Childfree S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis, author of the Chronicles of Narnia, had no children himself but was so disturbed by the "lack of imagination" he saw in the current generation, he was inspired to pen his now famous series.

Quoting a recent piece in the Seattle Times:

During World War II, a group of children was sent to the British country home of a professor to avoid the London air raids. It's easy to picture the wonderment with which these city children arrived, to a big, quiet house and a bookish bachelor professor who eyed them like strange creatures from another world.

That professor was author C.S. Lewis, who, like many of his compatriots, opened his home to evacuee children during the war. He was struck, he wrote in letters to his brother, by these "modern children's" lack of imagination, and their inability to keep themselves amused.

These thoughts weren't new, but the presence of the children in his home brought a new urgency. In 1935, he wrote to a friend: "I often wonder what the present generation of children will grow up like. ... They have been treated with so much indulgence yet so little affection, with so much science and so little mother-wit. Not a fairy tale nor a nursery rhyme."

He's not the only major children's author to not have progeny of his own. Dr. Seuss was also childfree. Both are perfect examples of how people who don't have children can have a huge impact on the next generation, and the one after that, and the one after that.

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