BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Head Shop >

Children

  
  

Page: 123(4)5

 
 
Jack Fear
12:42 / 22.02.05
So much good argument to digest here, and so little time--but I just wanted to say that Nick's

It can lead to selfish - "I shall exalt my kids and to hell with yours" - but it can also lead to altruism or wider "us" definitions: "we all have kids, let's make this okay for them".

is spot-on. There's a proverb--don't know the source--"The mother of one, the mother of all." Holds for fathers, too. Again, this is anecdotal, personal experience--but being a dad has made me, I think, far more protective of / empathetic towards / simply better with small people, whether or not I am their primary custodian. If written large, I think this can only be a good thing for the continued survival of the species.

I mean, the only thing that kept us from a nuclear exchange in the 1980s was the blessed fact that the Russians love their children too. Unless Sting is a liar, of course: and that is too absurd to contemplate.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
12:50 / 22.02.05
And I am currently experiencing, at one remove, the power/strangeness of having children.

I am finding my auntie-hood much more ground-shaking, intoxicating, world-questioning and plain huge than I ever expected.

'Intoxicating' is a word a friend suggested, and I find apt. When I'm holding my nephews, that's exactly how I feel, overcome,focussed only on them. I loved them immediately, which astonished me, and they/my sis&bro are in my mind on some level constantly now.

There's a new presence. (And I am voluntarily flogging to london 1x week to help out/look after them and the parents, which enthusiasm astonishes me and my sis.)

It has made me re-examine myself wrt the questions in this thread. I love my nephews, I'm going to make sure I'm there for them, there *is* something that is very difficult to describe about the feelings I have. I'm ridiculously excited and am showing everyone their pictures/boring on about how cute they are.

So, I have been looking again at 'not having children', a decision that I'd made unthinkingly (perhaps on the same level that you're talking about/some people make the decision to have children?) as a teenager, and never felt any inclination to reconsider.

I still don't want to. Thinking about this stuff has been very shaky/constructive for me but I am very glad that my sister has/that I get to play a part in this kid's lives from the start.

Hmmm
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
13:00 / 22.02.05
Oh, and our experience thus far is that children turn the entire family dynamic upside-down and inside out. Is this true for others?

Sis and I have been talking/thinking much about the various family 'styles' that she/husb grew up with: broadly: 2nd gen bengali/southern english/northern english/danish, and what they want to grab/are already feeling is coming from each.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
13:21 / 22.02.05
Having said which, to tie it together, people who live in yurts tend to consume a lot less energy than people in the higher professional class, so should we not be encouraging _them_ to have more children and we to have fewer?

If the only important consideration in the calculus of global and individual well-being were energy consumption, then quite possibly. Since yurt-culture sometimes has its own disadvantages, however...

(I'm going to pass over your discussion of diversity because you haven't said anything I disagree with that I can see and I don't think [?] you're talking to me.)

However, you seem to be suggesting, and correct me if I'm wrong, that because it is an urge it cannot be acted upon rationally

Ahhh, not quite. I'm saying that because it is an urge - arguably the ur-urge (ho ho ho) - it's a mistake to think that you can require it to submit itself entirely to rational governance without losing something along the way. I've mentioned it before, but one of the most interesting moments in conflict resolution was when a negotiator insisted that delegates argue in her home - her domestic child-rearing zone, if you like - rather than in their rational conference room. The negotiations were quicker, smoother, and less addled with testosterone politics. If you ask the desire to reproduce to account for itself and behave like a grown-up, you may be doing the opposite - taking something which is non-verbal and pre-rational (to some extent at least) and demanding that it be put into words and made safe and governable.

I'm also unnerved because I dislike the idea of penetrative instrumental reason cutting up the flesh of and attaining control of non-discursive reproductive drives. It looks too much like an echo of the partiarchal demand for control over women's reproduction. I realise that that may just be me being fanciful and yielding to a rather outmoded construction of male- and femaleness.

I saw the NS article at the time - but it doesn't excluse the other explanation; it might be that (in the evolutionary context) the extra fertility is synergistically aided by - for example - having a homsexual brother who will provide and guard.

