http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/feature/2003/05/06/breeding/index.html
To breed or not to breed
Studies show that couples who choose not to have children are happier than those who do. So quit leaning on me to spawn.
By Michelle Goldberg
Editor's note: It all started with a letter.
A reader in her 30s wrote to Salon a few months ago, begging us to publish more stories like "No Baby On Board," an essay by Pagan Kennedy exploring her decision not to have children. The reader, herself struggling with the question of whether to procreate, spoke of the personal cost of giving up her salary as the primary breadwinner in her family. "What would the return be on the investment?" she wrote. "Are there any laws that would require my children to pay for my nursing home when I am old? Are they going to be a sufficient hedge against poverty and loneliness?" This woman's letter -- which was marked "not for publication" or else we would have published it in its entirely -- set off a fierce debate among the Salon staff. (Yes, we really do read your letters!) Some thought the reader was crass and "emotionally crippled," and said anyone who would think about childbearing in stark financial terms shouldn't be a parent in the first place. Others defended her, saying she was being refreshingly honest about her fears, and thought that the fact that she was painstakingly examining her decision to have children made her far more responsible than those who have kids simply because they feel they should.
Since the issues raised by this reader engendered such a spirited discussion in our office, we decided that it was worth pondering in a public forum. Why have children, anyway? And should you have them if you don't feel a biological or emotional urge? If you don't, will you feel those urges later, and regret it? Does having kids make old age less painful? Does choosing not to have children mean you're selfish? Or are those people who choose to have children to fulfill themselves, or to ease loneliness, or to take care of them in old age, the really selfish ones? Are the sacrifices to your body, your finances and your freedom worth it? And why do so many parents preach the procreation gospel to their nonparent friends? Beginning today with Michelle Goldberg's essay "Married Without Children" and continuing until Mother's Day on May 11, we will run a series of essays that explore these questions and investigate perhaps the most critical decision that anyone makes over the course of a lifetime -- to breed or not to breed? This week, that is our question.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Michelle Goldberg
May 6, 2003 | When I tell people that I'm 27, happily married and that I don't think I ever want children, they respond one of two ways. Most of the time they smile patronizingly and say, "You'll change your mind." Sometimes they do me the favor of taking me seriously, in which case they warn, "You'll regret it."
I've heard this enough that I've started worrying that they might be right. After all, I'm not completely insensitive to the appeal of reproduction. In fact, I have a name chosen for the daughter I don't plan to have, and sometimes I imagine the life I could give her. Unlike me and my mortifyingly provincial childhood, she'd be one of those sparkling, precocious New York City kids I've always envied. I'd take her around the world, to study languages in Europe, to see the Potala Palace and the Taj Mahal. She'd have all I wish I'd had.
My husband doesn't particularly want children either, but there's no doubt he'd dote on her -- he's said as much. His wonderful family lives within walking distance of us, which is why his sister has more of a social life than any other young mother I've met. I think of his grandmother and grandfather, who live in a rambling house in rural Maine. Three generations of their adoring descendants admire them as few people admire the very old anymore, and seeing that makes me think that family can be the key to the best kind of life.
Still, the vague pleasures I sometimes associate with having children are either distant or abstract. Other women say they feel a yearning for motherhood like a physical ache. I don't know what they're talking about. The daily depredations of child rearing, though, seem so viscerally real that my stomach tightens when I ponder them. A child, after all, can't be treated as a fantasy projection of my imagined self. He or she would be another person with needs and desires that I would be tethered to for decades. And everything about meeting those needs fills me with horror. Not just the diapers and the shrieking, the penury and career stagnation, but the parts that maternally minded friends of mine actually look forward to: the wearying grammar school theatrical performances. Hours spent on the playground when I'd rather be reading novels. Parent-teacher conferences. Birthday parties. Ugly primary-colored plastic toys littering my home.
Raising a child is hard even for those who like all that stuff, according to Rick Hanson, a California clinical psychologist and co-author of "Mother Nurture: A Mother's Guide to Health in Body, Mind, and Intimate Relationships." "Most parents, men and women, say they dramatically underestimated how intensely demanding, stressful and depleting parenthood would be," Hanson says.
I'm just not up for it. I can sort of see that it might be nice to have children, but there are a thousand things I'd rather spend my time doing than raising them. The daily grind of motherhood seems like a prison sentence to me.
But is it one I'll regret not serving?
May 6, 2003 | Actually, never mind me -- even I find my own existential dilemmas a little tedious. But what about you? If you've read this far, it could be because you are or think you might be one of the quarter of American women who, according to Hanson, will never have children. The numbers are similar in other developed countries. According to an article published last year in the Guardian, 41 percent of British women born in 1969 don't have children. Some of these women can't have kids, but others simply have other priorities. Hanson says that of the quarter of American women who don't have children, three-quarters are physically able.
They won't always be. Fertility starts declining in your mid-30s. Sylvia Ann Hewlett's 2002 book "Creating a Life" may have been shoddy, irritating and smug, but it was accurate in its assessment of the dismal odds stacked against women who seek fertility treatments in their 40s. After a certain age, having a baby is no longer an option. So will women who choose not to have children regret their effrontery in defying the whole history of the human race? Are they -- or we -- setting ourselves up for a lifetime of barren desolation?
