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: 1(2)345

 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
08:58 / 14.02.05
Because it's natural and I like things that are natural.

Ah, well, that raises an interesting question. Tetanus is natural, as is infant mortality. Is homosexuality natural? MY survey says yes, but if having a child through the pokey-pokey-ouchy-squeezy method is *also* natural, then what's up with that?

Natural is a slippery fish at the best of times. If we say that having children is good because "natural", then how about adoption? Does adoption happen in nature? How about the nurturing of other males' children? One problem you have here is that nature is sufficiently broad that pretty much anything can be defined as "natural" if you mean by that "occurring somewhere in nature" - eating faeces, sleeping through Winter, hovering - whereas if what you mean is "natural for humans" you're struggling with the distinction between what is natural and what is artificial - so, procreation may be natural, but that ignores both the possibility that it is not natural for all - that it may be natural for some humans not to procreate themselves but to look after the offspring of others, like bonobos - and that the elements around that act of procreation are so unnatural that the act itself is no longer part of a natural continuum - so, you didn't have to bite off another man's ear to get breeding rights, your partner didn't give birth without anaesthetic or medical attention, your child was vaccinated against whooping cough, and so on.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
12:12 / 14.02.05
I have a little boy...What was the question?

Two things I can say for sure in my own case :

1. Everything I thought about what it would be like to have a dependent and the ensuing responsibilities / impact on my life BEFORE he actually arrived were proved to be utterly, laughably wrong.

2. My opinions about what it would be like to have children before having one were totally pointless, because of 1 (see above).

As regards the topic abstract, I don't really think the world has a problem with 'taking any more' children (or mosquitoes or dugongs or coelecanths for that matter), I think it can pretty much cope in its own inimitable Terra like way, and I personally find that the world is the only place there is for them, so find the question as to whether it is good or not a tad confusing. What's the alternative? Space colonies?

Although with the cheek I'm getting off mine at the moment, I sometimes think it would be a great idea.
 
 
_Boboss
14:01 / 14.02.05
we had a toddler stay for a week a week-or-two ago, put me off at the time, but it's already fading - i want to have kids, fully expect to have one before we've gone a couple of years further. it looks like a challenge, and one with a really big potential payoff. i sometimes think it's like art - artefacts are systems for holding and transmitting information, designed to create mental impressions in anyone who encounters them. the best information transmission system anyone's yet observed is the human - i want to make one of my own. (because i'm not going to be a succesful AI programmer)

personally i want to have kids bearing my own genetic stamp, for a variety of reasons, but i don't want to be too upset if it turns out i can't. it's memes and genes as someone said, but i'm not honestly sure which i think matters most. the obvious answer is memes of course, it's one's attitude that is going to leave the greatest apparent mark on society, but i feel uneasy making so clear a statement because i just have this sneaky itch that i want to be assured that me and the ancestors, or our spunk at least, is all wrapped up in a safe new autonomous package. what's that about? i dunno. i like my family, when it comes down to it - think the world would be a poorer place if there were no new versions of them (& me). got a nephew this christmas, felt moved, excited, like maybe we'd be able to teach each other a lot across the coming years. sorry, this isn't 'the heart shop' is it?

and fundamentally, there's always room for more kids because the person who figures out how to solve all the world's problems is going to have been one. (or the designer of the AI will have...)
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:20 / 14.02.05
As regards the topic abstract, I don't really think the world has a problem with 'taking any more' children (or mosquitoes or dugongs or coelecanths for that matter), I think it can pretty much cope in its own inimitable Terra like way, and I personally find that the world is the only place there is for them, so find the question as to whether it is good or not a tad confusing. What's the alternative? Space colonies?

I think I mentioned the tragedy of the commons a bit back in the thread, didn't I? Near as I Can tell, the Earth is _not_ coping in its own inimitable Terra way with the demands that are being placed on it, hence global warming, climate change, global _darkening_, and so on. So, if you want population levels to continue increasing - that is, for everyone to be able to indulge their desire to perpetuate their genetic material, or (in different ways) have somebody else's child to look after, do you also have to want everybody to change their relationship to the Earth and their impact on it? The disposable nappy (diaper) might be a good place to start this train of thought.
 