'it just is', is a perfectly valid statement, but not one, as you imply out of which much discussion can arise

Absolutely true, and for that reason it's all the more important to mention it; otherwise things like that tend to get left out of the calculus as incommensurable and valued at zero.

*Are* there ways of expressing the 'isness' of this desire, do you think?

Um. Well, the quick and dirty answer would probably be 'having kids', but I realise that's not what you meant. In a sense, if I'm right that we're talking about something non- or pre-verbal, then obviously not - and this is where I feel as if I'm banging the argument over the head a bit, but if you'll forgive me I'll say it one more time - and it is not appropriate or intellectually honest to require that it be expressible. At that point, you have to take the desire on its own terms, and make your decisionmaking take account of it as an artifact rather than try to translate it into something more 'rational'. That doesn't mean you can't question it, put reasons against doing it, and so on - only that many of these reasons will have no traction on the desire, only on the action.

I feel I'm running overlong. To answer your last question: I always thought I would have kids, in the same way I always thought I would be married at 27 (ho ho ho) and be too old to enjoy the 2000 celebrations. I only started to want them fairly recently, as a consequence of meeting more of them, seeing my brother's kids, and watching the world get older with me.

Although to be fair I also want an undersea base and my own personal spaceship, so, you know...
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
13:38 / 22.02.05
Interesting. Lots to think about.

One thing I would say is that I don't think very much questioning of whether and why we have kids tends to happen, and for that reason I'm vefy glad that UberSpunkySax started this thread.

(sorry, that's not helping you concentrate, is it? And I'm preseming haus was addressing HW)

I don't know how useful it is as an 'argument', but I'm not very interested in that.

I'm finding it fascinating and useful as a 'discussion', to hear people presnet a broad ranges of opinions/insights on this subject.

See, something that underpins the 'diversity' argument, which I think is very interesting/certainly relevant to me *is* the cultural impact and myth-making that goes on around the 'inevitability' of having children for some, and the inevitability of it never happening for others.

Anecdotally, I'm thinking of a dear friend and partner in child-free serenity. We grew up together.

K is straight, Christian, is hoping she'll get married at some point because otherwise, she won't ever be having a rel'ship. Which she'd quite like.

She is forever battling people's expectations of marriage=kids.

Me, queer: around the time I came out, people stopped bothering me about the kid issue, oddly. Even my dad.

For many people queer=not having/not wanting kids.

Which suits me, but is just as ludicrous/entrapping as the assumptions that K deals with.
 
 
Spaniel
20:36 / 22.02.05
As someone who is working on having children (obviously with a little help), I've put some thought into my motivations, but, frankly, I'm not coming up with much.

Yes, practical considerations have come into play: my girlfriend is older than me and her body clock is ticking, I'm earning a decent wage, I've met someone who I feel I could make a family with. But I can't say that any of the above has radically altered my desire to have children. I've wanted kids for the last 4 years - it's just that now it's looking realistic.

The thing is, when I'm asked to analyse my desire I tend to produce little more than whimsical statements. For example, one day I might answer that I think I would make a good father (whatever that means), on another day I might answer that I want to create and nurture little bobosses (girls and boys), and on another day I might talk about spreading my genes about a bit, and posterity and all that jazz. But, although those explanations might feel appropriate at the time, I've never come up with a completely satisfactory answer. It's like my psyche urgently needs to supply words where words weren't previously required.

I worry that by attempting to unpack the urge to have kids we run the risk of spouting empty words and nonsense.
 
 
Spaniel
07:23 / 23.02.05
That's not to say we shouldn't attempt it, or that we shouldn't talk around the issue, just that we should approach statements like "I want to have kids because of X" with caution.
 
 
Shrug
11:14 / 23.02.05
I'm all for having kids, I mean, who doesn't love being covered in baby snot and thinking it is unspeakable cute? But why reproduce (go through the hell of labour and nine months of whale-i-ness) when you can adopt?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:13 / 23.02.05
Well, little god, a number of people have discussed exactly that question in the preceding posts. What's your position? Why do you think people have natural children when there are unwanted babies looking for adoption? And do you think those reasons are good?

