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Think Before Babies

Jill

The headline of this article is absolutely atrocious, but since writers rarely write their own headlines, let’s ignore it and look at the substance of the piece, which is quite good:

As a young woman in my 20s I pondered whether or not to have children. Is there a way, I wondered, to decide thoughtfully rather than carelessly about this most momentous of human choices?
…
In fact, people are still expected to provide reasons not to have children, but no reasons are required to have them. It’s assumed that if individuals do not have children it is because they are infertile, too selfish or have just not yet gotten around to it. In any case, they owe their interlocutor an explanation. On the other hand, no one says to the proud parents of a newborn, Why did you choose to have that child? What are your reasons? The choice to procreate is not regarded as needing any thought or justification.

The question of whether or not to reproduce is an ethical one, and one that should be thought through carefully. When having kids is just what people do, it’s not a great system for children, for women or for families. And I don’t mean that people thoughtlessly/accidentally get pregnant and then decide to continue the pregnancy; I mean that childbearing is the assumed life path in American society, and a whole lot of folks don’t take a step back to consider whether they really want kids or whether having kids is just such an ingrained assumption about what a family is that they go with it.

77 thoughts on Think Before Babies

  1. I find the tone of her article kind of insulting – of course she, paragon of intellectualism, thought long and hard about the ethics of her decision to have two children. But the existence of the Duggars and Natalie Suleman tell her that most people don’t give it a second thought. Most people take on parenthood blindly without any consideration given to their ability to parent well, or what their decision might cost the world. Barf. She’s not the only one who’s ever thought this through. Some people think about the world and their place in it, and others don’t. It doesn’t mean we should all run around demanding that new parents justify their decision to breed. (Just as nobody should second guess anyone’s decision not to become a parent.)

  2. I’ve always thought that having kids should be more of an opt-in thing than an opt-out one; the default should be that you don’t unless you have a reason to.

  3. The existence of the Duggars and Ms. Suleman does not, in fact, argue that people have children without forethought.

    The Duggars have built an entire lifestyle around their choice to have as large a family as they can. Ms. Suleman fought for the right to conceive and carry her octuplets. We may disagree with these people’s choices, but we cannot say that they undertook them without any consideration; rather, the Duggars and Ms. Suleman seem to be very, very strongly interested in having children, and willing to endure hardship to achieve their desire.

    This is *not* the same thing as “Well, I just kind of never thought about it… having kids was just what I expected I’d do.” If you want something badly enough to center your lifestyle around it, if you want something badly enough to endanger your health deliberately and with forethought for it, then you are not doing it because you never really thought about it; you’re doing it because you want to, very, very badly. It doesn’t matter if common sense and logic suggests that probably you shouldn’t; it still indicates a level of thought and focus that probably borders on obsessive, rather than a lack of forethought or consideration of the subject.

    I do agree that there are plenty of women in the world who just had kids because that’s what people do, without really considering whether they want to be mothers or not. But that is not even remotely an accurate description of either Ms. Duggar or Ms. Suleman. And to misidentify people who have such an obsessive interest in babies that they are threatening their own health or the health of said babies as people who didn’t really think about it much is such a grievous mistake that it tarnishes the entire argument.

    If you wanted to make the argument that our culture is obsessed with babies and puts a high premium on them, to the point where some people become irrational with their desire to have more and more babies, then Suleman and the Duggars might be of value to your point. But if that were the case, then you couldn’t argue that people have kids without thinking about it any more than you can argue that people become bankers without thinking about getting rich. If your culture says that something is enormously valuable, of *course* you’re going to work really hard to get it. Because you want it. Because it’s valuable.

    The truth is, though, we’re a lot more ambivalent about children in this society. We mix reverence and contempt in our attitudes towards babies and children, and toward their mothers. We don’t have a society where babies are such an unequivocal and powerful good that it explains people like the Duggars… which is why we think they’re weird. We have a society where it’s just kind of understood that babies are what you do when you’re a grownup, but we don’t really put a high value on having them, and they are, objectively, difficult to deal with, so people who do put some thought into it often come to the conclusion that they’re not worth it… however, that does not mean that everyone who has put thought into it has come to the same conclusion.

    (There may be some confusion here between the concept of making irrational choices out of emotional desire, and making choices based on no particularly strong desire one way or the other, and conflating both of them with the concept “give no thought.” Thought does not need to be rational; *all* decisions are made on an emotional basis, because we must use our emotions to weigh our values and then come to a conclusion that, we’re hoping, maximizes the value, based on our understanding of what’s valuable. People who made a bad decision because they wanted something very, very much are *not* people who just drifted into a decision without thinking about it. You cannot conflate the two.)