 
Salamander
14:50 / 14.02.05
Um, no. Just don't want kids, just don't need kids, just don't have any buisness having kids. The world needs quality these days, not quantitiy. There are plenty of people as I see it, and more on the way all the time. And considering the way the worlds seems headed right now, it looks kinda selfish to me for people to have kids. But I've never heard a non-selfish reason myself for having kids, so there you go. If I did have one by accident, I would raise that child as a Thelemist, like I am.
 
 
Smoothly
14:53 / 14.02.05
I'm still intrigued by this thing about passing on one's genes. For one thing, your ancestors' genes, Gumbitch, are already being passed on all over the shop. If you trace back your family tree, at some point it will collide with Sax's (won't it?), and he's passing them on for you. Okay, they might not be *exactly* your genes, but how exact do they have to be to satisfy that urge? Would one mutation in the genes of your offspring fuck that up? You're already replacing half of them with those of your mate, anyway...
I just don't get this gene thing. I'm missing something. Anyway, it seems an odd reason to perpetuate the escalating problems like the one's Haus mentions, instead of solving others (ie. children without families). Can someone explain: Why not adopt?
 
 
_Boboss
15:22 / 14.02.05
i think i expressed (rather poorly) above that it's a weird combination of passing genes and memes that accounts for this feeling. but to take your point, mine and sax's genes aren't similar in any way that's meaningful enough for me i'm afraid, and i'm pretty sure in things like genetics it's the differences that really notice, not the similarities: the added complexity is useful for reducing entropy within the wider system. i don't wish to be facetious, but i think that by that logic, dna should have stopped before it reached the slime-stage.

i guess that's why i invoked my family, who i see in this context as a set of genes and behaviours quietly doing its thing. i like it, with many minor reservations, and want echoes of it to persist: i want (ideally) my children to know the smell of my grandmother's garden in the spring, because i do, and she does, and it's lovely and seems as deserving of preservation/continuation as anything else i've ever come across. that's a chain of memory and quaint countryside sundays lasting like a hundred years - how is that not good?

i really don't know how to explain the gene thing if you're not getting it, it's kind of a 'feeling;', the sort of thing that as you're thinking of it you just know the only words you can make out of it are 'pre-verbal urge'. i tried likening it to the urge to create art again rather badly. perhaps it's like wanting to climb a mountain.

couldn't adopt really, probably, so that's that.

'the world needs quality these days' so give it your quality! though i understand your reluctance: a thelemite toddler sounds like a one-way ticket to migraine city.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
18:26 / 14.02.05
Near as I Can tell, the Earth is _not_ coping in its own inimitable Terra way with the demands that are being placed on it, hence global warming, climate change, global _darkening_, and so on.

Is this a different thread? If so, apologies and maybe we'll start a new one, but assuming its okay to indulge this within context then...

I don't really see any of the things you mentioned as threatening the planet at all. It has surely been through all of this and far worse and still managed to be a mostly very hospitable place for us and all the other living things that currently enjoy its generosity.

Global warming, climate change and darkening threaten us, and most of the other larger life forms scrabbling around on its surface. The Terra Firma couldn't care less...

The disposable nappy (diaper) might be a good place to start this train of thought.

Terry's all the way chez Money $hot. Honest!
 
 
astrojax69
20:03 / 14.02.05
And if you accept an evolutionary slant on it, you'd expect there to be an irrational drive to procreate evidenced by some people (exactly how many isn't clear from this kind of argument, but it seems to be a sizeable proportion).

l'anima, sax and others:

surely a rational or irrational decision is one based on premises that can be controlled by our rationality - ie our conscious construction - where an evolutionary slant, by definition, has to be something instinctual, something hardwired into us? our rationality can lead us to build aircraft to fly, but we can't just propel ourselves against the fact of the universe and leap from a cliff because we *want* to fly...


me? i have no kids - although inherited two in a now nine year relationship - and never really thought i felt like i wanted to have my own... that's just me : )
 
 
alas
20:37 / 14.02.05
I want to say something that may sound kind of retrograde, but maybe someone can help me say it better. Raising children--not having them--does seem to serve a developmental function that no other task--even teaching!--quite takes the place of. It moves you outside of your own head, your own space, in a way that is unlike anything else--because you have to be in charge and yet not in charge; you have to be thinking about what this child needs; you have to have all your emotional buttons pushed by a growing child who quickly knows exactly how to make you feel anger, rage, frustration, or sorrow at their will.