GGM - very interesting stuff about the relationship of queerness and breeding. Especially, of courser, because very few queernesses these days preclude one from having children, either physically or by adoption (except except except - lots of interesting stuff to go into there). By the same token, I think Dan Savage has stopped using the term "breeder" to describe straight people, because it doesn't make an awful lot of sense in a world where gay men and lesbians can, in a variety of different ways, have children and _be recognised by the state as parents_. More on this later, hopefully...
 
 
Shrug
13:24 / 23.02.05
I think alot of people have children because at a certain point in everyone's life they turn a corner and become less interested in themselves. Whether they reach a point in their careers (pinnacle or not) where they no longer get the same satisfaction they used to get from achieving, whether they are in a happy relationship and no longer engage in the almost constant entertainment of partner attraction, whether they have reached that hump in a relationship where interacting with their chosen partner begins to get routine I think the common factor which preludes pregnancy is boredom (although some people might just buy a c.d. a baby is almost always more entertaining) . When people look around and say "well then what's next", I don't think its social pressure or social compliance probably more social corroboration ,if that makes sense, a point where the majority reach consensus on a certain next step. Very few people question sincerely the motivation behind their want of a child just that it makes sense and it is the norm.
 
 
alas
00:29 / 24.02.05
One step back to the earlier debate about sex: I'm not saying that sex is the only way to make human connections or that sexual relations are only about bonding relationships. But the "biological"/ "evolutionary" arguments that assume sexual interaction is primarily about making babies are I think much more religiously derived than the arguers are admitting to. (Don't make me talk about bonobos!)

my girlfriend is older than me and her body clock is ticking,

I'm very interested still in this thread. Sidestepping for one moment the question about all those children in need of adoption, I especially wanted to make the point that wrt the wealth argument, it is annoying that careers and wealth-creation strategies are pretty much predicated on a non-maternal life cycle. If you want to give birth to children and you are a female, your body is most ready to do it right at the time when you most need to be establishing yourself in a career.

Children in need of adoption: this is a very very thorny thorny issue. Ricki Sollinger says, "adoption only occurs off the backs of resourceless women." Now, I think she's overstating slightly: some women get pregnant and really do not want children for a variety of reasons and are happy to provide for someone else rather than have an abortion (for whatever reason). But I think in the majority of cases, there's an element of force. Basically, adoption almost always the transfer of children from poor families to wealthy families. The mass transportation of children across class and national lines has a troubling history. It doesn't make it bad, but it is worth avoiding thinking about it as a panacea.

And, as someone who adopted children out of foster care: take my word: it's really, really hard, even when many, many things are working in your favor, as they were for us.

And partly there's a "market" for wealthy people to adopt children partly because of women waiting "too long" to have babies.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
07:22 / 24.02.05
adoption only occurs off the backs of resourceless women

Even if true, that's not, in and of itself, a reason not to do it. Those women will not suddenly become resourced if people don't adopt their kids. That adoption may be an artifact of inequality doesn't make it a bad that I can see. Although, yes, the notion of a market is unsettling - but turning it all the way around; suppose a woman were to become pregnant with the intention of giving up the child for adoption - would the State (a.n. state, this is, not any specific one) have any right to forbid her that use of her body? Even if the argument is that her choice is dictated by a tyranny of the markets? Murky, methinks.
 
 
lord henry strikes back
12:00 / 24.02.05
I'm entering some dangerous waters here so I'll tread (water, presumably, otherwise this metaphore would be a little inconsistent) carefully.

Adoption raises some interesting points about what we, as a society, expect of a parent. If, for whatever reason, prospective parents cannot conceive their own genetic child, then, for many, adoption is the only option. Adoption, however, is a long process in which the prospective parent is expected to jump through a lot of hoops and and fulfil various criteria. For a bit of background I've included a link to an adoption site spelling out the requirements of adoptive parents in the UK:

http://www.adoptionuk.com/adoption_facts.asp

As a side point, I know from a couple of people who work in the adoption services that this is something of a rosy view. The claim that a criminal record does not automatically disqualify anyone from adopting is little more than a legal stand point. It is infact basicaly impossible for anyone with a criminal record to adopt in the UK.

My point is for anyone who can conceive their own genetic child, none of these considerations are applied. Anyone whose equipment works (if you will) is free to go off and have as many babies as they like. To me there appears to be a hypocrisy in who we consider fit to be a parent.

