The Gift of Life (I hope you kept the receipt)

In reading the response to a childfree author's review of a parenting book, I came across quite a few of the common "bingo" responses directed at the non-childed.

One responder wondered if childfree people like me felt guilty about being given the gift of life, education, childhood, etc. but was not going to pay that back by having children of my own. (The question was phrased in such a way to suggest I should feel such guilt.) Presumably I am supposed to feel guilty that I am not returning the favor. Returning it to my parents, society, the species, the universe, I’m not sure which.

What I hear in that argument is the suggestion that I was born with the obligation to reproduce. I would have to ask my mother about that, I guess. My take on that: if I was given something that came with such massive, life-altering obligations, I would not consider that a gift. To my mind, a gift is something given generously without strings attached. If giving it means the recipient goes into debt, then that is hardly a gift. When I get a new ATM card from my bank, I would hardly call that a wonderful, selfless gift from the bank.

Being born is a gift in the sense that I never asked for it. I never signed a contract and never gave my consent to the social contract that having a pulse requires me to get someone pregnant. It’s sort of like being kidnapped and then legally obligated to pay my own ransom. Or being kidnapped and then sentenced to jail because I was involved in my own kidnapping.
 

Also, I have zero children, which means my children don’t exist, so it seems odd that I would owe something to people who don’t exist and who never will exist. It also seems extreme to pay my gift forward by burdening my children with the same debt that I was burdened with. Presumably my children would take on the same debt to reproduce, like a chain of debt that passes down through the generations, like serfdom or chattel slavery.

I keep hearing that this is what’s wrong with this country, that this generation keeps putting the next generation in debt with our actions today. At least, that’s what I associate with political conservatives, ironically many of the people who expect that I should feel guilty that I am not reproducing, not putting my children into reproductive debt.
 

If there is a debt to society that is to be repaid by reproducing, then what is the message to those who are unable to have children? Are they tragic figures who will take a horrible debt to their graves? If I'm supposed to feel guilty for choosing not to have children, it sounds to me like childless people are supposed to feel shame for being failures. That sounds pretty heartless to me. I don't believe that's true.

If choosing not to have children is by definition ungrateful and selfish, then I guess that means that Mother Teresa was just a self-centered, ungrateful waste of space. (The only thing I have in common with her is that I’m childfree. It’s an extreme example, I grant you.) Everyone who becomes a priest, nun, or monk must simply be a selfish loafer unwilling to sacrifice anything for others, too stuck in their carefree lifestyle to do the responsible thing. F***ing party animals.

Life is a gift. Know what else are gifts? Freedom, rationality, common sense, foresight, a sense of social responsibility, choices, opportunities, the ability to plan, independence from peer pressure, birth control technology, and knowledge of human reproduction. Not to mention travel, career opportunities, financial independence, pleasures of life, free time, peace, and quiet.

There are thousands and thousands of people who worked for centuries to make sure that people could have more control over their reproductive choices.  I’m grateful for their sacrifice, and I honor them by being thoughtful and responsible about my reproductive decisions. It would be a slap in the face, a rejection of scientific knowledge, to make an ignorant, irresponsible decision one way or the other.

I do owe my parents quite a bit. They shaped me into the person I am today. After teaching me to be a responsible, thoughtful person, I want to respect their sacrifice by making the best decision for myself. And, if I can learn from their mistakes and not follow in the footsteps of their mistakes, that truly is a wonderful gift.

Pity Accepted

I have heard people say that they feel sorry for childless or childfree people. I have mixed feelings about that. It sounds condescending and patronizing. It sounds like someone saying he knows what’s good for me more than I do. It sounds like an insult disguised as warmth.

But, okay, I hereby accept the sympathy of the childed. I accept that I am a valid recipient of your pity. My life lacks the purpose or rewards that a life with children brings. Thank you. I welcome your sympathy.

Now, let’s see what we can do with that pity. I would now like to explore how far it goes. I hope in your mercy you will be willing to extend the same income tax breaks to me that parents get. After all, the phantom children that I am supposed to have deserve just as much consideration as other children do. I hope in your appreciation for how empty my life is that you will be willing to let me take the same time off work that you do. I hope you will remember my piercing loneliness and not mention your children in every conversation that you have with me. I pray that you understand how much I envy you, so please limit your complaints about how hard it is to be a parent.