  4. On the other hand, no one says to the proud parents of a newborn, Why did you choose to have that child? What are your reasons?

    Even more interestingly, asking this question – even in the most casual fashion, as in “…and that’s why I don’t want to reproduce. So what was your thought process when you decided to have children?” is usually seen as an incredibly rude thing to do and I’ve had people react really badly to it. As if the choice is so sacrosanct that it can’t possibly have, like, a reason or anything.

    The response seems, in fact, eerily similar to “so when did you know you were straight?” >.> Although that might be anecdotal evidence.

  5. I have to say, I agree with all three of the comments that I can see. On the one hand, I think it is incredibly important that young people, particularly women, have models for adult lives that do not involve having children, so that they can make a good choice. On the other hand…what a smug, self-righteous tone this writer takes. I mean, look at the opening sentences:

    As a young woman in my 20s I pondered whether or not to have children. Is there a way, I wondered, to decide thoughtfully rather than carelessly about this most momentous of human choices?

    No. There’s no way, and not only is there no way, white woman in her 20s, but you, yes, you, are the first and only person to have pondered the issue! Thank goodness for you!

    And then the whole thing about the “burden of justification” being on those who choose to have children. So the solution isn’t to get people to mind their own business about other people’s life choices, but just to change whose business gets minded? Bullshit.

    I also think she radically misinterprets the quotation from the novelist that she says she is writing against. The novelist compares having a child to writing, and says “you just need to.” That’s not a decision based on whimsy or why not-ness or everybody-else-does-it, as this writer seems to suggest. It’s a decision made because you would be radically unhappy if you didn’t do it.

    Which I pretty much think is the only justification for having children. I have yet to hear of somebody who wanted to have children desperately, and then decided not to for ethical reasons, and all the ethical reasons in the world wouldn’t make it right for someone who didn’t want a child to have one. So I pretty much think the ethical dimensions are a sideshow.

  6. Lol. Wow! I just read that article this morning before I ever came onto feministe. Cool.

    I personally dislike that she frowns on other people choices to have X amount of kids. But as with her citation of ‘octomom’ I can understand that if the living condition of the children is horrid then maybe it’s not a great thing to have chosen to have all of those children. Not that anyone else should ever get to weigh in on someones decision to have a baby or babies.

    Otherwise I agree with her reasoning on actually thinking about it before just deciding to have a kid or few.

  7. Even more interestingly, asking this question – even in the most casual fashion, as in “…and that’s why I don’t want to reproduce. So what was your thought process when you decided to have children?” is usually seen as an incredibly rude thing to do and I’ve had people react really badly to it.

    That’s an interesting question. My wife and I thought long and hard about when we wanted to have a baby (short answer: when supporting one became managable), and how we would manage our baby’s child care, but I don’t really think we ever discussed why or if we wanted a kid. And even now, with our baby due this fall, I can’t articulate a great reason for why we wanted one. It was something we both always “just knew” we wanted some day. I guessed I assumed that most of my friends and relatives who don’t want kids are the same way (that is, they “just know” they don’t want kids) but I’m sure some of that is me projecting.

  8. For me it is quite like marriage. My husband and I had each vaguely imagined we would be married some day, we did not actively seek it until we met one another. I wanted to marry HIM, he wanted to marry ME. Similarly, until I met my husband, I thought of having babies as this vague future thing I would probably do and even though I planned to ensure my career would survive it, I rarely thought about specifics of actual parenting. Now I actively want children, but only OUR children, WITH him – even though I know there are no guarantees what they will be like, how/when we will come by them, or whether we will be the kind of parents we imagine. But I do now at least imagine, and I didn’t before.

  9. And now that I can see Alara’s comment, I agree with her as well. Not making the same decision I would make is not the same thing as not having thought through a decision.

  10. I don’t know about this article at all. Though I agree that people should think before making any monumental life changing decision, even that is not universal as there are people who don’t think before leaping into things, and I don’t know of any data which says over-analyzers like myself come up with better results than people who go with their gut. Also, to use Octo-mom and Ms. Duggar as examples is utterly ridiculous, not only because they are atypical outliers, but also because they both did think before they had their multiple children. They both had a reason for having the number of children (Octo-mom- to become famous, Jaycee Duggar- to follow that religion of hers.)