As I said, dangerous waters here, but I would like to put this forward and see what others think about it.
 
 
Olulabelle
13:37 / 24.02.05
Comapring the 'rules' for adoption with the lack of rules for general conception makes me nervous. The two situations are entirely different and are simply not comparable.

Adoption by its very nature suggests that the children who are being adopted have already had a fairly hard time, either from abuse or loss of parents or whatever. As a direct consequence of this it makes sense for the state to set out rules which try to ensure the children will not suffer the same fate a second time round. As a democratic society we can do that because the children have been handed into our care. What, as a democratic society, we cannot do is start to set up rules which people have to abide by in order to be allowed to conceive, because by doing so we begin to dictate who is suitable to have children, and this goes against the whole principle of social equality. Doesn't it?
 
 
lord henry strikes back
15:40 / 24.02.05
Adoption by its very nature suggests that the children who are being adopted have already had a fairly hard time.

I do not dispute that abuse and loss of parents are two reasons why children end up in care, but in other cases they are given up for adoption by mothers who cannot look after them. In some cases this decision is made before the child is born, and I believe that there are some schemes in place to match up parents and adoptive children before the the birth. In these cases I don't think that it can be argued that the child has really had it any harder than most.

As a direct consequence of this it makes sense for the state to set out rules which try to ensure the children will not suffer the same fate a second time round.

As regards abuse this sentiment worries me. Whilst I do see your point, there seems to be an element of 'well, it's OK to get it wrong once, we better try harder this time'. Surely, as a society, we should be trying to make sure that this does not happen in the first place (olulabelle, I do not mean to suggesest that don't feel this way, I'm sure that you do). And, in fact, we do. That is why we have social services, to remove children who are in danger or are being neglected from their home enviroment into the care of the state.

As a democratic society we can do that because the children have been handed into our care.

As I mentioned above, these children are not handed into our care. In fact, it is a proactive state that removes these children from their parents. I see this process as much more interventionist than you seemed to suggest.

Maybe someone can enlighten me. I think artificial insemination, IVF, and the like can, at least in procedural terms (in that the state, or at least a state regulated body, is involved in the process) can be seen as somewhere between having your own children and adoption. Does anyone know if the same kind of vetting is applied to people wanting these treatments?
 
 
grant
17:47 / 24.02.05
Hrm. I think the only concerns for IVF and other fertility treatments are basically the health of the mother and the parents' ability to pay for the services.

I suppose "health" could be expanded to take a mental health angle, but I kinda think that wouldn't be so likely.

I'm almost positive you don't have to sign any affidavits swearing to be a good parent, or have any social workers check out your home on a regular basis.


And partly there's a "market" for wealthy people to adopt children partly because of women waiting "too long" to have babies.

From personal experience, I know that there are a few grayer heads in every bunch of adoptive parents -- more than you'd see in a maternity ward, definitely. Not all, though, are older moms, and quite a few are stay-at-homers with a few kids running around already.
 
 
alas
22:58 / 24.02.05
Most of the caveats to what I've posted wrt adoption I agree with. Just to be clear: I'm not anti-adoption! I have adopted children! And I'm quite young, really--or was when we began the process.

I was responding to what seemed to me to be a rather rosy picture of adoption as the unproblematic "good guy" way to have children as opposed to the "selfish," "gotta be me own genes" idea. (Which has been addressed above, but adoption had gone more or less unexamined as a morally-superior option. (Implicit in some ways in the framing Haus's re-focusing question to the littlegod, e.g., Why do you think people have natural children when there are unwanted babies looking for adoption?--understand that I don't attribute any rosiness of view to Haus however...(!)

I'm simply saying that adoption is not a course of action that is free of moral ambiguities. Like most human endeavors, there's a complexity of ethics at work.
 
 
grant
00:08 / 26.02.05
I just came across this right now, and it's too perfect not to include in this discussion.

Speaking as an internationally adoptive parent, now...

...THIS is what's wrong with international adoption.

I have to laugh to keep myself from crying.
 
 
Mirror
02:49 / 03.03.05
I've come late to this thread, and haven't had time to read much more than the first couple of pages, so I hope that this post isn't redundant.

