people who have no children can be hard

People who have no children can be hard: 

Attain a mail of ice and insolence: 

Need not pause in the fire, and in no sense 

Hesitate in the hurricane to guard. 

And when wide world is bitten and bewarred 

They perish purely, waving their spirits hence 

Without a trace of grace or of offense 

To laugh or fail, diffident, wonder-starred. 

While through a throttling dark we others hear 

The little lifting helplessness, the queer 

Whimper-whine; whose unridiculous 

Lost softness softly makes a trap for us. 

And makes a curse. And makes a sugar of 

The malocclusions, the inconditions of love. 

 

[Gwendolyn Brooks {1917-2000} "1" from 'The Children of the Poor', in The open door : one hundred poems, one hundred years of Poetry magazine]