Progeny vs. Paper

I just received a mass e-mail at work announcing a birth. One of my co-workers just gave birth to a healthy 7-pound baby boy. The person who sent the e-mail is the secretary-supervisor in my part of the firm, and she sent it using her work account. She’s kind of a grandmother figure around the office, and on her office door are photos of everyone’s children and grandchildren, so she gets a kick out of being the one to announce every new birth.

She also likes to urge people not to waste resources, so every e-mail she sends, including this one, comes with an automated tagline at the bottom that reads:

“Please consider the impact to the environment before printing this email.”

Think about that. It’s a BIRTH announcement, asking ME to consider MY impact on the environment….

This seemed quite ridiculous to me, celebrating the entrance of one more person into the world and reminding me not to harm the environment by printing out an e-mail. The real damage at birth is the printing out of the e-mail? Perhaps she should have sent the same kind of message to my coworker when she announced that she was pregnant:  Please consider the impact to the environment before reproducing.

I wasn’t going to print it out anyway, but I think I get a little slack here. Being childfree is a massive carbon offset that I plan to take advantage of. I think if I get a vasectomy I should be able to print as many copies as I want....

Just Life, No -Style

I’ve never liked the word “lifestyle” when it’s applied to being childfree. It has a lot of derogatory feeling to it. The word “lifestyle” has the connotation of doing something not only uncommon but also somehow deviant. A lifestyle is something that other, abnormal people have, whereas the good, healthy, normal people just live their lives. “Childfree lifestyle” sounds like we’re all swingers or we are sunk in mindless decadence. (Some of the childfree no doubt are, but not in any greater percentage than any other population cohort.)

People refer to Hugh Hefner as living a “lifestyle.” We would never say that Mother Teresa had a “lifestyle,” though she clearly lived life according to a very unusual plan.

People who are hostile to homosexuality are generally the ones who call being gay a “lifestyle.” We generally don’t refer to a social conservative as someone living a lifestyle, nor do we refer to a “straight lifestyle" or "heterosexual lifestyle."

By the same token, I’ve never heard anyone refer to a “parenting lifestyle” or a “childed lifestyle.” Saying I live a "childfree lifestyle" is to suggest a lesser way of living than a life with children.

My preference would be to make it shorter. Save a few keystrokes. Why not just “childfree life”?

Reproduction as Deviance

I've come across many online opinions that suggested that being childfree is at worst some sort of deviant behavior or at best some sort of rebellion against society. In some cases that may be true, but I would add that being childfree is more about continuity than anything else. It's not necessarily rejecting, deviating, rebelling, or making a sharp turn away from something. Quite the opposite, in fact. Making a conscious, thoughtful decision not to change one's life in a certain way is not really veering off, but staying on course.

Being childfree by choice is not straying off course or stepping off the “normal” path. It’s actually staying on a path that everyone starts on. Everyone is born childfree. We’re not tribbles. No one is born pregnant. People who become parents are altering the reproductive trajectory of their lives. They are changing their status. I am not.

This is one of the reasons why childfree people are assumed to be immature and irresponsible, while parents are assumed to be more grown-up and wiser. By not having children, I am in continuity with something that goes all the way back to my birth. I can see how breaking a trend that you’re born with seems like a rite of passage, so therefore someone who doesn’t go through it has not really grown up.

But, obviously some things you should grow out of as you mature, like being unable to put yourself to sleep, but other things you really can’t grow out of, like breathing. I started breathing right after I was born. I don’t know if I can go through a rite of passage where I don’t breathe anymore. (Well, I could, but my life after that seems overly brief….)

This is also one of the reasons why parents may feel perfectly comfortable giving advice about a childfree lifestyle but not comfortable hearing advice from childfree people about being a parent. All parents were at one point people without children, so parents are people who have experienced both a life as a non-parent and a life as a parent. It’s sort of like the way that the oldest sibling has experience as an only child AND as the oldest sibling, but a younger sibling has no experience as an only child. I think a parent’s perspective can be quite valuable as a kind of “before and after” picture of parenthood, assuming the source has some degree of objectivity. But, someone who is a parent at 35 can’t really say firsthand what it’s like to be 35 and NOT a parent.