Sax referred to a miraculous and virtually instantaneous change of heart where suddenly one loves hir child after months of the child simply being an abstract concept. While I haven't had children yet, a couple of years ago I had a very sudden and dramatic change of heart that this description brought to mind.

From my young adulthood I'd been convinced, like many, that I wasn't interested in having children, for entirely selfish reasons (not wanting my life disrupted, my freedom curtailed, etc.)

It was while I was on an extended international backpacking trip with my wife that the change of heart suddenly HAPPENED. It was a very simple recognition and realization that permanently changed my outlook on life, and it took probably a tenth of a second for everything to occur. I was walking along, just thinking about what an incredibly great time we were having, and what an amazing life I'd had up to the point, and how incredibly grateful I was to my parents for my existence and everything they'd done for me.

It was at that moment that I realized that the greatest good that I could ever do for anyone would be to give them life. To simply give them the opportunity to experience all of the joy and pain and wonder, love and loss, everything that goes into being alive.

My wife and I haven't had children yet, but I know, fundamentally know, that I won't be a complete human being until I give the gift of life to someone else.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
07:53 / 03.03.05
I've come late to this thread, and haven't had time to read much more than the first couple of pages

That's clearly not true, though, is it? You could have read the rest of the thread, but chose instead to add to it. Now, that's interesting if we start to think about it in terms of childbirth and childrearing.

Is there ever a point at which one can say with confidence that one is ready to have a child? This goes back to Lord Henry Wooton's question about "responsible childbirth" - waiting until one can be said to be able to support a child, his assumption being financially but by implication also emotionally (as his model has at least one parent not working to look after the child full-time).

So, there's an antithesis of "good giving" - giving the precious gift of life, giving parental attention, giving financial stability - and "bad giving" - inattention, emotional damage, poverty - out of which some sort of metric of parenthood emerges.
 
 
Ex
15:08 / 03.03.05
I'd like to backtrack and unpack an earlier thought: Boboss noted, and I thought it very interesting:

The thing is, when I'm asked to analyse my desire I tend to produce little more than whimsical statements. ...
I worry that by attempting to unpack the urge to have kids we run the risk of spouting empty words and nonsense.

This made me think quite a bit (thanks for sharing the experience, Boboss).
I have a similar experience from the other ‘direction’ (I’ve been racking my brains for a non-antagonistic phrase, there.).
When asked why I don't want to have kids - or more accurately, when I ask myself, as I can be a lot more blunt with myself - I can supply various logical reasons. But none of these really get to the heart of my desire not to – or my lack of desire to do so, I’m not sure which best expresses it.
Also, many of my reasons can be potentially contradicted, as we have in this thread been challenging some of the assumed reasons for having kids.

For instance: I don't like many aspects of the traditional role of the female caregiver, and suspect I would get dumped with it.
But: I could organise and structure my child care differently - my partner could be the primary carer, or we could raise the kid in a group.

And: I am terrified by the apparent lack of boundaries between kids and carers, so that children rarely perceive their primary carer as a separate individual and ceaselessly expect their attention.
But: I can see that's probably another cultural 'habit', and I could, possibly, raise my child to understand from the outset that I'm a separate person, but still love them very much.

(I have another ten or so of these, but you hopefully get the gist.)
But even if you assured me that all the negative aspects that I see in childcare would not happen to me - that my kids would be ceaselessly self-contained, joyful, not too taxing, and would bimble around the house tidying up and making naive but wisely pertinent remarks, I still (I believe) wouldn't want kids.
I know it's impossible for me to say that for sure - because my lack desire for kids, I'm certain, is obviously connected to what I understand childcare to involve, and how I think kids behave. But from my perspective, I don't have a primary urge that is damped down by my various concerns. I have a basic, central desire not to have kids, which I can then unpack with explanations. Much like Boboss, I fear that these explanations are not the whole picture, by a long shot.

I suppose I wanted to include this perspective partly because I don’t often get to state it, but also to add another take on the idea that the urge for children is somehow pre-verbal. It seems the experience of a few people here that it is partly un-rational or inexplicable. But so is my desire not to have kids, although I don't know if it's inexplicable or irrational in the same way. I’m not sure what conclusions can be drawn from this, except with the fact that our desires escape our capacity to express them. Possibly, that we culturally don't have a very developed or useful vocabulary around childcare decision-making and evaluation.