  11. some things just shouldnt be held up to the yardstick of “reasonable-ness”—and i think parenthood is one of them

    @EG—i am a big fan of ppl minding their own business—unfortunately that attitude is in short supply

  12. They both had a reason for having the number of children (Octo-mom- to become famous, Jaycee Duggar- to follow that religion of hers.)

    The Duggar Mom is named Michelle. Jaycee Dugard did not have any choice in giving birth to the two daughters who were the products of repeated sexual assaults.

    I know this was purely an honest and innocent memory lapse/typo, but it made my blood run cold.

  13. I agree with Alara’s analysis. Frankly, if the writer is a professional philosopher her messy thinking is a bit of a concern.

    Maternal, or paternal desire can be extremely strong. Would the writer think it’s ok to judge someone for having a child if the ethical consideration came out at “not ok”? It would be easy for her to say, if her analysis came out to the exact number she wanted anyway.

  14. Some people claim that the mere fact that our offspring will probably be happy gives us ample reason to procreate.

    She demolishes this justification easily, but it’s kind of a straw man. Because I’ve known a lot of people who’ve had children, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone give this as a reason to do so. Most people I know have made no such assumption about their children’s future happiness, and have completely understood — and worried about the fact — that there are no guarantees.

  15. There’s definitely, for me, this feeling that I always thought I was going to have children, in the same way I always thought I was going to grow up and someday die. So, to deviate from my life-path, I have to justify it to myself. I grew up in a family filled with children, where women had children young, and I always assumed that’s how life happened. And everyone had fairly good, happy lives so it didn’t really occur to me until my late teens that I didn’t have to do what they did, and it was all normal and fine. Luckily, my family pretty much accepts whatever happens, so I have almost no pressure to have kids (I just get the question, and then they accept the answer of “no” and are perfectly pleasant about it).

    I would argue that there’s something very, very good about a blithe assumption that you’re going to have children. Some of the most frighteningly neurotic parents I’ve ever seen seem to be under the impression they’re doing something HUGE and NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE and they’re not sure they’re going to make it… even though many other people have done for hundreds of thousands of years without behaving like this. They put too much thought into having kids. They act like a kid who won’t eat broccoli is some kind of huge, despairing issue instead of a thing that merely happens.

  16. That seems to me to usually be an effect of not having spent much time with babies and/or children, not of thinking through the decision to have kids.

  17. Hmm. I wonder who would be pressured the most to “reconsider” having children? The undesirables no?

    The poor, uneducated, minorities, women with health issues and/or genetic diseases.

    Why does this sound soooooooo familiar….

  18. Some of the most frighteningly neurotic parents I’ve ever seen seem to be under the impression they’re doing something HUGE and NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE and they’re not sure they’re going to make it… even though many other people have done for hundreds of thousands of years without behaving like this.

    Not necessarily. Child development/childhood as a discrete stage and nonviolent parenting are “new” ideas. There is no longer a social expectation that one will beat their children or that children will act like miniature adults. I can’t speak for nonwhite cultures, though. Perhaps their histories of childrearing are less brutal, hamhanded and domineering than those of my British ancestors’.

  19. Child development/childhood as a discrete stage and nonviolent parenting are “new” ideas.

    Nonviolent parenting is a relatively new idea (sort of, as a movement, with exceptions for individuals, of course), but childhood as a separate stage from adulthood is not. While the Aries hypothesis has made its way into pop culture, I don’t know a single scholar of childhood or of pre-modern cultures who agrees with it. Certainly previous conceptions of childhood were very different from ours, but just as certainly those conceptions understood a difference between childhood and adulthood.

  20. That kind of sets up a false dichotomy. We can practice “modern” gentle parenting without being “neurotic” about it.

  21. some things just shouldnt be held up to the yardstick of “reasonable-ness”—and i think parenthood is one of them

    Gonna have to strongly disagree with you on that one. Children, being people, must be reasonably cared for; unfortunately that means that parenthood (our main means of caring for children) has to be held up to the “yardstick of reasonableness.” That’s why I’m okay with laws about what you can and cannot do to your child, for example, if you wish to keep them. (And yes, I know, the implementation of those laws often sucks, but the theory is good.)

  22. That kind of sets up a false dichotomy. We can practice “modern” gentle parenting without being “neurotic” about it.

    Of course we can. I was taking issue with the implication that all of the “newness” that modern era parents feel is an illusion. Some of it is an illusion, but we can’t chalk it all up to navel-gazing and neurosis. Maybe I have a chip on my shoulder.

