and a family.
For me, that choice was largely made through circumstances before I was even born.
Growing up in the small NSW river town of Moruya, my neighbourhood was filled with families where no two looked alike.
Elvis grew up in Moruya, a semi coastal regional town on the south coast of New South Wales. Source: Supplied
My home was just me and my mum, who raised me as a single parent on a disability pension.
I didn't have a father figure and a role model of a family growing up. Being a father myself was not at the forefront of my thinking.
My values and aspirations surrounding family are all products of the different lives I saw in my community.
A happy family needs time for children
I learned early on there wasn’t a right or easy way to do parenthood.
It’s lived day-to-day but understood retrospectively.
The parents in my community woke up and did the best they could with the day they were given.
People make family work in tough circumstances, and they become incredible parents by giving their most valuable resource: time.
My richest memories were coloured by the cheapest paint.Elvis Gleeson
I had a happy childhood. My richest memories – peeling hand prints on the walls, glowing plastic stars tacked to the ceiling, notebooks of itemised budgets I drew in crayon – were coloured by the cheapest paint.
And I learned that if you really want something, you make it work.
Mum just wanted to be a good mum. While there were things we could and couldn’t do in our socioeconomic bracket, she made a lot of time for me and her steadfast presence was more important.
I reached my teenage years with a simple philosophy: all that is needed for a happy family was a parent with time for their kid.
Elvis and his mother Irene, at his university graduation. Source: Supplied
Building a life where children don't fit
But any dream to have a family began to fall away on the foothill of adolescence.
Having children was never at the forefront of my thinking. At 14, without knowing any better, I was already making life choices that would indefinitely pause the prospect of children.
I pursued a bursary opportunity at a private school, which opened opportunities for a university education and an ambitious career.
Elvis says not being able to provide a similar childhood to the one he had is a contributing factor to him choosing not to have children. Source: Supplied
In the midst of such an overwhelming work life, I realised there was no real possibility for me to have kids.
I just don't have the stability.
I couldn't give my kids the time my mum gave me.
Mum eventually stopped asking when she would get 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 we realise we've become dull.
I had that moment through a phone call from a friend, who said, 'I’m going to be a dad!'
He was 25, my only friend to start a family, and one of few who had the means to make fatherhood tenable.
The news hit me like a bucket of icy water. I visited to see a cradle where there was once an Eiffel Tower of artfully piled VB cans.
I finally registered that I had quietly given up on my desire to have kids.
I had quietly given up on my desire to have kids.Elvis Gleeson
Life not what it used to be
My ideals around family belonged to the long-passed world I knew in the early 2000s.
I accept responsibility for my decisions and I don’t hold any regrets about the choices I've made.
But I wish we lived in an Australia where family and the pursuit of better life circumstances weren’t a matter of trade-offs.
I wish I wasn’t working the equivalent of two full-time jobs in the waning hope I might be able to provide for a family one day.
When I express this opinion, I’m routinely told I’m just another entitled member of Gen Z.
I know my mum had it hard. My challenges aren’t harder or easier—they’re just different.
So much has changed in my lifetime. I can’t taste the flavour of regional Australia anymore. I don’t wake up to the laughing kookaburras.
I wouldn’t have enough time in even two lifetimes to buy my own home, and I don’t have it in me to tell my kids they can’t put their little painted hands on the wall.
Why aren’t the rest of my peers and I having families?
I cannot speak on behalf of a generation, but my experience tells me the answer is found in the fabric of factors that shape our dreams.
It’s hard to be hopeful when it was only a few years ago I wason the only remaining road out of town.
I feel I cannot promise my child a safe upbringing after I said goodbye to my friend in 2021, one of millions in the pandemic toll.
Before and after COVID-19, I've seen the loneliness and disconnection that exists between people.
Hundreds of thousands of people and children have died in needless violence. There are wars. There's climate change.
This has been the world of my early 20s.
As a young person, there's a sense of dread 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 fray in every direction, as the pace of life quickens, as nothing means what it once did, my hope to be a dad dims.
Young people are starving for a future and country we can believe in. Our aspiration for families withers as the promised land dries.
And for more stories head to – a new podcast series from SBS, hosted 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 acclaimed TV show, Insight.
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