 

One counter to my argument is to point out the ways in which the human body is geared for reproduction, all the eggs and sperm and sex hormones and all the other biological foundations to having kids. You might say, sure we’re not born parents, but most people are born with the possibility to be parents, and nature sure does push in that direction. But again, there is nothing preprogrammed here, and it’s the nature of civilization to use free will and rational agency when looking at our own biology. Our bodies are also set up to be quite violent, even murderous at times, but we should not just give into those impulses just because they have a physiological basis.

Even if we just look at the physiology of it, anyone who’s gone through infertility treatment can tell you what a crap shoot it is to produce another human being. Even if you were completely fertile and had as many kids as humanly possible, 99.9% of women’s eggs will never be fertilized, and 99.9% of the sperm never fertilizes an egg. The vast majority of the human reproductive system “goes to waste” anyway, even without any birth control of any kind. (In a way, onanism is nature’s rule, not the exception.) If being childfree is some kind of waste of biological potential, it’s a 100 % waste instead of a 99.999 % waste. Not much difference. That's like saying my car is a gas guzzler because it gets 30 mpg and yours is a miracle of efficiency because it gets 30.01 mpg.

Of course, when you reproduce, you are creating a human being whose reproductive potential will be mostly wasted as well. Having a kid means over time that even more sperm or eggs will go unused for reproduction, a cycle of biological waste passed on to generation after generation.

By being childfree, I’m sticking with a course that has worked very well for me so far, and one that has the odds on my side. Biologically and mathematically, being childfree is not a deviant behavior, but quite consistent with the way that all humans are born.

Parents Really Are Better People -- A Memorial

Raising children is a thankless, disrespected job. It demands enormous sacrifice -- time, money, energy, even the sacrifice of the self itself. I don't think I could handle the demands that having children would make on my life as it is now. Among other reasons for being childfree, I recognize I just don't have what it takes to go through with all of that.

As a childfree person, I have no real appreciation of how difficult it is to be a parent. I will never get to be as mature as someone burdened with all that responsibility. I will never get to experience the enforced, inescapable demands that I be responsible for the health and happiness of a tiny, ungrateful dependent. I will never know the higher spiritual calling that comes with reproduction. I will never make it into the sacred inner circle, the winners circle.

Congratulations, parents. You win. You are in fact better people than I will ever be. You have achieved a form of martyred sainthood I can only emulate but will never really achieve. I admire people who are so deeply committed to a course of action that they abandon many things that I put in the categories of intelligence, planning, common sense, thoughtfulness, soul-searching, etc.

To those who took a massive leap of faith without much regard to the consequences, I salute your bravery. I admire your simple faith, flying in the face of all that evidence suggesting a different course of action.

To those who now have to find a way to reconcile their hatred of parenting with their love of their children, you have my utmost respect. It's a very challenging emotional feat that has rewards I can't even imagine.

To those countless parents who have modeled a way of life I have decided against, I thank you for the examples you have set for me. Without you, I don't know how I could have decided so easily.

To those parents who so fervently evangelize the gospel of parenthood, I thank you for all those helpful counterarguments that have confirmed the wisdom of my choices. I doubt you realize how helpful you have been.

Finally, to those espousing the hateful childfree lifestyle, I curse you. Because of you I have been further lured into a life reeking of individual identity, peace and quiet, freedom, uncountable individual opportunities, and a soul-crushing expanse of free time. Because of your detestable seductiveness, I now must face a second-class life devoid of instant martyrdom. I must search harder than parents do in order to find the same level of smug condescension laced with envy. (I found the smugness and condescension, but can't seem to locate the envy.)

Now I must somehow trudge onward, living a lesser life than others. I only hope parents will overlook my inferiority. I hope they leave me to admire them from afar. I'm so undeserving that I am not even worthy to be in the same buildings as their children. In fact, I suggest parents call attention to my perverse inferiority by boycotting all the theaters, restaurants, stores, and public spaces that I frequent. I hope parents show how magnanimous they are by leaving me to stew in my own regrets. Let the silence of my coffeeshop, empty of their children's screams, be the fitting penalty for my terrible mistake.

Guilty as Charged, Thanks

For the moment, I will accept for the sake of argument that I am selfish for being childfree. I admit that I do have self-interested, self-centered, self-defined reasons for choosing to be childfree, and I can see that perhaps “selfish” is an appropriate word to describe my decision. Let’s go with that label for the moment. Let’s see where that takes us.