(On a related sidenote, I’m interested as to whether I’d categorise my own feelings as a lack of desire (to have kids), or as a negative desire (a desire not to have kids) – I don’t feel strongly either way, so would probably express myself differently given what I felt was strategic or appropriate for the context. I’m interested in other takes on that.)
 
 
grant
21:23 / 03.03.05
I started an international adoption discussion in Switchboard.

Kids -- they're primal.


So is it even possible to talk about parenthood?
 
 
Tryphena Absent
12:47 / 04.03.05
And: I am terrified by the apparent lack of boundaries between kids and carers, so that children rarely perceive their primary carer as a separate individual and ceaselessly expect their attention.
But: I can see that's probably another cultural 'habit', and I could, possibly, raise my child to understand from the outset that I'm a separate person, but still love them very much.

This caused very mixed feelings in me because I'm not sure that it's a cultural 'habit'. I think it may be developmental and thus not related to culture but to both personal experience and every childs psychoanalytic phases. It might be detrimental to a child to recognise a parent as that separate too early. That recognition is something that probably has to come on its own and you can tell a child you're separate but the realisation can only be brought forward through some kind of abandonment.

I think the desire to/desire not to have children is rather incoherent or inconceivable in language. Perhaps this is because it's a personal decision and through expressing it there's a brief infringement on the other person's choice. I understand that my own desire not to breed is a negative desire rather than a lack of desire to have children and that complicates matters because I think it becomes rather easier to get confused (when the biological clock ticks). But that's rational negativity vs. the child as an object. I want a child like I want a Lush ballistic, something to experience for 10 minutes, not a lifetime, so really it has to be a negative desire.
 
 
ibis the being
13:39 / 04.03.05
One problem here is that procreation seems to make people, as a whole, more politically conservative. So, is there an algorithm or equation describing the optimum number of children a liberal can have before they begin to be inculcated with conservatism, and indeed a maximum number before, on the balance of probabilities, neglectful and (back to Lord Henry) impoverished parenting leads to bitterness, resentment, rebellion and the adoption of right-wing views?

Was this sarcasm? If not, where have you gotten the idea that procreation makes people more politically conservative? I can see an argument for aging and/or wealth (both of which may coincide with procreation) making people more politically conservative. But mere reproduction? You don't think that having children makes a lot of people more, or at least not less, concerned about the environment, social programs, health care, etc.?

Also - Ex, I have to agree with Nina that a child's inability to recognize interpersonal boundaries is developmental rather than cultural (at least until a certain age, of course). An infant's "ceaselessly expecting attention" is basically a biological imperative ensuring its survival. You can't teach a child to recognize your separate identity from the outset - until the age of 6 months a baby has literally no concept of itself or anyone else as separate entities.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:08 / 04.03.05
You don't think that having children makes a lot of people more, or at least not less, concerned about the environment, social programs, health care, etc.?

To the exclusion of their child's individual welfare? I suggest you talk to Lord Henry Wotton.
 
 
Ex
15:11 / 04.03.05
Yes - if I'd taken a bit more space on my earlier comments, I would have sketched in the distinction made by Nina and ibis.
I agree that there's a period when kids aren't capable of distinguishing concepts like other people's interior worlds - it's way too advanced as a concept. They probably also need to know for a while that they are very much protected and secure (possibly to the extent that other people have prioritised the child above themselves).
But I don't know where that early developmental stage runs into a more general reluctance of older kids to recognise that their own personhood trumps everyone else's - and if this is a good, necessary experience to have, or if it's just an outgrowth of the way we raise kids. I certainly remember when young being able to understand that my father was a person, while my mother was still some kind of adjunct to me, with no real right to time/possessions if I wanted to use them.

And in relation to the idea of psychoanalytic stages of identification and separation that the kid's father is never expected to be identified by the kid as completely synonymous with itself and its needs - he's always the thing that crashes into the mother/kid dyad and breaks it up. So if that stage really is necessary, I could potentially take on the paternal while someone else does the whole merging/traumatic separation bit. But again, I suspect this is in part to do with the development of nuclear families. I would hazard that a happy child needs to know that someone/some people are looking after it and are very pro-it, and fond of it, and attentive. But does the child need to not recognise the individuality of one of its parents, even once it's generally learnt to distinguish between itself and others?

