The number of births in Estonia is starting to resemble the government's approval rating — it seems that every month brings yet another negative record compared with the last. Fewer and fewer children are being born in Estonia. The average age at which people have their first child continues to rise, already surpassing 30.

Let me say at the outset that, in my view, having children or not having children is a deeply personal decision and no one owes anyone an explanation for making — or not making — that choice. Yet we have seen women made to feel bad for not wanting children as well as for wanting another child.

To me, the more important question is of a dangerous new mindset we are creating in society as we search for answers to why fewer and fewer children are being born.

Demographers and the relevant institutions have spent years looking for answers to this question. At the national level, that work undoubtedly needs to be done. It allows policymakers to understand that a lack of economic security, unstable relationships, an expensive or uncertain housing market, difficulties balancing work and family life and fears of time scarcity and burnout are among the main reasons people either postpone starting a family or do not plan one at all.

In public discussion, we have focused especially heavily on the economic aspect and over the past decade calculating the "cost" of raising children has become almost a genre unto itself in Estonia.

The Ministry of Social Affairs says that last year the average monthly cost of supporting a child for parents was €565. This includes expenses for food, clothing, footwear, housing, transportation, communications, leisure activities, extracurricular education and other direct costs. My spouse and I looked at that figure with wide eyes and concluded that, according to that math, our family could not possibly be raising three children. And yet we are.

At the same time, there is a very strong societal understanding in Estonia that a "good parent" must provide a great deal for their child. They must provide time, extracurricular activities, a good education, a larger living space and so on. All this in a society where a person is also expected to be a diligent worker, physically fit, mentally balanced, financially successful and socially active — and, of course, an informed parent. And if they cannot manage all of that, the impression is that something is wrong. Understandably, this heightens the sense of pressure.

As a result, public debate has become dominated by the view that raising a child is a major financial expense and a psychological burden.

Children and parenthood have not always been discussed this way. A child is no longer seen as a natural continuation of life, but as a project. A project that requires an Excel spreadsheet. A sufficiently large car. A sufficiently large apartment. The right school. The right extracurricular activities. And of course the right parenting philosophy. A project that increases the administrative burden in conditions where living has increasingly become managing life. People have simultaneously become the HR managers of their own lives, quality-control inspectors and victims of burnout.

Perhaps the current birth rate crisis is not only about money or insecurity. Perhaps the issue is that we no longer know how to see life as something natural. Life must be justified, planned and controlled and a child enters this world no longer as fate or hope, but as the object of a risk assessment.

That does not mean people have become cold. Perhaps never before have people cared so much about children's well-being. But inevitably, the constant discussion about the cost and psychological burden of raising children paradoxically contributes to families wanting children but not daring to have them or continuing to postpone parenthood while waiting for some perfect moment.

Research points precisely to this. People want children, but they do not feel sufficiently prepared. A belief has emerged that a child can arrive only into a completely ready-made life. But life itself never arrives in finished form.

I recently met a young father who admitted, with a hint of relief, that real life had not turned out to be nearly as frightening as it had seemed before his child was born. It made me reflect on how often we talk about children through the prism of costs, burdens and sacrifices.

I cannot put a price tag on my children. And I have never truly understood the question of whether children "take away" a person's time or life. A person is a whole. My children are not a side project separate from life — they are my life. We grow together and separately, but still as a whole.

Perhaps we have optimized ourselves a little too much. We have grown accustomed to the idea that life must be justified, controlled and complete before it can begin. But life has always begun under unfinished circumstances.

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