Posted on 01/02/2002 6:49:27 AM PST by dead
Is it really so hard to understand, asks Rachel Roberts, that there can be more to a couple's relationship than having children?
I am one of a growing number of women who will elect not to have children. And at least in my experience, the decision to not have children isn't one that is met with much enthusiasm.
From the family, there are comments like "But don't you want us all to have kids playing together at birthday parties and barbecues?" and "I've just always thought that part of a couple's life together is having a family".
From friends, there are protests like "But you'd make such great parents!" or "You've had such a good family life, don't you want to re-create that yourself?"
On the whole, though, the standard response is scepticism. Brush-offs. "Oh, you say that now, but wait till you turn 30!" And "I thought that, too, when I was your age but, trust me, that biological clock really gets you."
Well, I am fast approaching 30 and I have never been surer that I don't want children. My partner feels the same. We have thought about it a lot and have decided time and again that no, it's not for us. We don't want to be woken up at all hours to attend a screaming infant that knows only the need to suck. We don't want to sacrifice our time and energy chasing death-defying toddlers or taxiing around teenagers who have recently learnt to hate us.
More importantly, neither of us (me, especially) wants to see my body torn asunder during childbirth. We already love our life the way it is, child-free. And that is why the brush-off response interests me the most.
It's as though those who either have, or some day want, children refuse to recognise other possibilities in life. They are mentally closing off to paths different from their well-worn one. Particularly for women, it seems that in the face of all political and cultural change, we can always rely on some things staying the same.
Thirty years on from second-wave feminism, people are still incredulous of the woman who declares she doesn't want to be a mother.
Feminists have long argued that the social and political resistance to women who choose to remain child-free reflects a far deeper cultural anxiety about what is expected of women. Traditional femininity is inextricably bound up with notions of mothering, nurturance and birth.
Since day dot, motherhood has been viewed as the natural female career. And now, thanks to an enduring belief in biological determinism, the desire to bear children continues to be seen in terms of instinct, as a drive that is universally hard-wired into the female psyche. To be a normal woman, we must at least want children, even if for some reason we cannot have them.
Yeah, yeah, I hear you say, we've all done Feminism 101 - tell us something we don't know. Well, having experienced the reactions couples meet when revealing that they do not want children, I suspect there is something more at play than simply challenging the traditional ideology that surrounds women. Certainly a woman who elects not to have children is treading a less orthodox path. However, it's not just the woman's decision to not have children that disturbs convention, but the man's as well. As partners they upset traditional understandings of what heterosexual love is about. Why do I think this? Well, when was the last time any of us saw a romantic film where one lover whispers to the other "I love you so much, darling, I never want to have your baby!" It just wouldn't seem right.
From wedding ceremonies to popular culture, we are saturated with the idea that children are the symbol of a man and woman's love for each other. Undoubtedly the outcome of their physical union, children are moreover portrayed as the embodiment of a couple's emotional bond. The place where a man and woman's DNA and souls enmesh.
Having children remains integral to our contemporary mythology of love and desire, and those couples who reject parenthood disappoint our romantic expectations. They let us down by not making what is seen as the ultimate declaration of heterosexual love.
So perhaps that is why society shrugs off couples who don't want children. Perhaps the sceptical comments from family and friends reflect an unwillingness to accept romantic defeat. At the very least, it shows a distinct lack of imagination when it comes to recognising signs of love.
After all, for couples like us, the real romance is in being child-free.
Rachel Roberts is a freelance writer.
No. But look at it this way--somebody's blind; should they go to an art museum, or be a painter or racecar driver? No. But my point is that it's a fallacy to say "well, that's just as good." It's not. It's the best the blind man can hope for, but people with sight shouldn't pluck out their eyes, nor should they say, "well, I guess seeing isn't for everybody!"
Because best, in all things, is a matter of taste and choice and what's best for you has little if any bearing on what's best for me.
What if my taste runs to raping and murdering virgins? It's my choice, and what's best for you has little if any bearing on what's best for me.
You and I both know at bottom that position is ridiculous. Is there a human nature? Yes. Does it involve children? Absolutlely, or there wouldn't be "humans" to have a "nature." Your argument only applies in matters of taste. Children are not a matter of taste, but some are not suited to raising children, just as some have not the vision to become pilots or the wits to become mathematicians. But those people have a defect when viewed against the best human soul; even people who give up childbearing to pursue holier paths have souls that love children. Not liking kids is a flaw in your soul.
You know, I don't want to argue with anyone about having children, but the things of the "next" that are dearest to my Lord are surely the souls of my childen. There is no greater beauty in this world that I can offer up to Him.
God bless.
You're getting warmer...
for some it greatly impedes it because of the massive layer of fear that threat adds.
Of what? And to what? Don't stop now, you're nearly there.
I don't have a problem with this woman not wanting a child. Children should be brought up in an atmosphere of love. They should be wanted. At least this woman is smart enough to reliaze she couldn't handle the responsibility of having a child. Unlike someone like Andrea Yates who has them only to drown them ....
Even the best of kids misbehave. I'm sure you did as a child, and I'm sure that I did. It's part of childhood.
