Sippy Cup to the Head

[Jeff]

One of the topics we haven’t talked about on the board is the decision to have children. This came up once last weekend as I was curious about Rick’s thinking on the subject these days. When I was younger I remember being Very Vocal… hell, I was a complete asshole about this decision. I couldn’t think of a single reason why anyone on earth would have children. Though I still wish that most conservatives would stop reproducing, my heart changed on this issue. Since it is one of life’s most important decisions, I thought it would be worth discussing here.

What I would like you guys to do is to simply tell us a little about why you have the goals you do regarding children. I put it that way, because I can see how for some it is not a subject for thought at all. I remember hearing my grandmothers speak about their children. They both got married and had kids. A lot of people use just that phrase “got married and had kids” as if it were an implication instead of a conjunction.

Whatever your goals are, please share a little of your mind and heart.

Here is why I changed my mind. I am not suggesting in any way that this kind of thought should compel anyone who doesn’t want to have children to change course. Most of my reasons could be construed as selfish. The most selfish one was that I thought the experience of parents looked more complex than that of the childless people I knew. To me, childless experience seemed less subtle and nuanced. Again, I mean no insult by this. Really, it is a conclusion that only applies to me. If I tried to adopt a childless lifestyle, I felt I would not have been actualizing myself. As it turns out, I do think that my own experience is both more intense and deeper than it was before I had kids. Having children is like being on a stage all the time. The curtain never goes down. That kind of critical awareness has been very good for me.

I’d say this selfish reason is the main reason I am a parent. But there is also the consideration that I want people like us to exist in the future. And here I don’t mean people like Jenn and I, but people like our group. And I take my commitment to our kind of experience to have an implication for me. Certainly, having kids was something I could do, but it was also something I would have had to actively resist once I got with Jenn. And I am at least committed enough to putting people like all of you in the future to go with the flow here.

My arguments about why people shouldn’t have kids never really went away. I still think the world is a pretty cold place. And overpopulation, though continually exaggerated by prognosticators, is a real concern. And the amount of suffering by children in the world today is staggering. And so on and so on and so on...

Still, I address these problems differently than I used to. Now I see (again for me!) that I don’t want to capitulate to my own pessimism about the sorry state of the world. My role in the great goodness of Maddie and Emily is part of my own response to the bad things that happen, especially the bad things that have happened to me. I see them as part of my commitment to the kind of world that I want, not as shirking my deepest philosophical and spiritual principles.

The old arguments still move me: I would feel irresponsible if I had more than three children…especially with my income. I would feel irresponsible if I raised my children to believe that the world is a happy go lucky place where good is always rewarded and bad is punished. Etc...

But now I have this new experience: There has always been a part of me that loves to look at the really terrible things in the world. It’s not because I like to see people suffer, it’s just that when your heart goes out it is a little beyond your control. Once I looked alone. Recently, I have been immensely gratified to see Maddie asking the hard questions and seeking to alleviate the suffering she finds. And my heart goes out again, this time with a little joy.

Jeff


PS Interesting discusssion of the topic here: www.slate.com/id/2143659/

[Thanin]

The only reason any rational and good person can have for having children is to abort them as they come out. Preferably this would be done by sliding them right as they're born into an oven... or “from womb to oven”, just as Jesus said.

[Thanin]

Here's the exact passage. I had to look it up. Sorry I couldn't recount it from memory.


"And thou birth shall flow from womb to oven. And you will use its body as a feast, feeding those in need with its flesh which is not unlike your own and quenching their thirst with its blood that was once shared by your own beloved. Now, Peter, remove the eyes so I can join this new game you call 'marbles'."

Luke 12:4

[jtmx1]

"I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has power to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear him!"

Luke 12:4-5

But it is interesting that the passage here happens to concern the body...

[chris]

admin said:

But now I have this new experience: There has always been a part of me that loves to look at the really terrible things in the world. It’s not because I like to see people suffer, it’s just that when your heart goes out it is a little beyond your control. Once I looked alone. Recently, I have been immensely gratified to see Maddie asking the hard questions and seeking to alleviate the suffering she finds. And my heart goes out again, this time with a little joy.

If I didn't know you better, I'd say that was a touch sadistic. "Excellent... she has embraced the pain that afflicts all humans! Bwah-hah-hah!"

From my standpoint, which is solely that of a male, I completely understand the primal urge for men to impregnate women and create children. I can't explain it, any more than I can explain intelligently why the sight of the mounds of flesh around a woman's anus can make me want to have sex with her. But I do understand and feel, in my own way, that urge to procreate.