Many people here know that I am raising my nieces--they were 6 & 7 when they came to live with us, and really that was a wonderful thing, in so many ways. People would treat me like a saint when we did it, but I really did it for the same irrational reasons everyone here has mentioned: these were kids who needed help, who I decided needed ME, specifically, and that no one else would be quite as good. Before it was a done deal, I began to get jealous when I imagined them going to other parents. So, not very saintly, really.

I fell head over heels for them, completely in love, and when you're in love you are in that weird place where you're not sure where you stop and the other, your beloved, begins--so what is selflessness? what is selfishness? It was all mixed up for me.

Admittedly, the children look like me, and I have felt that presence of my familial DNA as something of a tug. I am not sure about that, however. The older of the two is so like my spouse, you'd think they were related, but they are not related at all, genetically.

I am fierce in my protection of them--a student who I am close to tells me he'd be scared if he wanted to date one of them.

But then it's also true that by opening out to these children, we have opened to their whole lives, their parents, their circumstances. That has been a good thing, but it is not an easy thing. I know and love people who have adopted internationally, and I understand this impulse; my friends have done it from a good place, from a wise place. I suspect Grant did so, too--everything points to it.

But I also believe that some people don't enter into with as deep a scrutiny of their own motivations as they should. There's a kind of heroic narrative that's very tempting when one is taking in another person's child.

But It's not fair to children, for one thing, to view them as needing to be "saved" from where they are from.

And I'm in despair over the fact that there are so many African American kids, so many foster kids, in the US who can't find homes, and some people will tell you they're going to China because of the perception that Asians are smart. There's a desire for an atomized child; a child whose past can be somewhat erased, or dealt with by just a few Chinese meals every year.

There is a consumerist model that lurks in the background of this experience that I think every adoptive parent must examine carefully.

I'm not opposed to international adoption, at all. I just think it's a complex undertaking, and--as a fairly massive social phenomenon, looked at on a macro-level--a little worrying.

anyone interested in a funny and gut-level honest account of adoption, and specifically open-adoption, should read Dan Savage's THE KID: OR WHAT HAPPENED WHEN MY BOYFRIEND AND I DECIDED TO GET PREGNANT. AN ADOPTION STORY. It's awesome. After going through the pain of watching the birth mother break down when they took her child away--after a couple of days of bonding and connecting--even with the prospect of regular contacts in the future, he said, basically, that it was really really hard; he and his boyfriend were in the car weeping from the experience. But they couldn't imagine not going through it--he sensed it was really important to see that pain, to feel it, and not to explain it away or pretend it's not there.

I guess I worry about adoptive parents who don't see that pain, and who have the option--whether they use it or not--of being able to pretend that someone didn't die, a little, in the process of bringing this life to them.
 
 
_Boboss
09:34 / 15.02.05
been thinking about the 'pre-verbal urge' thing i said upthread - won't do really. i think that alas has hit the head with 'developmental function' - i think that making/rearing kids is an important thing for me to do as it will, i'm sure, offer a huge change, probable widening, in my self-perspective and how i relate with others. relishing the prospect of having an outside self who i think of more than i do my own. it's about learning i suppose, a desire to observe childhood with the eyes of an adult, try to better remember how i got through my own by noting how the kids manage it.

there's also a desire to fend-off the second-childhood/ midlife-crisis thing that so many middle class males get - you have your second-childhood when you bring up your kids. if you're too busy at work for this, then you have to suffer the laughter of everyone not-impressed by the sight of men in their forties driving cars that only teenagers could like.

so this comes to some very murky 'range of human experience' thing - childmaking or rearing looks to me like one of those difficult, challenging, rewarding things that you can do - some of the tough stuff life has to throw at you which feels a thousand different ways at once but is likely to leave you in better shape by the end. the potential rewards from better understanding the processes of growth and maturation that most every hume has to go through is something i want to observe from close-up, give my input to.

this of course is selfish - i'm not convinced altruism is something that exists at all, so selfishness doesn't worry me as a source of motivation - but it's a funny kind of selfishness if there's another self that benefits even more, no?
 