Anyway, I don't want to derail the thread too far.
 
 
ibis the being
15:55 / 04.03.05
To the exclusion of their child's individual welfare? I suggest you talk to Lord Henry Wotton.

Um, I realize being dismissive is considered chic, but I was actually kind of hoping for a real explanation. Yours is to refer me to a single Barbelith poster, and a childless one at that? - he stands in for the legions of people who have become politically conservative upon procreating?

How do concerns for - as I listed - issues such as the environment, social programs, & healthcare exclude the individual welfare of one's child? How about wanting - for one's individual child - day care, student loan funding & educational grants, federal funding for the local school, after school programs, affordable health care, pesticide-free vegetables, pollution-free schoolyards -- shall I go on?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
16:07 / 04.03.05
You can. However, it doesn't get us very far. I don't imagine my father wanted a pesticide-free vegetable throughout his entire life, before or after fatherhood. The pesticide, he would probably maintain, was the best bit.

So, you may believe I am being dismissive, but I don't see anything to dismiss. My experience, as another urban jeep pulls up at the gates of a Camden school after a half-mile journey, is that parents will happily behave in ways hideously deleterious to the environment in order to benefit their own child. I have seen what would in a childless person be mere bloodlust ascribed to some form of maternal protective instinct. Let's look at these schools. If one's own child is getting them, to what extent is it necessary that other people's children do as well? So, if you find yourself with the wherewithal to get your child private tuition, why not do that rather than embark on some lengthy campaign which may not bear fruit until long after your own child could have benefitted from it? And how do you get the funds to do that? Lower taxation, for a start. Ditto healthcare, which is, after all, why Americans have a system of health insurance rather than a national health service.

You seem to be saying that having a child makes one desire the best for all children. In my experience this is simply not true, but the idea is mooted above - the "father of the world" idea. You may believe that this is what parenthood does. I believe it may, or i tmay be the case that these things may be seen as the best way to get what is wanted for one's own child, but the benefit to other children is merely collateral. Of course, the reality is that different people respond to parenthood in different ways, and we don't have figures to support any contention either way. I would point out that people tend to move to the right, although by no means exclusively - when the things they have to lose go from being abstract - integrity, pride - to concrete - money, securities, children.
 
 
ibis the being
17:06 / 04.03.05
Thanks for responding.

You seem to be saying that having a child makes one desire the best for all children.

Not at all. I'm saying I don't think that, generally speaking, in the majority of cases, having children strongly affects the political persuasion a person had before having the kids. I.e., if someone's a social & fiscal liberal before starting a family, they're not likely to do an about-face because they now have little ones to care for. I think a much bigger factor in "turning conservative" is amassing wealth, which frequently causes a person to want to hang on to that wealth - and that the overlap of a lot of people's becoming financially secure and deciding to have kids is what's leading to your false conclusions. Americans as a whole love low taxes & have private insurance not because we're compulsive about splurging on our children, but because we're a nation of middle-class capitalists who don't trust our government to spend our money wisely - but that's getting off-topic.
 
 
grant
17:53 / 04.03.05
Mmm -- I think having children makes it a little harder to walk the walk, as far as some social issues go. It's like a comment someone made over in the self-defence thread in the Conversation.

It's one thing to defend yourself from attack, and another one to watch some other person face an attacker, and have to decide when to intercede and with how much force.

With children, there's no "when" -- you are driven to intercede as soon as possible if not before to any threat imaginable. (There's a parallel anti-drive to throttle the little creatures in their sleep, but the two drives might well be related -- too much worry, too much responsibility.)

It's not an about face as much as it is a reaction to a new pressure.
 
 
Jack Fear
16:55 / 05.03.05
Interesting sort-of parallel thread on the topic here, BTW; some good fodder there, I think.

As I consider it, I think that having kids doesn't lead inevitably to either a progressive or regressive attitude—moreso that it tends to confirm and reinforce the tendencies you had pre-children. because, really, we're talking about the same end, as approached by different means.

