Across the country of what is now known as Australia, a highly unusual form of contraception has been practiced for thousands of years. For those living on Australia's harshest landscapes, small family sizes were likely critical for survival, ensuring the limited food and water supply was enough to go around. For people living on territories like the Great Sandy Desert, annual treks had to be made to cross immense distances, following food and water sources with the seasons. I am only hypothesising here, but such treks would have been almost impossible with a heavily pregnant woman or newborn child. And yet, what makes this Aboriginal method of contraception so unique is that, unlike every other one I have ever come across, it targets the male reproductive system.

In many cultures around the world, male circumcision is a common rite of passage, often done around the time of puberty to mark the boy's ascendance into manhood. This Aboriginal contraception method is a similar rite of passage, often accompanied by a circumcision, and is a lengthy ritual practiced out on country with Elder men who sing and teach the boy during the long process what it is to be a man. The many men's presence is also necessary because the boy—who may very well be in his early twenties—will often need to be held down during the procedure. This contraceptive is physical: A small hole is pierced through the base of the penis, through the tubes which carry the sperm, and out the other side. The two holes are then plugged with thorns to prevent them healing over. What this eventually ensures is an incredible mechanism of contraception whereby the man's ejaculate will exit through these holes at the base of the penis unless he seals them with his own fingers.

I've been thinking about this Aboriginal practice over the last few days, since having a conversation with a dear friend about whether or not any of us should be bringing children into this world. Thanks to the fact that our recent human history was written by a very small group of people that tried to bury local knowledges to make way first for God and then for Science, many of us are unaware that contraception has been practiced all over the world for thousands—if not tens of thousands—of years. Whether it was ingesting plants to induce miscarriages or boring holes through penises, people, particularly women, have long wanted to choose how many children they bring into the world. Very few of us, throughout our human history, want to be forced to have children we either do not want or cannot support. It has long been critical to our survival.

Yet, I feel the conversation around producing children at this moment in history has an undercurrent of exceptionalism, as if we are the first to be able to choose to not have children, or the first to live through collective mortal risk, or the first to realise the impact of procreation on the wider environment. This is simply not the case. Choosing whether or not to reproduce has been a critical component of cultures around the world for millennia, and the choosing not to has always been as important as the choosing to. Those who choose to and those who choose not to are performing the same essential function: both groups are choosing how to live as best they can, for themselves and for the wider group, including the environment upon which they collectively depend. This is critical reproductive work, the strategic work that keeps our bodies, languages and cultures alive and thriving.

Here's what isn't critical reproductive work: uncritically reproducing. This doesn't simply mean accidentally falling pregnant/impregnating someone, for reproductive work is in no way limited to the mechanics of reproduction. Rather, uncritically reproducing is when we don't choose, we simply do because "that's what people do". Uncritically reproducing is having children that we don't really think about raising, or spend time raising. It's using children as a salve to save a failing relationship, or as a way to procure unconditional love. It's producing children without thinking about the world they're coming into, and without providing them the skills they will need to navigate it. It's reproduction without the reproductive work.

Now, this situation is exceedingly common. Not only are we are force-fed pronatalist propaganda which threatens that a life without children as a life without meaning, we are also encouraged to hand over the majority of the work of raising children to the State so that we can return to employment. In much of the Western world, the intergenerational household has been empty for generations and small, extended families are spread thin over large territories. Expertise has been substituted with compliance and very few of us have any practical skills to teach our children because our high-energy lives are facilitated by technology and capital. Our economies are bloated and the new norm is to live saddled with too much debt to have any meaningful freedom, including to get up and go if we need to. All of this amounts to lives that are over-worked and full of stress.

Despite this, not having children is rarely considered an option—in fact, it's often decried as "selfish" (something I struggle to wrap my head around), and couples who cannot conceive are encouraged to spend their savings on technological interventions, alongside women who dare sit on the fence into their late twenties. Adoption is normally only considered as a last resort, rather than a wonderful avenue to becoming a parent. There is, I find, a revealing contrast between the fantasy of baby of one's own and wanting to be a parent. A recent poll in the UK showed just how quickly this genetic fetishisation wears off—parents spend less than one hour talking with their children every week.

Bringing a child into this world is one of the most non-consensual acts any of us can engage in. A child cannot choose where it is born, or to whom, or in what conditions—and it is here for life, even if that child grows up to cut his own life short. It is such an immense thing, to make another human being; to bring her into the world and ask her to learn how to live in it and survive in it and make the most of it and be happy in it, particularly when we have long lost the cultural knowledge which tells us exactly how to do just that. Our world is changing so fast, the advice we can give of our own experiences will too quick be out of date for our own children. Rather than having a well-beaten path to follow, our children are being born onto shifting sands. Being a parent to that child is going to be an immense task, almost as immense as being that child in that world.

But there will be some of us who commit to that very task above all else, because a world made for children is a haven for us all. Even if the winds change and we are met with conditions we could never have previously imagined, we commit to bringing into being the world our children deserve. This reproductive works support the essential functions of our human societies, and it is in no way limited to parents. Those who choose to reproduce can achieve very little for their children without the widest possible community also committing to safeguarding a fruitful future for the youngest among us.

So, should you have kids? Nobody can answer that question for you. Choosing to and choosing not to are equally vital, and both provide the necessary reproductive work that our culture has long sacrificed to the economic fetish of productivity. Those that choose to will do so knowing that, to the best of their ability, they will provide those they love with everything they need to grow and live and find meaning. Those that choose not to will do so knowing that, to the best of their ability, they will provide those they love with everything they need to grow and live and find meaning. The choice is yours. As my wisest friend likes to say: do not make the right decision—make the decision right.