 
Brigade du jour
13:57 / 15.02.05
I have noooooooo intention whatsoever of having kids at the moment, and please note that the extra 'o's on the word 'no' were meant to convey my fear, maybe a little perverted self-defeating jealousy, perhaps even some righteous anger.

Fear, because I'm scared of giving up my cosy, 'selfish' (as Jack Fear puts it) life and being forced to spend the rest of it looking after someone else: 18 or so years pretty constantly, the rest of the time just worrying about them.

Also, fear because I'd be scared I'd panic and dump the sprog quicktime before I had to assume any responsibility or anything.

Jealousy, because I look at my friends with children and wonder in the darkest, most secret cloacae of my imagination what joy and bio-cultural righteousness having children would bring. And then rebel against it by being all 'fuck that shit, I'm just me, my own person, no-one's a beautiful and unique snowflake anyway, boo sucks'. Told you it was perverted and self-defeating.

Righteous anger because I can't help feeling that it's wrong to produce more children when there are millions already alive (as opposed to what, as Haus reminds us, doesn't exist) who would benefit from what I have to offer them, be it love, nurturing, education, financial security (well not much in my case, but plenty compared to what some Sudanese orphan might expect in the near future).

I'm particularly fascinated by the sudden and definite overwhelming love for this thing that Sax describes. I can cope with the concept of this flick of a mental switch intellectually but it's hard to empathise fully because ... well, it really does seem to be one of these things you have to experience yourself, which renders my entire opinion on the subject rather uncomfortably moot.

Having said that, I'd like to take issue with the notion of selfishness so far described. It occurs to me that a childless person calling parents selfish (which I sometimes do, in my many moments of resorting to somewhat emotional language) and a parent calling a childless person selfish merely actively illustrates this very 'mental switch' by demonstrating the positions perhaps commonly held on either side of it. I was quite offended by the notion that I might be selfish for not having children (partly because it hadn't occurred to me before, I suppose) and found it faintly ridiculous on first response. However, I wonder if I would suddenly agree with it were I to become a parent?

However, I'm not saying I'll never have children ever ever ever, mainly because I don't have the moral or intellectual certainty to believe in 'never' and 'ever'. But at the moment, with my life the way it is and me the way I am, if I found out I'd got somebody pregnant, I suspect I'd shit a brick. Or even a whole house.
 
 
grant
16:12 / 15.02.05
alas: There's a kind of heroic narrative that's very tempting when one is taking in another person's child.

I really don't want to turn this into an international adoption thread (although it's tempting), but I gotta say yeah to that. On the "cool" adoption groups I'm on, that's typically referred to as "the 'rescue' thing," and is much derided. Main problem is getting it as a vibe from friends, which is something pernicious my little girl is going to be picking up on when she's just a little older. "Aw, how noble!" Fuck that.

I think this ties into the parallel discussion we're having here about selfishness. It certainly illuminates it in a dramatic way. I think there are at least two but possibly three or more definitions of "self" at play. There's the child as "self" and the parent as "self" and the community/ecosystem as "self."

So having a child is a selfish act because it's using another human being to fill a need in your own life. It's also selfish because there are limited resources to take care of all the children that have already been born.

But the role of "need" as experienced by the child in those two selfishnesses can be diametrically opposite -- children also need parents. They need affection, as well as food & water & all. So that affection transaction complicates stuff -- mutual bonding becomes mutual need becomes a self-sustaining selfishness/selflessness dynamic.
 
 
Loomis
20:06 / 15.02.05
I don't have anything particularly headshoppy to add, but I'll go on the record for the sake of the stats as saying that I have never had the slightest desire to have children and I expect to maintain that belief in the future (or have a serious problem explaining things to Ariadne).

Numerous reasons have been given above for not having them, and while many of them hold true for me, they're not preventing me from sprogging. I simply have no desire for children. I don't like the concept of kids and I don't like the actuality of kids. I've just never been one of those people that likes kids. I've never wanted that familial bond, never wanted to be able to look about me and see cherbuic grandkiddies, it's just not for me. Some people like strawberry, some like chocolate. It's just one of those things really.