I just think that there are a lot of unsympathetic people around that don't understand that there really could be a problem with the child. I'm not talking about ADHD or ADD. I think those are almost made up disorders for normal children.
I'm talking about kids with real problems like brain damage, genetic disorders that affect their development, etc. You can't always tell by looking at a kid if they have a problem. My daughter looks perfectly normal, but she has brain damage.
I think we need to focus on how to help these children (and their parents) that don't know how to control themselves. I've been told that I could put my daughter on medication. Well, I'd rather have a child that has tantrums occasionally then put her on medication all the time.
I also know that sometimes you have to take your children out when you really don't want to. You may have a sick child, and you have to drag them to the doctor, then the grocery store, and then the drug store. Even a well-behaved child could have a melt-down from something like that.
"Love" and "Life" are the two essential aspects of conjugal love. <>P With the exception of strictly casual, animal copulation enabled and encouraged by our secular society and federal government (as a means to pre-empt the bonds and sovereignty that are a marriage and family's due), sex is a magnificent and most pleasurable means of expressing love for another.
But the purely objective and natural result of sex is procreation. Contraception not only degrades the act by removing its essential potency, it precludes the conjugal act from fulfilling its essential nature of total self-giving and receiving.
Stripped of their natural dignity and potency -- and, most of all, their sovereignty that is Self-Mastery -- men and women dumb themselves down.
By the use of contraceptives, they not only reject Life loud and clear -- seeking to plan it and partake of it only on their own terms -- they transfer the natural dominion of man over things and animals to Themselves. They manipulate themselves by negating their essential potency as co-creators.
Take a look around you ... the evidence of our degradation (particularly that of women) abounds.
This concerted and constant abuse of the will to degrade and manipulate the Self conditions us to further manipulation by the same State who imposed contraception on us ... by first seeking to eradicate Undesirables.
"Freedom" does not consist in rendering one's choices moot of consequence. The greater part of freedom is sometimes restraint. We are no longer a free people. We were doomed the moment we caved to the Sexual Revolution which rendered us little more than prize pigs at the State Fair only too happy to rut at will and call it "liberation" because our sexual relations no longer entailed real Obligations to each other or threatened the introduction of a New Life which was not expressly wanted, Genetically Perfect and -- by all means -- Economically Feasible.
It's still got the potential to be potent.
As a bonus, it's absolutely free from reliance on third parties, plastics, pills, drugs, needles, suppositories, foams, creams, jellies, sponges and whatever else "liberated" sex needs to be "free".
At these junctures you're just taking it to a rediculous position errecting strawmen for your own pleasure. That's more reply than those paragraphs deserve.
You and I both know at bottom that position is ridiculous. Is there a human nature? Yes. Does it involve children? Absolutlely, or there wouldn't be "humans" to have a "nature."
Right on one wrong on two. Children (reproduction) are wrapped up in the survival instinct which, to various degrees, is shared by all living things. Strictly speaking not part of human nature just a part of nature in the big picture. One of the big parts of human nature is our desire to override nature in the big picture. We've done it since the first cave painting, we strive for ways other than reproduction to achieve some level of immortality. We leave our mark on the world in other ways, when in doubt we come up with languages so we can record our thoughts and instruct people, nurturing without breeding.
Your argument only applies in matters of taste.
Everything is a matter of taste to some degree. Eventually everyone makes a decision on children based on "taste", that's how we make decisions. The most basic being how many to have. If you can't accept 0 as a valid answer that's not my problem. But any arguement you come up with to assault that answer can be equally applied as to why your answer should be increased.
Children are not a matter of taste, but some are not suited to raising children, just as some have not the vision to become pilots or the wits to become mathematicians. But those people have a defect when viewed against the best human soul; even people who give up childbearing to pursue holier paths have souls that love children. Not liking kids is a flaw in your soul.
Ahh and here we finally get to the real crux. The actual reason why people get such a bent biscuit when they encounter those that don't want kids. You think there's something wrong with my soul. Fortunately that's not for you to decide. You can go ahead and think that. Luckily I know you're full of it. My soul is AOK. I've found other ways to achieve my immortality, one that allows me to maintain a quiet life sans diapers and all the other accoutrements of child rearing. Maybe the real thing is that you're jealous. Annoyed that people have found ways to be happy and whole that you're missing. You shouldn't be, I'm not. Everybody has to make their own path, yours has kids mine doesn't. I don't consider either superior to the other. Mine is better for me, but just me I make no claims to its value for anyone else.
Knowing I'm one fertilization away from a completely untenable situation makes the thought of pregnancy absolutely terrifying. So I married a woman that's almost garaunteed infertile. I ain't no dumby.
As for our society our views are a little different. While certainly things are troubled, especially in the areas of sex and sexuality, there has been a rather natural cycle of society in history. The pendulum swings back and forth every couple hundred years between emotionless animal lust and absolute prudishness on all levels. The round trip is usually about 300 years give or take. We never seem to be able to stop at the happy medium (which we were in for the WWII years and those surounding, where sex is fun and all but everybody knows it's at its best in a relationship built to last), momentum in one direction or the other always pushes us too far. This cycle has been going on for a long time (at least back to Pompeii) and I've learned not to sweat it.
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