Or, as I saw on a postcard recently:
"I don't envy you because of your baby. I envy your maternity leave."

The Children Integer

(I've been following numerous threads on being childfree and what that means. As a result, I have a few things I'm mulling over for this blog.)
 

Everyone has a number of children. My number is zero. Other people choose (or have) one, two, three, etc. Many people who have more than zero decide to stop at the number they have. Some stop at one, two, three, etc. I have decided to stop at zero. Zero is the optimal number for my life. When people ask me if I have children, I think I’ll tell them “I have zero children.”

Some people arrive at the number after considerable thought, some do not. Some overthink it, some don't think enough. In some cases, the optimum may actually be a different number than the current number. I would say if you are going to be off, better to err on the side of underestimation -- better to have fewer children than you can handle than to have more children than you can handle.
 

I like to think this could be a bridge between those who are childed and those who are not. Can't we just see this as a number, just like any other? 

A number is a number is a number. Mine is zero. What's yours?

On Horoscopes, For No Particular Reason

I have an idea that star signs based on birthdays might have some general utility in predicting some things on the individual level. I’m not saying that horoscope predictions or Zodiac personality descriptions could withstand scientific rigor, just that I can see some plausible correlations to reality. Or, at least astrology could be recognizing some very general patterns that do exist even if “the stars” are not the reason. I’m not someone who believes that “every myth has a basis in fact,” because that is obviously not true, and I’m not trying to rehabilitate the image of astrologers. I’m just saying it makes an interesting thought exercise.

Here’s a proposition: all other things being equal, people born in the same time of year could tend to act in similar ways. Or, people with birthdays around the same time might be more similar to each other than similar to people born at other times of year, if you could factor out all other differences. It seems plausible that people raised in the same culture, for example with the same holidays, same celebrations and same calendar system, could grow up with some similar personality traits. For example, it seems plausible to me that people with a birthday near Christmas would often have a common experience of getting fewer presents in a year than others did. (Assuming they celebrated Christmases and birthdays.)  They might get only one set of presents for Christmas and their birthday, so therefore experienced a childhood of envy of other kids, felt short-changed by their childhoods, or early on discovered other measurements of happiness besides material possessions. Gross generalizations here but there may be something to it.

Along the same lines, if children are born into an education system that has summer vacation, then plausibly children who celebrated birthdays in the summer might have a very different experience than children born during the school year. It may be more isolating or marginalizing for a child to have a summer birthday, so he or she grows up with a different relationship to peers than schoolyear-birthday kids do.

In this case, it’s the cultural and social context that sets up the distinctions, not the actual stars. It would depend on the meanings that are already out there about different times of year. Someone whose life is strongly identified with a certain time of year, and if that time of year has a special meaning, would conceivably have a different sense of self than someone who identifies with another time of year. Again, all other things being equal.

This is aside from the force of expectations or power of suggestion that the astrology system itself may set up. It could be that if you are told your entire life that as a person born at X point in time you must have the personality traits Y and Z, that could actually make someone have those characteristics. It could be a case of predictions making themselves true. At the very least there could be a confirmation bias at work. People may notice the things their sign charts say that are accurate much more than what they get wrong.

I could also see a testable biological correlation here somewhere. I think the likelihood is small, but it’s a question that could be tested empirically. All other environmental factors being equal, there could be some developmental similarities in utero among people born at the same time of year. I could imagine this being true especially in pre-industrial agricultural societies where there may be more and better food at some times of year and not others. Different parts of the year might mean different maternal nutrition, different levels of maternal exercise, different forms of stress, all of which could theoretically translate into different birth outcomes and even different early development. Possibly as a winter newborn one’s infant experience could be very different from that of a summer newborn and this could have an impact on personality. Surely giving birth at a time of less sunlight could increase the chance of post-partum depression, which could have a long-term effect on a newborn. (This is only focusing on mom and baby, I realize, but it’s just by way of example.) It’s a bit of a stretch, but you could say that celestial bodies do influence personality, if you include the sun and the tilting of the earth in creating seasons.

There could also be other similarities that are already built into the fact that two people are born at the same time of year. Having the same birthday means, on average, being conceived at the same time of year, so presumably people with the same birthday may already have parents who are similar in their behavior. For example, two people born nine months after Valentine’s Day could both be raised by parents who are conventionally romantic, which could translate into similar parenting.