I must admit to being intrigued by the notion of being obliged to propagate our species. I certainly see no moral obligation. If we were the last couple on earth, I wouldn't feel an obligation to breed. How can you have an obligation to a species? That's only a word we use to describe a group of individuals with a common trait. I'm more interested in the quality of life for each individual, and part of that involves the right to make their own choices. Survival (of a species) isn't a good in and of itself.
 
 
ibis the being
23:09 / 15.02.05
My five siblings and I span twenty-five years in age, so that I've always had young children in my immediate family. For pretty obvious reasons, then, the whole concept of family for me is about more than two people - and specifically includes raising and caring for children. I'm sure I could condition myself out of such a notion, but why would I want to? It may be a selfish desire, but only in the sense that wanting a spacious apartment, three good meals a day, a comfortable living, and - for that matter - a mate are selfish desires as well. Arguably, acquiring anything beyond minimum food intake and shelter enough not to freeze constitutes selfishness. I think that going through life fretting about using more than one's "share" of every little thing, including unborn babies, is just too unbearable (no pun intended). Call it willful ignorance - I think there is a certain amount of willful ignorance necessary to derive any kind of joy out of life, perhaps especially when it comes to children.

I do have what's probably an instinctual desire to actually carry and deliver my own child, but I don't think that instinct is the primary factor in any decision I will make about starting a family. I've asked my boyfriend about this very topic, and he's all for adoption. I'm for it - but then, I have to admit, I'm completely terrified of it. I once helped a former boss through the adoption process (editing his profile and so on), and the up-close look only increased my fear. I think I'm a somewhat possessive person, and the idea of someone someday coming out of the woodwork wanting to meet his/her biological child, my child, feels so threatening to me, though I know it's completely irrational. An open adoption is not much more appealing - I imagine myself just feeling so insecure the entire time, wondering when will my child want to leave me to be with his "real" mother?

I don't think I'll actually go through with starting a family until I've worked out some of those fears, so that I can make a more rational decision about whether or not to adopt.
 
 
alas
23:37 / 15.02.05
Adoption is a big thing. It's not small, at all. It always comes with ghosts--although some ghosts are more fully present than others.

It's interesting, to me, that it's big partly because we make it big; some cultures--particularly in "Oceania"--the south pacific, Polynesian cultures--practice adoption frequently and fairly casually. It's normal to be raised by someone other than your parents. But we have hundreds of years of taking the idea of "bloodlines" very very seriously, here. It wasn't really a formal, streamlined, legal reality in the US until the 1850s and in Britain I believe it was first codified in the 1920s. This history shapes us more than we know. And we're at a point where, socially and culturally, we haven't decided just how flexible we're willing to be with family structure--we're still pretty damn wedded to the heteronormative model of marriage, and we still treat adoption like an "as if begotten" relation. So it's normalizing and centralizing a genetic model of kinship that is distinctly socially constructed, Western.

That's why we still have so many stories of birth parents "coming out of the woodwork" . . .
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
07:22 / 16.02.05
But we have hundreds of years of taking the idea of "bloodlines" very very seriously, here.

Absolutely - children are not just little people who need love and care, they are also legal entities, and legal entities used in our society to protect the descent of property and wealth. Very important.

As another example of how this can be handled, you had a culture of adoption of male children among the wealthy in ancient Rome, where you kept your identity as a former member of the family you left, but moved into the household of your adoptive family, taking their family name but keepign the previosu family name with the addition of the suffix "an" - so, Gaius Octavius was adopted by Julius Caesar and became Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. This was driven by different social engines - the political union of families, and the need for every senatorial family to have a male heir. You could do some quite interesting things with this - for example, Clodius Pulcher got out of the senatorial class by being adopted (at the age of about 33) by a Plebeian, who was younger than he was...
 
 
alas
11:34 / 16.02.05
Clodius Pulcher got out of the senatorial class by being adopted (at the age of about 33) by a Plebeian, who was younger than he was...

So it could be a form of gay marriage?

I've been thinking a great deal about how adoption rubs up against gay marriage: see, adoption and marriage are the only two ways that two persons not related by "blood" can become relatives under anglo and american laws. So there's all this possibility of family formation suggested by these ways of legal-afiliation.

But you said "got out" of the senatorial class--did he want to get out? Or was he kicked out? What was so bad about being a senator--I mean, the interns alone are said to be very attractive and worth all the paperwork? <--pathetic attempt at headshop humor. But I am curious.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:21 / 16.02.05
Ah, well.... short version.

