"What if I can't have children?

“What if I can’t have children?”

If, for one reason or another, you’re not going to have children, maybe you can’t physically, or maybe you never found the right person, you still have another path.

You can mentor.

Of course, it won’t be exactly the same as parenting, but it can come awfully close. You can help shape the life of someone who didn’t get what they needed from their own family. You can be the steady hand they never had.

At one point in American history, the Shakers, a celibate religious community, built this idea into their way of life. Since they didn’t reproduce, they took in orphaned or abandoned children, raised them, mentored them, and gave them structure and care. They didn’t see it as charity. They saw it as a responsibility.

If you don’t want to be alone in old age, don’t be selfish when you’re young.

Cultivate the future. Build into others. Leave behind more than memories of pleasure.

Even if you never have children of your own, you can still adopt and care for the underfathered and undermothered. And they will remember you.