I recently had a conversation with someone who joked about what his daily horoscope predicted for him that day, and I replied that I hope he had the correct birthday for himself, or else he would be prepared for the wrong thing. I didn’t think about that before I said it, it just came out, and then it hit me: how do you really know what your birthday is? I don’t remember my birth, so I’m dependent on other people to tell me when it was. (I suppose even if I claim to remember the day, my memory could be faulty.) My birth certificate tells me what day it was, but it’s just a piece of paper and paper can be forged. If a birthday-based astrology system is accurate, it won’t be fooled by an incorrect birthday, because the stars know the truth, right?

It occurs to me that the whole birthday epistemology question is a good basis for testing the accuracy of a birthday-based astrology system. Theoretically, instead of starting with your birthday, an astrologer could start with other information about your life and work backwards to predict accurately what your birthday is. Astrology could verify the accuracy of one’s birth certificate, in principle. It’s possible that if the horoscopes are accurate then a long-term survey of your daily horoscope could reveal that your birthday is in fact not the one that you thought but in another month entirely. (Does anyone who follows the star signs come to imagine that his birth certificate is wrong?) Or, you could simply monitor what happens to someone around you and figure out that person’s birthday if you didn’t know it already.

Of course, if all these non-star factors (seasons, holidays, agricultural rhythms) are true, you would need totally different prediction systems for different religions, cultures, climates, and regions. If your personality or destiny really is linked to visible star formations or the solar seasons, then you would clearly need a separate system for the southern hemisphere. I don’t know what to tell you if you’re born in Australia and you’re not sure what your birthday is, but I might come to some conclusions about you if you celebrate Christmas….

The "Screamachine" -- An Allegory

Let’s say I had a seriously malfunctioning portable robotic stereo.

It went off at random moments playing screeching sounds at high volume, and I had very little control over it. Sometimes it wandered off in a random direction regardless of safety or other people. Sometimes I could coax it to be quiet and be still, and sometimes nothing I could do worked and it would go on and on until it went quiet on its own. If I brought this machine into a coffee shop or restaurant or store or library or theater, I might get some dirty looks from all those selfish people who were expecting some quiet time.

“But wait,” I would say, “it’s very important for me to take this with me everywhere. It’s who I am. If you don’t have one of these, you have no idea what it’s like. Show a little sympathy, because your dirty looks are not really helping me, are they? Maybe if you had one you wouldn't have such an empty, meaningless life."

Perhaps I took ownership of my noise machine before I really knew what they were like. Perhaps at one point I was afraid that I would have a big hole in my life without such a machine so I went right out and got one. I could tell you this machine is in fact the future of technology and at some point we will all be dependent on it when we get older. It has some kind of artificial intelligence, theoretically, that will make it function better as it learns more and more over the next two decades. Don’t you care about the future?

“Besides, just about everyone has one, and once you grow up you will want one, too. (Uncle Sam even gives me a little tax break – sort of like green energy credits, only not.) Those days when you could go into these places and not hear these angelic machines are a thing of the past, really. And, what can you do, these things just make those noises. It’s what they do. You should see them when they make really sweet spontaneous noises, or when they sit in sleep mode. I wish I could show you that right now, but the thing keeps screeching. You’ll just have to believe me. Maybe when you get one of your own you can see that it’s all worth it. That’s when you know you’ve grown up and added something to society.”

“It’s just going through a rough few years right now, but over time it will get quieter. It will run around on its own a lot more then and spill things on you, but the screeching will be a little less spontaneous. Sometimes I’ll even be able to shout at it and activate the voice-recognition quiet mode from a distance. That is, unless it’s tired or amped up or bored or frustrated or interfered with by other noise machines.”

Now, I’m thinking if I had such a thing and I did disturb other people, I could rightly be labeled inconsiderate. I should at least minimize the noise that it made or apologize when it was disturbing others or make sure that everyone could see that I was at least trying to deal with the challenge. I should not mind minimizing the effect of my noise machine by staying away from quiet areas or keeping my machine from moving around and screeching in the ears of others.

If I were to impose the sensory effects of my choice on others, I would certainly hope I would not try to induce others to join the  club. I would hope I would be able to respect the fact that others without screamachines may not want the hassles that go with them, or else they would have them. Who knows, maybe the people out in public have machines of their own and just wanted a space outside the home where they could get away from their own machines.