You take on the class of the person who adopts you. Generally, adoptor and adoptee were both senators, so this was moot, but there were examples of young men from plebeian families being adopted by patrician families and so becoming patrician themselves - because they became the heir of the patrician family, and so would have to. So, lineage was not necessarily linked to blood - in the later empire, emperors used adoption as a way to nominate their successors - and there was no point in adopting a son unless you needed a successor. For the same reason, you would adopt the elder son of the adoptee's family.

Soooo... Clodius Pulcher was one of the Claudii, one of the Patrician families, and had political ambitions. However, he queered his pitch with the senatorial stream by violating the rituals of Bona Dea - long story - and so, to pursue his political career, he plebeianised - that is, became a member of the plebeian class, and subsequently a tribune of the people. Remember, there are at this point certain jobs you can only do if you are a patrician, and others you can only do if you are a pleb. So, to become a pleb, Clodius (Clodius being the plebeian spelling of Claudius) had to be adopted, which he was by Publius Fonteius. So, it wasn't a gay marriage, but it was an adoption where resemblance to the traditional family unit was not as important as the social, political and class implications of the act of adoption.
 
 
Sekhmet
16:58 / 16.02.05
"Fostering" was an ancient tradition among the chieftains of Northern Europe as well. The Celtic and Norse tales are full of foster-sons and foster-fathers; it seems that people traded sons around a lot, to strengthen alliances and keep the noble families from becoming too insular. The foster-parents would raise the sons to adulthood, when they would then return to the house of their birth, after forming a powerful bond with the foster-house.

Not adoption, per se, but I think perhaps a similar phenomenon the Roman system?
 
 
astrojax69
19:07 / 16.02.05
on the bloodlines topic, the fact we choose to consider bloodlines important is a fascinating aspect - as an 'animal', humans, i guess, could choose to not bring up their own young (presumably where thgere was a fair likelihood of the young being brought up, somehow!), and/or bring up the offspring of others. this is not unheard-of across the animal kingdom.

it appears a biological thing the need *to* bring up our young (in the general nursery aspect of raising children, how long breast feed, keep in the home, when does it get autonomy, etc) but the social constructs in which we actually *do* bring them up seems something we, as a species, could choose to change - change our whole mindset about the progeneration of the species.

what would that do to culture?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
07:29 / 17.02.05
as an 'animal', humans, i guess, could choose to not bring up their own young (presumably where thgere was a fair likelihood of the young being brought up, somehow!), and/or bring up the offspring of others. this is not unheard-of across the animal kingdom.

It's not unheard of in the "human" kingdom, either, is it? I mean, that's what adoption is. So, at present we are having both the raising of one's own offspring and the raising of somebody else's offspring represented as "natural", in the sense that somewhere in nature it occurs... but what does that mean for us? Is it that the general desire to have children of our "own" - that is, that we have seen come out of ourselves or our partner, and which we think is probably there as a result of the insemination by the other party - is actually cultural rather than somehow "inbuilt"? That's quite a big step...
 
 
Grey Area
08:06 / 17.02.05
Urie Bronfenbrenner conducted a comparative study of parenting styles between the USSR and the USA, and found that the more socialist culture of the USSR contributed enormously to the willingness of strangers to help, discipline and generally care for a child that they encountered. In fact it was expected of adults to display affection and dispense discipline to children in need of either, regardless of their family connection. So I'd argue that there is definately a cultural aspect to our expectations of what parenthood implies, and that this will affect the built-in, instinctive desire to have children.
 
 
Sax
10:04 / 17.02.05
Is it that the general desire to have children of our "own" - that is, that we have seen come out of ourselves or our partner, and which we think is probably there as a result of the insemination by the other party - is actually cultural rather than somehow "inbuilt"? That's quite a big step...

I suppose it all depends on whether you view sexual desire as either a signal that you want to get your cock tripping/quim quivering for no other reason than pleasure, or whether it's the manifestation of a hard-wired biological functionality of species propogation.
 
