Toward a Childfree Identity

[naamah_darling]

A friend, who has asked to remain anonymous for fear of leg-biting, poses a question about being childfree. It's a legitimate one that I have been asked before, but never seen answered. (And no, dear anonymous reader, I don't find the question offensive. I'm actually glad you asked.)

"I've been wondering why it's necessary to have the label.

Comments

[naamah_darling]

Ah, I reserve breeder for blantantly horrible parents.

Actually, no. I've pretty much stopped using it, because it's just not accurate to me. It has nothing to do with whether you've had kids, and everything to do with whether you're an asshole. Right? So when I see a horrible parent, they're just that -- a horrible parent. "Breeder" could mean anyone who's bred, and some people use it to mean anyone who's heterosexual. So there you go. I prefer to be very specific in my language. :)

(Although I am hard pressed NOT to call people who have, ahem, SEVENTEEN OH MY GOD CHILDREN "breeders." Because, damn, that's about all they DO.)

And OH DEAR GOT THE PAIN of people who have a baby to make things all better in their marriage. Have these people never grokked the simple fact that babies are HELL on marriages? Good fucking lord. Have they NEVER been around a baby for more than two hours?

And yes, if you want someone to love, get a needy puppy or something, or do a good deed for some poor folks or some old folks or some disadvantaged kids or something. Volunteer work is great, and very fulfilling. Bang. You're loved and needed, and these people won't grow up to crash your car and steal money out of your wallet while you sleep and give you grey hairs when they come down with a fever of 104 degrees at midnight on a Friday.

The only reason you should become a parent is because you want to become the lifetime caretaker of a real-live human being who is going to outlive you. That is a HUGE DEAL. And people who go into it thinking it's going to be fun are just . . . god, I feel so sorry for them, and their kids! Because if having a kid ISN'T hard work . . . umm . . . are you doing it right? *lol*

I'd hear people say intelligent people have an obligation to breed, and it drives me nuts because I don't completely disagree. See, to be honest, I'm not sure how that's going to play out over the next ten generations or whatever. I don't think we'll wind up massively stupider than we are already, but I just don't know. I could see that. Don't think it's likely, and I don't think it'd be a huge change, but I could see it maybe happening. And good lord . . . if that were true . . . that's horrible.

But even if it were going to happen and I knew it, well, fuck the human race, then. Because that is how badly I do not want to be a parent. And people who don't want to do it make shitty parents no matter how smart they are. I'm smart, but oh GOD, I'd be a crappy mother. I have already deemed my faulty genes as not worth salvaging through egg donation, and the process is too Byzantine and probably dangerous for me to want to fool with anyway. Sigh. It's a good idea for other folks to consider, though, and I know that many do.

Thankfully, I know lots of very smart people who have kids, and I know that lots of stupid people have perfectly serviceable children who grow up to rise above the misfortune of their origins (I've got LOTS of friends like this). I don't think that the race is fucked. Especially given that most smart folks have siblings to pass on the same genes for them. Thank all the powers that be, my sister has three.

[pixxelpuss]

See, I don't want full-time kids, but I'd like (to steal a term from else-thread) rentals. I don't even think I'd hate the incubation process that much. But T & I are all smart and funny and liberal. I feel like those are good genes to put out there. And many of my friends are similar. Maybe we should have a smart people communal children kibbutz. Where some of us have kids and they get raised by the community, and possibly a hired nanny.

Seriously, though? The more developmental psych class I take, the less I want kids.

[naamah_darling]

In all honesty, seriously, if I had an extended network of help that would assist me in child care, I would be much more interested in the idea of having kids. I mean, I still wouldn't, but I would at least have really considered it at some point before I decided that it would be not only bad for me and the kid, but logistically impossible for me to manage with sanity intact.

Modern life is superior in most ways. One of the ways it fails is in the absence of a large family/clan structure to provide support to mothers and children.

[achanchinou]

What Naamah said - the idea of a community of like minded folks to help with the kids... YES! I'd jump on that. I would, in part, like to reproduce, but I know my limits mentally and physically and I would NOT be the worlds #1 best parent - I simply can't hack it. There's also the fact that for the most part, kids annoy the piss out of me. Usualy they're the ones raised by bad parents, but still. I would wind up hating myself if my kids turned out like that.

Maybe we should coin a new term, and use it as the start of forming a commune somewhere where those who are inclied to do the incubation and those who are inclined to be part time parents can like. Make that happen or something. Wouldn't be the first time.

[achanchinou]

I'd hear people say intelligent people have an obligation to breed, and it drives me nuts because I don't completely disagree.

Yeah, that's where the fine line of almost insult comes when I talk to childfree people. I almost never say what I said above - and I would never go so far as to say anyone has an obligation to breed, that'd be like... "assholier than thou" attitude to the extreme. But it may be a valid point. There are people who're sure that we have, overall, gotten stupider in the last ten generations. And there are people who're sure we've just got a lot more subject matter to go over, and so we can't all be as apparently smart as we were in general because we know less about more. (does that make sense)

So there's no telling. There's a lot of people that I know of that I'd like to see have children who turn out much like them, because those people aren't going to be around forever, most likely. If raised properly, the child(ren) will at least retain a sense of who the parent was, and if raised proplerly the child(ren) will be one less bumbling sheediot in the masses.

I myself am not a parent. I'll be 28 in April. I cannot decide if I am Childfree or if I am merely disinclined to do the work. Sometimes I catch myself wanting children, most times I find that I'm not only unwilling but appalled by the idea. So I don't label myself, I just say when asked that I'm holding out for an option better for me than just straight up Childfree.

[naamah_darling]

Knowing less about more is a good way of putting it. I think this may have a lot to do with it.

It's nice. A lot of the smart people I know do have kids, more than one. So I feel good about our odds. And that's all I need to worry about, isn't it? Feeling good about the future I will not see.

I don't have to worry about the world my kids will live in.

Thank goodness.