We all want our children to be safe and happy and prosperous; we manifestly live in a fucked-up world where those prospects are uncertain. We can choose to try to either (a) protect our children from this broken world (regressive, small-scale, me-first option), or (b) fix the world (progressive, big-picture, rising-tide-lifts-all-boats option).

I know which option I will tak, and which I think is more likely to be effective long-term—but then, I was politically progressive (for an American, at least) before I had children: but having kids makes progressivism seem a far more urgent matter for me now—just as it makes conservatism seem far more urgent to those whose politics lean that way anyhow.

Kids are funny—they hold up a mirror to us, make us acutely aware of how we've dropped the ball. My daughter said to me the other day, "I read in a magazine that within fifty years there will be no more wild gorillas or chimpanzees left." And although she didn't mean it as one, it felt like an accusation: I'd fucked up. I'd let her down.

And I thought of something that Julian Cope wrote: Our children are going to take one look at the world we've left them and they're going to kill us whilst we sleep.
 
 
Katherine
12:11 / 16.03.05
Reading what's above actually seems to prove something that a customer and I were discussing after the birth of her child.

The basics of the conversation boiled down to basically before after the forementioned sprog she could feel slightly upset by things such as the environment, government policys and so on. Not enough to do alot about it other than sign the odd petition, buy some organic food when it was on cheap etc.
But having a child where you share a bond, you see the world in a different light. No longer is it somewhere to live and use until you die but it's somewhere her flesh and blood is going to continue living, suddenly it matters about pollution, what the heck the government is signing today, and what food is being eaten. Her words were 'I clean the house so it's nice, pretty and above all safe for my child. So cleaning up the world is just another step now'
 
 
Whisky Priestess
15:13 / 16.04.05
I must echo Nina's nameless dread. It's the same sense of impending doom I get when I think seriously about the prospect even of marrying someone. Hmm, do I have commitment issues? I *know* that wanting and having a baby is not the same as having a lobotomy, but I've had a very scary encounter that almost persuaded me otherwise ... here's the story.

The Fear was compounded for me on the day after a friend's wedding when I was given a lift by some other guests - a family with young kids. For reasons I won't go into I ended up at their house for a cup of tea. A piece of lovely cello music came on the radio and the mother looked up with a dreamy expression and said "Oh, XXX's concerto in (key), I used to play this."

I quizzed her further and it turned out that before marrying and having kids she had been a music scholar and concert-level instrumentalist at Cambridge. When I asked her if she missed it she said (shivers crawl up my spine even now) "Oh, I suppose so, but everything that happened before these two (kids) just seems so unreal ..."

Run screaming? I nearly choked on my PG.

And the parasitic thing bothers me too. Let's just say that if your body wants you to produce a healthy child, why does it make you throw up and feel like shit for the first months (and sometimes the entire term) of carrying it?

I think men's and women's experiences of and attitudes towards pregnancy and birth can be radically divergent because of the level of involvement with the physical process. I know for damn sure I would not feel this aversion to child-having if I weren't obliged to be the child's host. I would be happy to donate my eggs to help childless couples, for example, even if this resulted in a child that was genetically "mine" but which I would never know. Although that's not really "having a child" at all.
 
 
Triplets
00:05 / 29.04.05
WP, in Dale Carnegie's "How To Win Friends and Influence People" he makes an important observation that 95% of the time people are thinking about themselves. Their health, their thoughts, their career, their day off etc. Narcissitic? Yep, but entirely true.

When you have kids it changes, Metroplex stylee, from "me me me" to "them them them". In work my human-pupa laden colleagues can talk of nothing else. If singleton life is narcist and mildly autistic, parental life is the polar opposite. Prolly that's where your outburst of xenopedism came from. Not saying you're a self-absorbed narcissist, though!
 
 
Nobody's girl
07:07 / 29.04.05
And the parasitic thing bothers me too.
It certainly seems weird in the abstract, but talking from current experience, I can assure you that it's not as creepy as it sounds.

"Oh, I suppose so, but everything that happened before these two (kids) just seems so unreal ..."

I've encountered that reaction before, but I reckon it's socialisation. My own mother certainly didn't let having kids get in the way of her career and aspirations.
 
  

Page: 123(4)5

 
  
Add Your Reply