 
Smoothly
10:32 / 17.02.05
I suppose the key word is 'reason'. We desire sex for the pleasure, I'd have thought, but it's pleasurable because finding sex pleasurable (and so desirable) has been well established as being evolutionarily advantageous. So isn't your question a bit like asking whether we eat because we're hungry or because we want to supply nutrients to the bloodstream?
 
 
Sax
11:34 / 17.02.05
I don't know, really. Is it a comparable analogy, given that you would have to eat to stay alive, but you wouldn't have to have sex to continue your own personal existence?
 
 
Smoothly
12:33 / 17.02.05
I suppose I'm trying to unpack what 'reason' means in this context, and comparing the reason for having sex (because it feels good or because it builds new tissue) with the reason for eating (because it feels good or because it builds new tissue). The point I was making is that sexual desire is *both* a signal that you want to get your cock tripping/quim quivering *and* the manifestation of a hard-wired biological functionality of species propogation. The former being a result of the latter.

I'm not sure that it is such a huge step to argue that the desire to raise our own (biological) children is cultural. That's why I'm ken to explore this 'pre-verbal urge' to raise one's own. People might express a preference for this because they'd feel anxious about the child wanting to find hir 'real' parents and so on, but I don't think that's anything to do with the urge that Gumbitch (for one) was getting at.
Maybe approaching it in reverse could be useful. If we can explain why one might want a relationship with one's biological parents, we (or at least I) might get closer to understanding this genetic bond. As far as I know the couple I identify as my parents are also my biological parents, but if I were to discover that they were not, I really don't think I'd (a) feel any differently about my relationship to them or (b) want to track down my biological ancestors. But that's just me. Maybe others feel differently and could articulate why it's important.
 
 
Sax
13:15 / 17.02.05
Just moving on for a moment, I found this story by Amy Raphael in last Sunday's Observer quite interesting.

Basically, she has one child and finds that people constantly ask when she's having another:

The first few times it happened I was taken by surprise. A casual conversation with a relative stranger would suddenly become deeply intimate, personally probing, shamelessly intrusive. The woman - for it was always a woman - would nod at my pram, at my month-old baby and ask: 'When are you going to have the next one?' The very first time I was stunned into silence. My daughter was tiny, with the primal cry of a newborn. My hands looked like a giant's whenever I touched her. I barely knew how to carry her around, to wash her, to make her feel safe in this world. And I was supposed to be considering the next one?

Personally, I found things the other way. Most breeders I know have one child; when we said Mrs Sax was up the duff again, people seemed surprised that we wanted another.
 
 
Smoothly
13:36 / 17.02.05
On the intrusiveness thing - nearly every woman I've known who's been pregnant has expressed dismay at other people's presumptiousness about touching the bump; that people would pretty much make free with their hands in a way that they would never dream of in other circumstances.
Makes me wonder if this taps into any kind of impression of babies as community objects. More than likely, people are just thoughtless. I friend who had breast implants said they had a similar effect. Something about the 'not-you'ness of the implanted baby/breasts that breaks tradional boundaries.

I think the 'when are you going to have the next one?' questions say more about how women are seen as either making a decision to turn their bodies over to raising children for the foreseeable future, or not. A women becomes a mother, and what do mothers do? Have babies.
 
 
Loomis
14:25 / 17.02.05
'When are you going to have the next one?'

It could also be small-talk, especially if made by someone who gets tongue-tied around new parents. Like when an employee on maternity leave comes into the office with their baby and everyone is oohing and aahing as though getting knocked up is the biggest achievement one could aspire to and they fawn all over a sleeping baby. I stand there racking my brains for something polite to say, and after a couple of minutes my only result is usually: "I'd better get back to work."
 
 
lord henry strikes back
15:04 / 17.02.05
Just to get me started, and going back to the thread summary for a moment, I do not have kids and I do not see myself wanting them. I have never felt a bond with any infant that I've spent time around. This is not to say that I'm against kids, I just don't see them as a part of my life.

However, as many people love to point out to me, I'm only 24 and "I'll see things differently when I'm a little older".
Be that as it may.

What really interests me is how people arrange their lives once they have a child. To take an example from my own family: my aunt had her first child about 5 years ago, and a second a couple of years later. On both occasions she started to leave them with child minders and return to her job as soon as she was able. I'm not accusing my aunt and uncle (who did not stop working at any point) of bad parenting, I just don't understand what would motivate someone to have children and then leave the raising to someone else.