But the urge to procreate is a far cry from the urge to care and nurture, and the latter is sorely lacking in me. Plenty of my fantasies have involved the bedding and subsequent impregnantion of an attractive female, but the fantasy dies really quickly as soon as the woman tries to hand the baby off to me. If I were tall enough to be an anonymous sperm donor, I would have signed up and then some; I would have been denied the primal rite of planting the seed myself, but there would have been that irrational satisfaction of knowing that my loins had (to borrow the metaphor) yielded some fruit. If in 18 years, though, the bastards came knocking on my door looking for daddy, I would be the asshole who shut the door on them and wanted nothing to do with them, and then they could go through the rest of their miserable lives blaming daddy for all their problems... actually, just like kids who grew up with their daddies do...

I read that article on Slate yesterday and actually forwarded it to my equally anti-procreation wife (because I thought it was interesting, not because I wanted to change Bridget's mind). You see things like this every now and again from apologetic mothers who used to be anti-child, ostensibly trying to speak as a peer, but in reality speaking to younger women as though the writer is Moses on the mountaintop wanting to lead the wayward childless to the promised land. And all these arguments, for all the after-the-fact rationalizations and justifications, all hinge on one basic premise: an unduplicatably unique personal choice. In Emily Yoffe's case (who is one of the hottest MILFs in the universe; www.slate.com/id/2142625/), her choice stemmed from wanting to marry someone that wanted children. That's an argument for children?? My husband wouldn't marry me unless I agreed to bear his children?

The underlying argument seems to be: no, there's no good reason to have children now, but once you have them, you'll look back and be glad you did. Well, that's an even worse justification than saying you did it because your spouse wanted you to. I'm sure I could obtain a lot of personal emotional growth my chopping my left leg off and having to deal with the consequences, and maybe I'll look back at the fully-legged past me and think "Boy, there's a lot I didn't know about myself back then," but that doesn't mean it was a smart fucking move to hack my leg off. Next excuse.

Just about every point in Yoffe's article is either after-the-fact rationalization or quite easily refutable. Example: "They seem stuck on the notion that being a parent means forever climbing a Mt. Everest of diapers .... Diapers pass in a snap. It all goes so fast." -- Yes, and then the diaper-age is quickly followed by the shrill, shrieking age, followed by pre-pubescent misery, which is just a prelude to puberty and all the eye-rolling, "god, mom," and drop-down screaming matches that go with it.

There is one good argument in the article that I can see, and it's not an especially rational one: "It's fun! When you are experiencing parenthood from the inside, there is an overwhelming pleasure in the funny, fascinating things your children do." That's all good and well, but while your 2-year-old may tell you funny things when you put her to bed, just where was the overwhelming pleasure in having to drag her kicking and screaming to bed in the first place, eh?

For me, all the positives of children add up to what Bridget and I have decided to do: selfishly be a great aunt and uncle. Kids are fun? Awesome -- we'll take 'em out to a movie and then drop 'em off in mommy and daddy's laps when they're cranky and ready for bed. They say interesting things? Cool -- send us an e-mail or post it on your blog (or in Jeff's case, post it on the board).

All of you know that I LOVE kids. I think they're usually more interesting than adults to hang out with, and that has never changed. My negative reactions to articles like the ones on Slate comes from a distaste from being talked down to by people with kids (and no, not all of them, not even most of them do it). Trying to tell me I'm missing out while using poor rationalizations that are rooted in one's own irrational urges. Note that I have not, except in counter to specific points, gone into the umpteen reasons I have NOT to have kids. They're pretty standard, and repeating them is unnecessary (Yoffe's article goes into a couple of them).

PS: Jeff, I have never understood the idea that bringing kids into the world now is somehow worse than bringing children in during other eras. Are you really saying it's worse now than, say, the Middle Ages, or colonial America, or the Great Depression? And if one would say that the world is inherently a cold place and not good to bring children into... then how could one justify their own continued existence?

[Jeff]

Hey Chris,

I wasn’t suggesting that bringing kids into the world is a worse thing to do now than in the past. I do see one line of argument that implies that consequence. From the standpoint of overpopulation, it might be worse. There is the old example of the “tragedy of the commons.” The land has a carrying capacity and going beyond it even a little has catastrophic results…at least for cows.

I do think that the world is a better place now for a minority of the world’s population, of which we happen to be a part. But most of the people in the world are exploited by the mechanisms of progress. I am just communist enough to believe that. For most living conditions are about the same as they were 1000 years ago. And for some they are much worse due to our exploitation. I guess I’d say that while the world is a pretty cold place now, it has traditionally been bitter cold. And most of the people in the world have never seen things change except for the worse.

Still, I agree with your basic point: Western Society has improved morally in the last 2,000 years. I’m just not sure that the good it has brought its own people outweighs the damage it has inflicted on the rest of the world or even on its own underclasses. If you could go back and eliminate the possibility of Western Culture, would you do it? I might, I really just might. But I’m torn. I do so love my books, the internet, my recording software, and this remote control, and this paddle game… I think I would be willing to trade my PC, my air conditioning, and my college degrees for the ability to live like my Cherokee ancestors…that is, if I knew I would be left unmolested by my European ancestors.

