Why Millennial Men Missed Out on Kids

This Christmas Eve, as I’ve done every year since I was a child, I joined my father’s side of the family at my aunt’s house, a few blocks away from where I grew up in Bethlehem, PA. I’m the second youngest of 16 cousins, many of whom are much older than me and have children anywhere from between 2 and 22. And there’s a whole brood of second cousins between 4 and 8. I’ve always thought it’s more fun to play with the kids than hang out with the adults on Christmas Eve — make pillow forts, run around, look for Santa Claus, throw snowballs. At the same time, I understand, looking at my weary cousins, that the energy I have for fort-building is partly a factor of not having kids myself, of living in New York City and for the most part having lived an ultra-modern, basically hedonistic urban lifestyle since I was 22.