Oh, also I'm new here (in terms of posting at least) so hello all.
 
 
lord henry strikes back
15:20 / 17.02.05
Before I get accused of sexism, I did not mean to suggest that it had to be the mother that stayed at home. If the father had choosen to take on the caring role it would have amounted to the same thing.

I'm posting from work at the moment so I have to be brief.
 
 
Smoothly
15:41 / 17.02.05
I just don't understand what would motivate someone to have children and then leave the raising to someone else.

Possibly because they had this compelling 'genetic urge', but not much of a memetic one. They would seem to be a good example of this phenomenon (which, I admit, is as alien and puzzling to me as it is to you).
(And welcome, by the way)
 
 
Olulabelle
18:28 / 17.02.05
What motivates a parent to leave a child with a carer once it's born? Well, one reason and probably the most important one is money. Lots of families can't survive on just one income and conversely, lots of families also end up consisting of only one income provider anyway. Some people (like me) are lucky because we have access to Grandmas who don't work and who are willing to take on the role of carer whilst the parent is at work, but some people have no choice but to use a paid childminder. Our society does not support single parents, and it does not support families who have chosen to have one stay-at-home parent. Lots of people would much rather stay at home and look after their children, but simply can't afford to.

Reason number two is a sense of self. It's hard to imagine how tiresome re-runs of the Teletubbies can become if you haven't been forced to watch it every day for a year. You can't comprehend how frustrating and draining eight hours of constant crying (no matter what you do) can be unless you've been there. You end up craving adult conversation, a bit of respite, however much you love your child. Indeed, cruelly, the early years are the hardest and the ones where you need outside adult influence during the day the most and yet these are the years you are traditionally supposed to not work and stay at home. Many women (I say women because this is my direct experience and the experience of fellow Mothers) find they are much better parents if they continue to pursue some part of their old life 'pre-children'. In Western society this is often our work role because we are very much defined as people by the job that we do.

When you meet new people one of the first questions you are asked is, 'What do you do?' For three years my answer to that was 'I look after my son,' which was almost invariably met with blank looks and from then on in a complete lack of interest in continuing to converse with me. Now I work and suddenly I am a 'worthy' person, someone interesting and valuable. I am no different to the person I was when I stayed at home, yet I am viewed differently and with more acceptance simply because I now 'work'.

It's unfair that society views stay-at-home parents this way, but it is sadly fact. If society was more accepting of the role then perhaps more parents would choose it if it were financially possible.

The third reason is career paths. Once a child goes to school you have most of your day free (again like me) but if you have been out of the working loop for years it's very hard to find another job. For reference, I can tell you that my current job pays me a third of the salary I earned before I had my child. Although that's partly to do with the fact it's charity funded it is, I think, true to say that I would have been very lucky to find a job that paid me my previous wage after having not worked for three years.

Working whilst your child is little, (even part time) can help with this career stagnation and given that once a child starts school most parents go back to work and remain there until they retire, it's vital to be able to get a job when you need to. I have a friend who has a degree, is highly intelligent, did a vital job and had an excellent career before she had children. She didn't work for seven years whist they were little but recently they started school and so she is back in the job market.

Now no-one will hire her. No-one. It's devastating to be in that position.

Personally, I still think the best carer for a child is of course a parent of either sex (although there is actually an argument to be made for professional childcare coupled with parental childcare if affordable) but practically this is often not possible.

That's why I detest the 'why have a kid if you only plan to leave it with someone else' line. Generally this point is only ever made by people who don't have children, have no personal experience in the matter and therefore can't understand that in most situations it's a case of needing to (for the reasons stated above) rather than a complete lack of disinterest in the child.

(Apologies for suddenly appearing in this thread BTW. I have read it all, but I only discovered it a couple of days ago.)
 
 
Smoothly
19:04 / 17.02.05
There are clearly lots of good reasons why one might leave a child with a carer, like you say. But I think what lord henry was asking was why have children if you're going to have to leave a majority of the raising to someone else. Which is a different question.
To be honest, this is something I associate more with fathers. There are lots of men who seem very keen to father children, but then do take very little interest in them when they're born. See Wife Swap etc for details.
 
  

Page: 1(2)345

 
  
Add Your Reply