Truly Unselfish Reasons to Have a Child

Yes, I’m a Selfish Childfree Person, Part II

I can think of several unselfish reasons to have children, but it’s hard to imagine any that are not totally lame or totally creepy. None of these are very common reasons for Americans to have children.

Some relatively unselfish, for-the-greater-good kinds of reasons:

1. My religion needs more followers.

2. The rain god demands more human sacrifices or else my people will starve.

3. The master race needs more members.

4. My country needs more soldiers, especially since those evil ____s are breeding like rabbits.

5. My parents want grandchildren.

6. My spouse wants children.

7. My first child needs a bone marrow transplant.

8. My cannibal village will starve without fresh meat.

9. My first child needs some companionship.

10. My pets need more human companionship.

11. My friend the neonatal nurse will lose her job if the birth rate goes too low.

12. The community garden needs compostable material, and if I don’t provide it, who will?

(Okay, some of these are gruesome, but don’t tell me that having a baby for food is really all that different from having a baby to provide organs for your other child. Potayto, potahto.)

There is another kind of extremely lame “unselfish reason,” unselfish in the sense that it is not overtly or consciously driven by self-interest, so it’s not exactly cold calculation. That doesn’t mean it’s selfless, either, just that it’s easy for that person to imagine that it’s not an actively selfish choice.

I’m talking about getting pregnant or getting someone pregnant:

1. On accident, because of laziness, carelessness, or ignorance about birth control or reproduction.  (Yes, sweetie, unprotected vaginal intercourse in a hot tub CAN result in pregnancy.)

2. Because you never really thought about doing anything else.

3. Because you let other people make the choice for you.

4. Because you were totally wasted when it happened.

5. Because you weren’t considering the consequences of your actions.

Notice how many of these unselfish reasons are grounded in ignorance or carelessness. That’s not a very noble basis for becoming a parent. Something like half the pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned. There are a whole lot of “oopsie” babies out there. As bad as the American sex education curriculum is, it’s not THAT bad. These are largely preventable oopsies, assuming the people WANT to prevent them.

A lot of the myth of the unselfish parent is based on the reality that parenthood may not be a well-thought-out choice in the first place. “How can I be selfish when it was a total accident? Don’t blame me, it must have been fate!” To really take credit for an unselfish decision, it ought to be a real decision.

Sorry, no credit for selflessness when it's really thoughtlessness.

Parents ARE Better Workers. Sort Of.

This is inspired by a childfreedom post about a Shine.com article. Check out the original to see what I'm on about.

There are ways that parents do have special skills and qualities that are useful to an employer, but they’re not necessarily things that parents or employers want to admit. When I think about what it would be like to be a stay-at-home parent rejoining the workforce after 10-20 years, here is the list of things I think I would be able to offer an employer.

1.       Eagerness.

I would do just about anything to keep the job, if it meant not going back to my life of mind-numbing drudgery. Do you need me to stay late to work on projects? You got it. You’re doing me a favor by giving me something interesting to do with my time. I enjoy having grown-up conversations with adult people. Please don’t send me back there. Please. Here is where childfree people may take their jobs for granted – you think THIS job is boring and soul-crushing? You’re lucky you’re not home with my kids....

2.       People Skills.

Does your CEO act like an impulsive, spoiled brat? Make me his assistant, because I know how to deal with that kind of person. Perhaps I can give him a cookie or make him take a time out. Maybe take away his TV privileges. If you’re a company that treats its employees like children, then my management skills are just what you need. If your firm is in any way like a group of self-centered, immature, needy people, then I have exactly the tools you want.

3.       Team Spirit.

As a stay-at-home parent, my individual identity has for years been conveniently subsumed under the needs of the collective. No need to waste time squashing my individuality, because it is already pre-squashed for your convenience. If you could train me to obsess about profits as much as I obsess over my kids, then I can guarantee you Fortune 500 status. If you could convince me that the company is my family and you could guilt me into sacrificing everything for it, then you have got one loyal worker.

4.       Managing Accountability.

Do you have outside pressures from creditors and auditors? Do you need to deflect outside criticism? As a dedicated pronatalist I have a big toolbox of techniques for doing that very thing. I’ve got the Sob Story, the "How Dare You Judge Me" Deflection, and my all-time favorite, the "You Don’t Know What Love Really Is" Speech. (I've even made a Power Point of that one.) If you are looking to offset this whole new “social accountability” fad by presenting yourself as the victim instead of the perpetrator, then I have some tactics you are going to love. As a divorced parent with stay-at-home experience, I know all about using legal action to pre-empt hostile action or to destroy the competition. I know how to launch a money-seeking lawyer at someone. That just may come in handy in your line of work.

5.       Blind Optimism and Trust in Authority.

I'll do what I'm told by the peer pressure that's around me. I will drink the Kool-Aid if you appeal to my need to fit in with everyone else. You could give me the worst job in the world but tell me it’s "The Best Job in the World," and I will probably believe you. I fell for that trick once, so there’s a good chance I will again.


The Yeah, But....

All sarcasm aside, I do agree as a very general rule that parenthood could be good preparation for other jobs. At least, I would agree that being a good parent could help develop attributes that would make you a good worker or good business person. If you handle parenting responsibilities well, then that could be good sign that you handle responsibilities well in general.

However, there are at least two big problems with that argument, or at least two big questions that have to be answered:

1.  Does being a parent mean that you are a GOOD parent?
I said that being a good parent could be good job training, but not all parents are good at being parents. In fact, it is extremely hard to have a parent fired. You have to break the law in some very specific ways to be fired from motherhood, for example. It is much easier to be fired from a job than to be fired from parenthood, so the level of accountability for parents is actually much lower. If your irresponsible financial habits bankrupt your household, you still get to keep your job as parent. In most businesses that would get you fired. If an employer really is supposed to use parenting experience as a guide, then the employer would need to be able to evaluate how successful you have been as a parent.

And

2.  Is being a parent the BEST way to get these skills?
I have no doubt that many people thrive as parents and learn a lot of valuable things that would be useful to a boss someday. But, compared to other ways of getting these skills, becoming a parent may be a really poor route to take. Perhaps there are better alternatives for acquiring these abilities. I’m guessing a few accounting classes could be as useful as running a household budget for a few years. In many fields, it could be that a decade of parenting could teach as much as just a couple years of formal education. Furthermore, there is the question of the depth of the knowledge you gain as a parent. If you’re a school district, you would do better a) to hire someone trained as a kindergarten teacher than b) to hire someone to teach kindergarten just because her one child was five years old once. Being a parent is obviously not the ONLY way of getting these skills. Spend 10-20 years doing just about anything and you’re bound to learn something useful, but that doesn’t mean every way you spend your time is equally valuable.

Like I said, parenting can be great, so parents can be great employees. I’m just not so sure they are automatically the best. Nor are they good for reasons that make parenting look good.

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.