The answer, happily, is no.
To breed or not to breed
Studies show that couples who choose not to have children are happier than those who do. So quit leaning on me to spawn.
By Michelle Goldberg
Editor's note: It all started with a letter.
A reader in her 30s wrote to Salon a few months ago, begging us to publish more stories like "No Baby On Board," an essay by Pagan Kennedy exploring her decision not to have children. The reader, herself struggling with the question of whether to procreate, spoke of the personal cost of giving up her salary as the primary breadwinner in her family. "What would the return be on the investment?" she wrote. "Are there any laws that would require my children to pay for my nursing home when I am old? Are they going to be a sufficient hedge against poverty and loneliness?" This woman's letter -- which was marked "not for publication" or else we would have published it in its entirely -- set off a fierce debate among the Salon staff. (Yes, we really do read your letters!) Some thought the reader was crass and "emotionally crippled," and said anyone who would think about childbearing in stark financial terms shouldn't be a parent in the first place. Others defended her, saying she was being refreshingly honest about her fears, and thought that the fact that she was painstakingly examining her decision to have children made her far more responsible than those who have kids simply because they feel they should.
Since the issues raised by this reader engendered such a spirited discussion in our office, we decided that it was worth pondering in a public forum. Why have children, anyway? And should you have them if you don't feel a biological or emotional urge? If you don't, will you feel those urges later, and regret it? Does having kids make old age less painful? Does choosing not to have children mean you're selfish? Or are those people who choose to have children to fulfill themselves, or to ease loneliness, or to take care of them in old age, the really selfish ones? Are the sacrifices to your body, your finances and your freedom worth it? And why do so many parents preach the procreation gospel to their nonparent friends? Beginning today with Michelle Goldberg's essay "Married Without Children" and continuing until Mother's Day on May 11, we will run a series of essays that explore these questions and investigate perhaps the most critical decision that anyone makes over the course of a lifetime -- to breed or not to breed? This week, that is our question.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Michelle Goldberg
May 6, 2003 | When I tell people that I'm 27, happily married and that I don't think I ever want children, they respond one of two ways. Most of the time they smile patronizingly and say, "You'll change your mind." Sometimes they do me the favor of taking me seriously, in which case they warn, "You'll regret it."
I've heard this enough that I've started worrying that they might be right. After all, I'm not completely insensitive to the appeal of reproduction. In fact, I have a name chosen for the daughter I don't plan to have, and sometimes I imagine the life I could give her. Unlike me and my mortifyingly provincial childhood, she'd be one of those sparkling, precocious New York City kids I've always envied. I'd take her around the world, to study languages in Europe, to see the Potala Palace and the Taj Mahal. She'd have all I wish I'd had.
My husband doesn't particularly want children either, but there's no doubt he'd dote on her -- he's said as much. His wonderful family lives within walking distance of us, which is why his sister has more of a social life than any other young mother I've met. I think of his grandmother and grandfather, who live in a rambling house in rural Maine. Three generations of their adoring descendants admire them as few people admire the very old anymore, and seeing that makes me think that family can be the key to the best kind of life.
Still, the vague pleasures I sometimes associate with having children are either distant or abstract. Other women say they feel a yearning for motherhood like a physical ache. I don't know what they're talking about. The daily depredations of child rearing, though, seem so viscerally real that my stomach tightens when I ponder them. A child, after all, can't be treated as a fantasy projection of my imagined self. He or she would be another person with needs and desires that I would be tethered to for decades. And everything about meeting those needs fills me with horror. Not just the diapers and the shrieking, the penury and career stagnation, but the parts that maternally minded friends of mine actually look forward to: the wearying grammar school theatrical performances. Hours spent on the playground when I'd rather be reading novels. Parent-teacher conferences. Birthday parties. Ugly primary-colored plastic toys littering my home.
Raising a child is hard even for those who like all that stuff, according to Rick Hanson, a California clinical psychologist and co-author of "Mother Nurture: A Mother's Guide to Health in Body, Mind, and Intimate Relationships." "Most parents, men and women, say they dramatically underestimated how intensely demanding, stressful and depleting parenthood would be," Hanson says.
I'm just not up for it. I can sort of see that it might be nice to have children, but there are a thousand things I'd rather spend my time doing than raising them. The daily grind of motherhood seems like a prison sentence to me.
But is it one I'll regret not serving?
May 6, 2003 | Actually, never mind me -- even I find my own existential dilemmas a little tedious. But what about you? If you've read this far, it could be because you are or think you might be one of the quarter of American women who, according to Hanson, will never have children. The numbers are similar in other developed countries. According to an article published last year in the Guardian, 41 percent of British women born in 1969 don't have children. Some of these women can't have kids, but others simply have other priorities. Hanson says that of the quarter of American women who don't have children, three-quarters are physically able.
They won't always be. Fertility starts declining in your mid-30s. Sylvia Ann Hewlett's 2002 book "Creating a Life" may have been shoddy, irritating and smug, but it was accurate in its assessment of the dismal odds stacked against women who seek fertility treatments in their 40s. After a certain age, having a baby is no longer an option. So will women who choose not to have children regret their effrontery in defying the whole history of the human race? Are they -- or we -- setting ourselves up for a lifetime of barren desolation?
The answer, happily, is no.