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.
"...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..."
I..I..I..I..I..I..I..I..I..I. -- 0r --
We..We..We..We..We..We..We..We..We.... when talking about it's "Partner".
Selfish, Low-Life, Lesbian Scum.....
Times like this makes me thankful that when two more queers do get together.... The quicker that they 'breed' themselves out of the Human Race - the better.
Oh - and don't used the "Homophobe" moniker, either. I've yet to see any member of that deluded grouping that I was 'afraid' of. I believe that it's the opposite direction - most 'homosexuals' have a phobia about the hetero couples.......they're afraid that they couldn't handle being that close to a member of the opposite sex for a great deal of time. Too many of their foibles would be brought to the surface. So, instead, they 'pair-off' with someone who shares their fears - then they both feel better about themselves..
But, just as you no longer have that choice -- just one of many Overt bits of population control imposed by our government in the name of Security -- most have been conditioned to think they no longer have the choice to bear a child that is not Economically Feasible, Planned and Perfect.
You hear it all the time on the forum, this forum in fact.
They don't call it population control for nothing, Steve-b.
Contraception's just a bit of self-administered Long-Piglet poison into which we've bought ... hitting the lever marked "STRINGS-FREE SEX" as often as we like in exchange --like perfectly predictable, and addictable, rats in a lab.
It's the kindly face of our pharmceutically inclined Kindler, Gentler Keepers. Their real intent is clear enough if you read up on population control ... particularly the Germans and Margaret Sanger, the panoply of American capitalists or any member of the Bush Family whose taken great pains to appear Pro-Life ever since Prescott got his clocked cleaned tipping his eugenicist's hand a little too early for the tastes of once-lucid (and moral) Americans.
Contraception is the strapping into a seatbelt of your sexual organs PERMANENTLY because you know that you've no real sovereignty over your destiny than an animal has over his sexual urges.
That's why they call you Long Pigs, baby.
That movement is driven by a few things, one of which is heterophobia.
Which is why Eve Ensler (more info available via google search with her name) has her very male-bashing play performed......on Valentine's Day every year.
364 other possible days, yet it is performed across the country on Valentine's Day, the one and only day specifically set aside to celebrate heterosexual love between men and women.
It's heterophobic and misandric. There's a very well-written book called "Heterophobia"...
That movement is driven by a few things, one of which is heterophobia.
Which is why Eve Ensler (more info available via google search with her name) has her very male-bashing play performed......on Valentine's Day every year.
364 other possible days, yet it is performed across the country on Valentine's Day, the one and only day specifically set aside to celebrate heterosexual love between men and women.
It's heterophobic and misandric. There's a very well-written book called "Heterophobia"...
I prefer the physical defect analogy, because flying is not essential to the human experience; fear of something secondary doesn't portray the difference--but your analogy is superior I should think in that one can overcome a dislike of children, whereas blindness is (for the time being) rather permanent.
that's not the position being discussed
It was an impediment to the discussion I felt necessary to address.
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.
The analogy gets a little hazy, I think, when we consider how that a person with perfect vision (i.e., one perfectly capable of raising children) with a fear of flying (i.e., doesn't like kids) relates to the issue at hand: wouldn't someone perfectly suited to raising children wish to do so? If not, why wouldn't they?
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...but that hasn't been shown.
I agree, people can have a nature unsuited to childbearing, just as they can be unsuited to philosophy. But I and Plato both stress that the lives which can't partake of the respective goods, while possibly best for the parties involved, are inferior compared with those that can, which is the point I have been stressing from the beginning, I think. As far as "showing" that childbearing is better, if you mean "proving on the basis of reason alone" I don't think that's possible--if you don't get why raising kids is a joy, there's no way I can convince you of it; but that is not to say that I'll allow someone to argue unchallenged that being willingly barren is just as good.
...(although you've said otherwise)...
Indeed I have; but as a matter of prudence ;) I would say that people who would choose the highest life of service need not me to defend the good of childbearing for them.
That is not a conclusion, it's a given. The simple fact that you exist proves it more than I can otherwise demonstrate. But if you don't like kids, fine. I'm not trying to convince you to have them; just that you're missing out on something really big in the human experience.
>Mission Completed. Next?
Not really. The entire population of the earth can fit comfortably in an area the size of Texas, in nice houses on 1/7 acre lots in pleasant subdivisions far nicer than 90% of them live in now. That leaves the rest of the earth in which to raise food, etc..... (So much for Paul Erlich and his Population Bomb. His book was the bomb.)
And what if, in some point in time, you come across a like minded child? One that preferred company of adults. More specifically, you being the adult. Would you then care to be around him/her or you just totally dislike kids you don't want to be around one no matter how alike he or she is to you?
You hit the nail on the head there. And then the baby will be another object. Something to dress in the latest brand names, take to the latest places, etc. I see it all the time and I wonder "How would you have the energy to just be starting at that age?"
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.