My basic point is that the world will always have a certain amount of evil in it and a certain amount of indifference. It is my belief that these two taken together will always outweigh the good, provided you are just looking at their massiveness compared to that of the good in the world. Still, I do think that the small amount of good in the world is like the leaven in bread. It is ultimately the controlling factor. Hope will always be both necessary and important. That’s all I meant. The necessity of hope is the admission that the world is continually inadequate to the best moral judgment.

So, here’s how I would answer you: If you take all the moral activity in the world, both good and evil, and you put it on a scale, the scale tips toward evil. But if you look at the value, beauty, and power of the good you see that a little bit can go a long way.

I realize that that is about as clear as mud. The truth is there are some complex questions that I’m avoiding here because I don’t want to argue for anything, just respond to your question.

Jeff

[Tyler]

I have an argument for having children. They force you biologically to care for someone more than yourself. I'm a really selfish guy. There has never been someone in my life who I cared about more than myself other than my children. It's like a forced connection to your fellow man. Of course, I'm not arguing that everyone should do it. I think that 90% of the populace would probably fuck up the whole thing, as they have in the past.

[jtmx1]

Many of Chris’s reasons for not have kids are like my own reasons for not having pets. I have nothing against pets, per se. Certainly, I love animals. I even enjoy seeing other people interact with their pets. It seems to make them so happy. But I have never experienced the need to run my hand over an animal's back or scratch its ears, etc… Of course, I’ve done these things, mainly to see what all the fuss was about. But it does nothing for me. And there are real downsides to owning pets.

For example, if you have a cat or a dog that you keep inside your house, your house inevitably stinks. It doesn’t matter how small the creature is or how well you clean up after it. There is floating animal hair and dander in your house. And some people, including some people on this board, will suffer when they come to see you. If you like to wear black, you must make a serious effort to combat animal hair. But worse than all these things combined, there are always going to be situations in which an animal will turn on you, its proud owner who has done nothing but care for it affectionately and faithfully. You might be feeding your dog the same way you always do but today she rips your hand apart because it hovered over her feeding bowl too long. Cats are the worst about this. Since cats don’t feel any real social ties to you they will hiss, bite, and scratch you for almost no reason at all. Before Jenn left on vacation, James (one of our two inside animals) ripped her up so badly that we wondered whether a trip to the emergency room wasn't in order.

All this downside and for what…being able to run your hand across an animal's back? Being able to pretend the animal looks vaguely like an ugly and grumpy human? Seriously, I struggle to understand why people have pets. I guess I can understand fish to some degree, as they have certain hypnotic and soothing properties. But even this doesn’t overcome the fact that to have the fish you must constrain them in a bowl. Having any pet means taking away its freedom. And I just can’t understand how that could ever be justified.

Again, I love animals. I love to see nature shows on TV, go to the zoo, read about them, etc... But I just don't need to own one.

There was one set up that I felt respected the pets. When we lived at my dad’s house on the hill, all the pets were outside animals. And it wasn’t like we kept them at all. We put food out for them so they stayed with us. Sometimes, some of them didn’t feel this was a square deal, so they left, never to be seen again. In that situation, I felt like I was meeting the animals on their terms, which were for the most part friendly.

Jeff

[Tyler]

I've always preferred outside cats to inside cats. There is the unfortunate downside of finding their corpse beside the road. And animals are animals. If you have several cats outside you will end up seeing one that has been jumped by the others and torn to shreds. You'll see one that's had its back half tore off by something trying to cling to life. You will have to be faced with the question of when it is the right thing to kill something to put it out of its mercy. Then, after you've made that decision, you'll find an example that proves that you did the wrong thing.

[jtmx1]

Lat thing on this subject today: Sure you don't have to have kids or pets to be good. Everyone would agree to that, I think. But the tendency to be alone is ultimately bad for the vast majority of mankind. Aristotle's argues that a person who is completely self-sufficient must either be a beast or a god (Politics Book I Chapter II). I think he is quite right about this. He just doesn't state the ratio of beasts to gods among loners. It's a million to one, a million assholes, jackoffs, and scumbags for every one Juliana of Norwich.

"The proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to the whole. But he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part of a state. A social instinct is implanted in all men by nature, and yet he who first founded the state was the greatest of benefactors. For man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all; since armed injustice is the more dangerous, and he is equipped at birth with arms, meant to be used by intelligence and virtue, which he may use for the worst ends. Wherefore, if he have not virtue, he is the most unholy and the most savage of animals, and the most full of lust and gluttony. But justice is the bond of men in states, for the administration of justice, which is the determination of what is just, is the principle of order in political society."