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So you really want one of these?

It’s a question I try not to examine too closely, frankly. The reason for that is, well, I have them already–I’ve had them for my entire adult life, really. The time to question my decision to have them at all has long since passed, I think.

But sometimes I’ll come across an article like this one–I try not to wince at the tone they inevitably sport, a combination of defensiveness and superiority–and I’ll find myself musing a bit on my own embedded and irrevocable parental status.

The title of this particular specimen, “9 Silly Things People Say When They Hear You Don’t Want Kids,” presents us with a list of reasons the author thinks the general population considers valid reasons for reproducing, and the author’s rebuttal of each based upon her own personal slant on the situation. I wondered, were any of these going to be my reasons for becoming a parent..? I doubted that from the get-go, given the tender age at which I began my personal population replacement program and that lack of logical forethought implied thereof, but there was also the greater possibility that one or more of the reasons listed might be a reason I liked being one now. So let’s take a look:

1. Aren’t you worried about ending up old and lonely?

I agree with the author; no, I’m not worried about ending up old and lonely–not only was I not worried about that at the time I had my first child (and who is worrying about that, at nineteen?), I still don’t worry about it now. I have never really understood the mindset of creating actual, live, individual human beings as some kind of 401(k) plan that are emotionally chained to your well-being. Frankly, it worries me more that I have people whose welfare is of such utmost importance to me that I may someday be a burden to, rather than a support. If I were deciding to have kids for the first time now, this factor would make me much more likely to decide against having them, especially with the increased likelihood now that I would predecease them by decades and cause them to experience that many more years of heartbreak and loss.

2. “But you’d have such great kids!”

Well, I must say I got the opposite reaction from those around me when I was a pregnant, unmarried nineteen-year-old. Quite the opposite, as I’m sure you can imagine. Implications of my contribution to the future generation of unemployed criminals were far more common. Of course, now people are always telling me how great my kids are…I agree wholeheartedly! and in this case, in a slantwise sort of way, this was one of my reasons for having them. Not because I thought from any disinterested standpoint that they’d be some kind of evolutionary step up for Homo sapiens, but because I passionately loved their father and thought he was a sterling example of humanity both physically and mentally. (Though to be honest, by the time I’d had the second one, my personal and intimate opinion of him had deteriorated markedly, but I did still think he was a strong healthy reasonably intelligent specimen and also, I already had one kid who was in my eyes completely awesome and didn’t see why a second one wouldn’t turn out the same way.)

3. “But you’d be such a great mom!”

Oh, my. As with number 2 above–that was very much not what I was told at the time. And I still catch a fair amount of flack from their father on my non-ideal motherhood, and God knows compared to just about any TV mom in general or the pervasive societal ideal of Teh Mother, I have always fallen far short of the standard. But my kids seem fond of me..? Truly, I’m not a great mom, and I never thought I would be a great mom, either–where the hell would I have learned how to be a great mom? Not from my mother, I’m afraid–I think this one will have to go into the same box as number 1–had I thought about it logically at the time, I would have specifically not had children for this reason, rather than being inspired to have them because of it.

4. Don’t you want a family?

Yes, I always desperately yearned for one, and still have moments where I sadly wish I had a good and present one–but again, as with number 1, I really can’t see creating individual, live human beings solely to fill up some emotional holes in my life. In fact, I find it repugnant. Therapy and strong adult friendships are the palliative for having an absent and/or wildly dysfunctional family, folks–not poppin’ out brand new people who are utterly dependent upon you for well over a decade and therefore have no choice about feeding your emotional needs in exchange.

5. “But they’re so cute!”

Well, that is true. But I admit, even at nineteen, I really wasn’t thinking about that, and I can’t imagine thinking about it now if I were going to embark on parenthood for the first time either. I mean, if I want something cute around the house, I can buy any number of stuffed animals to decorate it. Having practically raised my younger sister from birth onward, which occurred when I was but nine years old, and being farmed out to babysit from age thirteen to bring some much-needed cash into the family budget, I had no illusions about either the cuteness of babies and small children nor the disgusting, scary, exhausting amount of work they were. And I wonder if people realize that childhood is really only a short part of the entire lifespan–my older son will be eighteen in February, and while I think him quite handsome at six feet four inches tall with a deep bass voice, moustache and goatee, he left cute behind quite some time ago and doesn’t look likely to ever return to it.

6. “But it’s natural.”

Can’t argue with that–my inability to control my fertility by my will alone was the entire reason I got pregnant in the first place, after all, both times. Contraception is quite an unnatural imposition on what my body does involuntarily. However, so is the progression of a fatal disease, or bleeding to death when an artery is punctured—natural has absolutely nothing to do with desirable, folks. They may intersect…or they may not.

Of course, there’s also the implication that it is natural mentally and emotionally to want to have a child, and therefore unnatural mentally and emotionally to not want one. I really hesitate to go into what is natural and what is not for people to think or feel. Says who..? Of course, some religious sects will tell you God, of course! because they’re the ones with the inside knowledge of what God is thinking and planning for you, of course! and don’t bother asking them Why do you know, specifically, what God wants me to do better than me? because you won’t get a reasonable answer.

7. “It’s a woman’s greatest achievement.”

Oh, let’s not go there. Unless you also believe that the act of ejaculation is a man’s greatest achievement and are lobbying the public school industry to produce and teach from only textbooks that discuss this as the greatest historical achievement of mankind. Otherwise, go away.

8. “You’ll change your mind.”

Obviously nobody is ever going to say that to me, as it’s rather too late for that. However, it is funny to me how taboo it is to ask anyone, or even initiate a discussion with anyone, about how you or they might have changed your mind in the opposite direction–how having children might have been a real mistake. And I can tell you, simply from having known a great many people fairly intimately over the course of my life, that it is not really all that rare for someone to feel that having one or more of their children was a mistake, and also, when you feel that way about your children–yeah, they figure that out eventually, whether you ever outright tell them that or not.

9. “You should have at least one of your own.”

I like what the article author says about this:

This is one of my favorites, as though kids were canapés or raffle tickets that would be gone by the time the party is over

She goes on to talk about overpopulation, which isn’t something I really worry about–access to choice in reproduction completely takes care of any overpopulation issues. All you have to do is look at nations where contraception is easily available, and their reproduction rates, versus places where it is banned or impossible to obtain, and look at theirs. I find addressing overpopulation as a standalone issue to be a waste of time. If you give most people, especially most women, the option to control their fertility, they will self-limit reproduction to reasonable, environmentally sustainable rates of their own volition.

So…why did I have kids? Not really for any of these reasons. I had kids because I was immature and reckless about contraception; because I was in love and thought I was going to be with the man who fathered them forever in a way that only an infatuated adolescent can; because I felt guilty about my carelessness once the results of that carelessness became clear and felt that I didn’t deserve to evade the consequences; because I was afraid of the abortion procedure; because the contraception I was given failed and when I became pregnant again, I thought I would regret an abortion more than I would regret having another child; because I believed their father when he said he would never hit me again. I can’t say if any of these were particularly good reasons for having children; in the main, I’d say they weren’t. Then I wonder just how many people have children for particularly good reasons, if emotional neediness and insurance against old age are considered good reasons…?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Punkass!, Contraception, Family, Feminism, Reproductive Rights, This Thing of Ours. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.