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.
Hmm..this has me wondering how high the percentage is of only children who are childfree by choice and/or express a dislike of children. Every only I know seems to fit this description, with the exception of one who might as well have been since he was 12 yrs old before another child was in the picture.
More importantly, neither of us (me, especially) wants to see my body torn asunder during childbirth.
Wow... if that's all parenthood were about, who WOULD want to have kids? But you see, I actually feel sorry for her that she doesn't know anything about the JOYS of parenthood... what could possibly cause her to see parenthood so negatively?
It is true that you never really know the full meaning of love until you have children (and I write this with my 2 year old daughter sitting on my lap and my 5 year old son humming in the other room)... what it is to love with no expectation of reward, to love wholly and unselfishly. From the moment you have a child and you hold them in your arms, you are forever vulnerable: you will feel deeply every tragic story you see on the news that involves a child and worry that it could happen to yours. When they are disappointed or hurt, you feel it acutely... you are their biggest fan and greatest cheerleader.
And it is precisely tending to that screaming infant and then seeing it smile which causes you to bond inextricably and chasing around that toddler as its eyes open to the world which helps you to see it through new eyes. And, oh, the fullness of your heart as you see your child's angelic face at night when you look in on them as they sleep, reassuring yourself that all is well as you hear their soft breaths. And what greater pleasure than the embrace of your child and hearing "Mommy (or Daddy, as the case may be), I love you!". I never thought my heart could possibly be capable of so much love and pain until I had children.
I don't think you can point to human populations' imploding as they are in the West.
I don't think folks have ever before bought the lie en masse that it's better to be dead than unwanted. If we are returning to the pagan model of human worth, we should at least have the decency to pot our children -- particularly females -- in the public square and let them die of exposure should no one chooses to take them.
I think we're dealing with something qualitatively different than the pattern of sexual mores which, I agree with you, have a certain ebb and flow.
This is due precisely to the concerted attempt to essentially transofrm human nature. Witness the movement to make women more like men by affording them a mother-only right to homicide.
Can it be true that Gaia is a misogynist? Is there really something so wrong with being so absolutely fecund that your body can return a fully-formed human being nine months after receiving a sperm?
It's insidious ... I think it starts with the concerted effort to eradicate female modesty, damage the female psyche by exposing it to and imposing upon it "male sexuality" (not to mention male competitiveness in the workplace ON TOP OF female competitiveness for suitably stable and supportive partners) and thereby stunting the women in particular from being able to recognize, much less hold out for, her absolute due ... a male who would love her and cherish her and support her AND THEIR CHILDREN the rest of her life.
That's the ideal. It's not just some Christian moidel of marriage. The Christian model is actually the model of the Fittest who will indeed be doing the Surviving if you think about it.
Just as my mutt of a dog is healthier and happier and longer-lived than some wiggy, overbred pure breed ... the Naturals will win out, even, over the Manufactured -- much less the dead-at-the-get-go progeny of those who contra-vented Life or aborted their own.
Total Love-Child, baby ... Mom was a dizzy blond Uptown pedigree golden and his daddy ran a bar in da backada-backada Bywater downtown.
Which is maybe the most interesting point in the article.
As for objectification of women, you're probably on to something. One of the things many historians point out when comparing eras is that, at least in the west, women either get priviledges or rights, never both. To over simplify it women can either vote or have people hold the door for them, not both. Look at the Renesaince, women had pretty much every priviledge in the world and not one single right (note if you try to explain this to a feminist I'll send flowers to your funeral, they don't like this fact). But again this is pretty cyclical (though it's gone a lot further than any time I've looked at in the record).
Overall I think the pendulum will continue to swing and I'm pretty sure we're at the apex (notice how abortion opinion is swinging more and more pro-life, at least part of the pendulum is already swinging in the other direction). If I'm right 150 years from now whatever Muslim countries are left will have strip clubs on every street corner and Christian women will be veiled at all times (not like Taliban restriction levels, like sane Muslim countries have it). Of course it's people like you that will get the pendulum swinging in the other direction, which at this juncture is a very good thing. I just hope we stop the swing in 75 years or so when things are functional, probably won't happen though, never does.
But the issue isn't physical defects, it's that he doesn't like something, which would be more like hating flying. To say that human nature contains constants doesn't mean different people don't have different natures. The Republic, of course, includes discussions of different types of natures. Plato thought the best life was the philosophical one, but not everyone has a nature to enjoy philosophy. They're necessary, of course, for the city to exist; otherwise, you'd have no craftsmen. So there's no reason someone can't have a nature such that they don't like children. It may be that the highest nature would want children (although you've said otherwise), but that hasn't been shown.
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.
In that case, the big issue would be your victims.
You and I both know at bottom that position is ridiculous.
Sure, but that's not the position being discussed.
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 it is a matter of taste. A person who hates flying has a nature unsuited to being a pilot, even if he can see perfectly. It may be that the best life is that of a pilot, but the nature of someone who hates flying cannot share in the joys of it, and the best life for him is something else.
Sure, Rachel. Think of when you're not fast approaching 30, but rather 70 or 80 and, likely being without a partner, are sitting, huddled in some gub'mnt rest home somewhere wondering why nobody gives a rip about you. Children are the best old-age insurance policy you can have, bar none. Of course you have to have taught them to be, unlike yourself, unselfish.
Some people just do not have the "grace of life." (1Pet3:7) Enjoy it while you can, Rachel.
Probably the right move. It appears you have nothing to offer but bitterness and lonelyness. The world will probably be a better place with your gene pool dying off. Darwinism, of a sort...I s'pose.
I would rather have a cellar full of wine than a cellar full of kids.
This thread is starting to sound like a bunch of Hillary quotes about 'the chilllldren'. Life does not consist of just having children. Jeesh!
Tell me again after your daughter goes through her early teens. Kids are still cute when they are that age.
After 5 years of marriage, I didn't expect to be able to have children because of an earlier surgery so I stopped taking the pill because it was giving me headaches. Within a short time, I was pregnant, and not too pleased.
During my children's teenage years, I thought I could have been happy without children for the same reasons I came up with in my 20-something years. My teenagers were a real test.
Now, with many years of angst and torment behind me, I am so blessed to have the wonderful two children that I have, ages 24 and 19. My post to this thread is a tribute to them, the two who angered me, frustrated me, turned me inside out and almost sent me to a mental institution... but who I love dearly and can't imagine a life without. They have become wonderful people in their own right.
Children shouldn't be brought into this world to keep one from being alone in old age, but those who have them are blessed.
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