When are you going to get a screamachine of your own?

Agreeable Disagreement -- Fighting Bingo with Bingo

(I wrote this one for the childfree audience, so that's the "we" and "us" I mention.)

I have an idea I’ve not tried yet, but it seems promising, and I wonder if anyone else has had success doing something similar. It’s this: agree completely with pronatalist reactions and use those same arguments to support the idea of NOT having children. Let their own arguments show how sensible it is to be childfree. I’m having trouble keeping sarcasm out of my answers, but maybe that’s unavoidable. This approach also kind of assumes you’re debating with someone in a rational, open-minded conversation, which is often not really the case.

Some examples:

1. “You’re being selfish and immature.”

Response: You’re absolutely right. I am in no position to be a good provider or role model to a poor, innocent, vulnerable little angel. Parenthood takes a lot of self-sacrifice, and people who are not prepared to be selfless or are not mature enough should definitely not have children. Thank goodness I didn’t make the mistake of having children in my condition.

2. “You’re one of those people who hates children.”

Response: Unfortunately, you are correct. I think something is deeply wrong with me, something wrong with the way that I’m wired. Perhaps I need a lot of therapy to figure out where that malfunction comes from. Until I can cure myself of this deformity, I should probably not be near any children. Everyone should keep their kids as far away from me as possible, out of earshot, never even mention your kids to me, until I get this straightened out. Or, if that’s not possible, let me have my own spaces devoid of children. Thanks for reminding me that it’s entirely possible for someone who hates children to become a parent anyway. Thank goodness I haven’t made that mistake.

3. “Someday you’ll regret it if you don’t have a child.”

Response: I could not agree more. I think you’ve just touched on a really profound bit of wisdom, there – it is possible to look back on a reproductive decision and feel deep regret about it. I shouldn’t be hasty and rush into something without looking realistically at my life.  It’s a really good idea for me to take a detailed look at all the possible futures before doing something monumental like deciding whether or not to have a child. The wrong decision could be totally devastating for me.

4. “Once you hold one in your arms you’ll feel differently.”

Response: You are so right. I keep forgetting that people with different experiences than mine may have something wise to contribute to my understanding of myself and my life. I see I can be just as happy or even happier if I had made a very different reproductive choice. And you are totally correct that once you have a child your life will be completely different and your old life will be a distant memory.

5. “You’ll need someone to take care of you when you’re old.”

Response: Yes, sir, absolutely. Having children is most definitely an economic decision that redistributes resources, redirects labor, and creates whole new social obligations. I have to think about my later years and make the best investment decisions now so I can have the most comfortable retirement possible. I better think long and hard about how I invest my time, energy, and money right now, because making a bad financial decision today could spell disaster in twenty or thirty years. Thanks for reminding me I need to invest my salary wisely in things that are most guaranteed to pay off later.

6. “Society would collapse if everyone thought like you did.”

Response: I know, and I hate myself for that. The only way I can feel better about being such a non-contributor is to remind myself that at least I won’t pass on my selfishness to any children. We childfree misfits will probably die off because of our own shortsightedness. Thank goodness my monstrous perversity is not contagious – people who have children are fortunately so much in love with parenthood that they are immune to any temptation to live an “alternative lifestyle,” and lucky for them they can’t switch sides anyway even if they wanted to.  Fortunately for society, we can encourage people with children to have as many as they physically can; since parenting is such a joy, they won’t mind picking up the slack for the rest of us.

7. “You’re missing out on the most fulfilling thing you could do.”

Response: Totally true, and it breaks my heart. I am deeply flawed, self-destructive, and in denial. I don’t have the courage or toughness to put myself through what parents go through every day. Parents are my heroes. I can only look on in awe at the things they can do and wish somehow I could risk so much to achieve so much. They’re like the people who climb Everest without oxygen tanks. Thank goodness those rare, special people are out there to inspire the rest of us in our lesser everyday lives. I can only hope to find a fraction of that fulfillment some other way. My fear and weakness are quite disgusting, really. Maybe I don’t deserve to be happy, so I really don’t deserve the ecstasy that comes with being a parent. I haven’t earned it, and I’m not sure I ever will. I’ll try to carry on as best I can with a second-rate life. Please think of the less fortunate, like me, around tax time or when it’s time to promote people at the company. Throw me a bone, I have nothing else going on in my life.