When judging the morality of particular actions, one important issue is the question of social harm. How much does a selfish decision negatively affect other people? I can imagine some arguments that my not having children could be bad for society, but I’m having a hard time agreeing with the assumptions behind that point of view. I suppose society needs a supply of new people to continue to exist, assuming that the continued large number of people in the world should be maintained. I suppose you could say I owe it to future generations to reproduce, but then again if I don’t reproduce then my descendants don’t exist in the first place.

The other side of the harm issue is the question of “lesser harm,” which happens when you do something harmful that prevents even worse things from happening. Because I think I’m the best judge of what my future self would be like, I can imagine that my being a parent would not be in the best interest of my own child. I can anticipate that my children might just as easily make the world a worse place as make the world a better place. I’m convinced, selfishly or not, that many people would be better off if I were to be childfree.

Let’s assume my selfishness really is completely narcissistic, and I truly am out only to do things that I enjoy, no matter what the effects on others. Objectively, we would have to agree that that kind of person would be a horrible parent. Given the behavior of many parents I have had the pleasure to observe over the decades, I have come to the conclusion that having children is no guarantee that a person will stop being selfish. So, the more selfish I appear to be, the better reason I have to be childfree.


Parenthood is not a cure for narcissism. Parenthood just helps narcissism find new victims.

Furthermore, the selfish behavior of individuals is not always a bad thing for others. There are plenty of good things that happen when people pursue their own self-interest. (I’m not making a plug for free market capitalism here, though I would note that most of the evangelically pronatalist are perfectly comfortable with the idea of private economic self-interest powering society.) I donate clothes and household items to the local Goodwill store, where I also shop for bargains. I donate things and shop there largely for selfish reasons: I want more closet space, I don’t want to spend time setting up a garage sale, I would have to pay for garbage pick-up, and I prefer to buy things at the lowest price possible. All of those are terribly self-centered reasons. The result? This charity gets free stuff to sell and then gets revenue from selling items to me. The greedier I am with bargains, the more money Goodwill makes. My reproductive selfishness may be working the same way. Even if my decision is bad, let’s remember that often good comes from bad.

What does it say about being childed if childfree people are considered selfish? Presumably, that means that being without children comes with many benefits. It suggests that having children comes with many sacrifices and many disadvantages. It implies that childfree people are enjoying an unfair amount of fun or free time or money or any number of positive things in life.

In fact, if choosing not to have children is a horribly selfish act, that means that having children is a major sacrifice that childfree people are not making. We are choosing NOT to take on the horrible challenges that come with children. We are choosing a life of enjoyment, limiting something that would make our lives needlessly difficult.

Now, of course, if having children is the greatest joy in the world, and if I’m going to regret being childfree later in life, then ultimately my decision is going to hurt me most of all. I am consciously choosing something that could make me profoundly unhappy, forgoing the chance at the greatest joy possible, and doing that with eyes wide open. It’s like a kind of self-denial, really. I mean, if I’m choosing to miss out on such wonderfulness, you could hardly say that I’m selfish.

You can’t have it both ways. If being childfree is selfish, that must mean that having kids is not enjoyable. If having kids is the greatest joy in the world, then I’m not actually selfish for giving up the chance. If childrearing is the most rewarding job in the world, then I have consciously chosen a lesser option. How greedy and selfish can I be if I’m shooting for second place while everyone else is going for first place?

I see one good objection to my position here. A person can make a decision out of selfish motives, thinking that the result will be fun, only to discover that the choice made his life worse. Possibly this is what I have done, choosing to be childfree for selfish reasons, only to realize at some future date that it made my life worse. If that happens, I can’t claim I wasn’t selfish before just because I’m suffering now. Suffering in the present does not excuse the fact that I was selfish before – there is no retroactive selflessness, reading the effect back into the motivation. Being selfish now could make me miserable later. This is all too true.

Therefore, by all rights, I can say the same thing about being a parent. Just because parenthood costs you so much today does not mean that you chose to have kids for unselfish reasons. Perhaps you had them for selfish reasons and now you have regrets. Perhaps that is why my childfree reasoning seem so selfish. If you were to choose again between parenthood and childfreedom, your informed choice today would make childfreedom look much more enjoyable.

So, I think I'll embrace the "selfish label." It reminds me that I'm making the right choice.

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."