8. “You’re only thinking of the negatives and don’t see the positives.”

 Response: You got me. It’s true. I have let myself be so overwhelmed by 1) all the complaints I hear from parents, 2) all the things I see are hard about having children, and 3) all the ways that children drain people of their energy, that I haven’t left room in my heart to believe them when they backpedal and say how much it’s all worth it. I’ve let myself be taken over by logic, self-reflection, and critical thinking, when really I should have more blind faith that the good parts outweigh the bad. I need to listen to the truth underneath all the chatter. There’s some more good wisdom here: you have to be skeptical about what people say about having children – the true ratio of positive to negative may be largely unspoken, so you have to read between the lines sometimes.

9. “You get to experience a whole new kind of love.”

Response: So true, so true. I hate that I have been missing out on that. I’m spending all this time with friends and family, developing as an individual, that I completely missed out on that special love. I’ve gone without this unique bond for so long, and I’ve become so self-sufficient in my life, I think I’ve spoiled my chance at creating that relationship. I have this irrational fear that the relationship with my children will compete with my other relationships, but that clearly would not be the case, since the more kinds of love you can experience the better, right?  You’re so right about how important it is to have love in your life and not to do anything to endanger that possibility. Love should be protected, encouraged, and nurtured, and I should let nothing stand in the way of that. Good thing I don't have kids, then.

10. “If your mother thought the same way you did, you wouldn’t be here.”

Response:  Absolutely rock-solid logic.  Nonexistence is really tricky that way, isn’t it? You have reminded me that it’s pointless for me to try to predict how I’m going to feel about someone who currently does not exist. It’s impossible to say how the existence or nonexistence of someone else is clearly going to make my life better or worse. The concrete is much better than the abstract. Thanks for reminding me to look at my own experience within my own family for guidance about parenting. I can now look at what I know about my mother’s life in order to decide whether or not I should really do what she did. And, there are good words of warning here: sometimes parents can raise rotten, ungrateful, selfish, and immature children who fail to follow in their parents’ footsteps. Luckily, if I don’t have a child, I won’t be adding any more of those useless “childfree” people to the population.

I’m not saying that pronatalist reactions are fair and accurate, but chances are the people who want to argue with you are not really interested in debating the accuracy of anyone’s view. It can be very disarming to accept other people’s reactions and run with them to show them where those arguments lead.  We can thank them for the ways that their wisdom supports our choices. This could be a great achievement for CF people – so many of the arguments, both the good ones and the bad ones, support the choice to be childfree that even the most fanatical pro-parenting people agree with us!

The No-Birth Announcement

Recent converts tend to be the most zealous and the most obnoxious, and I think I'm in that category with my recent embrace of the childfree life. Some things that slightly annoyed me before now seem like things I want to subvert in my own annoying way.

The latest example: the workplace birth announcement. At my company, any time an employee or spouse of an employee gives birth, someone sends out a mass e-mail to everyone in the department giving the name, weight, update on the mom, etc.

I don't think this is a terrible thing, for the most part. I'm not inconvenienced any more than any other blanket e-mail containing information I don't need.

What I've been thinking, though, is that if announcing a birth is a valid use of e-mail, then really ANY legitimate reproductive choice is a valid subject for an e-mail. (I say "legitimate," because I have to draw the line at announcing infanticide or castration without consent. Arbitrary and biased of me, I know.)

So, I've been toying with the idea of a "no-birth" announcement, heralding the non-arrival of a baby into the household. One of the great things about this is that you can send one even if you already have children, and you can send one as often as you like. Feel free to copy or edit as you see fit. Convert to metric measurements where applicable.

I also want to make some kind of illustration for it, but I'm not sure how to draw a stork carrying a bundle of freedom, enjoyment, peace, and quiet.

Here's what I have so far:


__________ and I would like to announce the arrival of no new family members yesterday. Forty weeks ago we successfully used birth control, and thanks to good planning we welcome ourselves back home from no hours of labor. Both of us are resting comfortably, and not too tired at all, really. We're both hoping to get our pre-non-pregnancy bodies back the way they were as soon as possible.

Name: Continued Freedom, Peace, Quiet, Autonomy, Enjoyment, Disposable Income
Time of birth: N/A (life is continuous)
0 lbs., 0 oz.
0 in. long

Thank you for all your prayers and best wishes.
Love,
_________ and __________