    1. @kungfulola. For sure. I definitely feel that while parenting itself is not “new” the way of parenting I am learning and trying to implement is different to the way many of us were raised. It takes constant conscious effort for me to overcome how I was raised. Much better than just winging it though.

  23. Some of the most frighteningly neurotic parents I’ve ever seen seem to be under the impression they’re doing something HUGE and NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE and they’re not sure they’re going to make it…

    Karak, as a relatively new stepmom, I have to say that whether or not something is objectively NEW and NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE doesn’t really weigh in on how it feels to an individual person, particularly someone like me, who’s trying to build a good parenting style from scratch after 20-odd years of massive emotional abuse. You’re damn right I feel exactly like that – because my parents were the best models of parenthood I ever saw and they were in many ways fairly awful parents. Certainly not healthy ones. And I really don’t want to perpetuate that to my daughter, particularly since, as someone who ardently doesn’t want to reproduce, this is the only one I’m ever going to have.

  25. @Azalea,

    Yeah, remember every ZOMG OVERPOPULATION thread in the history of the internet? Exactly like that. It’s fucking tiring, trying to introduce the incredibly complex idea that “it’s a resource problem, not a people problem, so to centre it on marginalised populations is raging bullshit” to most people’s brains.

  26. The Duggar Mom is named Michelle. Jaycee Dugard did not have any choice in giving birth to the two daughters who were the products of repeated sexual assaults.

    I know this was purely an honest and innocent memory lapse/typo, but it made my blood run cold.

    Arrrgh, I just shivered myself. Normally I’m proud of my ignorance of popular culture but sometimes it lets me down in conversation.

  27. On the other hand, no one says to the proud parents of a newborn, Why did you choose to have that child? What are your reasons? The choice to procreate is not regarded as needing any thought or justification.

    For married, straight, TAB, white parents, perhaps? A lot of people are expected to justify their decisions to reproduce. Unmarried black parents, for example. People with disabilities.

  28. The choice to procreate is not regarded as needing any thought or justification.

    Unless you’re poor. Or young. Or single. Or young and poor, poor and single, young poor and single…. Then you’d better explain yourself, little missy. Because you’re obviously too young/ poor/ desperate(single) to making such a big life choice rationally.

  30. The term, “Octomom,” is misogynist and dehumanizing. I would encourage feminists not to use it, nor to exclaim about how AWFUL Ms. Suleman’s children’s lives are, unless said feminists have personally witnessed atrocious living conditions.

    Also, having children is a hard decision to make “rationally,” because you cannot possibly have all the facts before you make the decision.

    As for sneering at parents who see child-rearing as something that is NEW and NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE: well, it hasn’t, not by them. So it is pretty amazing and scary.

    Finally, regarding parents never being asked why they had a child? Of course they are asked, especially if they have more than two children or are non-white or unmarried or lesbian or gay or trans-gendered or transsexual. Or too old or too young.

  31. As far as to why I had my daughter, she was conceived via birth control failure. I chose to continue the pregnancy for reasons that are extremely difficult to quantify, and frankly aren’t really anyone’s business. I think there does need to be room for women who choose to continue pregnancies and who choose to become parents despite birth control failures because we do exist. To say that every pregnancy ought to be intentional really erases much of reality due to the simple fact that birth control can and does fail, and the children who exist because of that fact aren’t all shameful burdens, and the women who choose to keep their children doing their children some sort of ill service.

    TL;DR. Life is messy, not all pregnancies that are carried to term were planned, that is likely always going to be the case. And this article chaps my hide because the author didn’t account for that fact.

  33. @shfree – Is it mutually exclusive to say that you became a parent after deliberation and careful thought, and to say that you became pregnant by mistake? Only the most fervent pro-lifer would say that you were a parent the moment you conceived; most would say it was still only a potential parenthood. You may have been making the decision under pressure – 12-20 weeks instead of say, 12-20 years – but in your words, you “chose to continue the pregnancy”. As an intelligent person, you were capable of making a good and informed choice against the clock. I don’t think the article’s tone precludes the idea that other women do the same.

  34. Author is somewhat hilarious, yes. “SOME people are just so THOUGHTLESS about having children, while *I*, on the other hand, entertained a number of COMPLEX THINKY THOUGHTS on the issue, and decided that…” *snore* Was her experience of having and raising children perhaps more profound as the result? More useful to society at large? I frankly don’t know how anyone can go through the process – and all of the physiological aspects that go along with it (and I don’t just mean pregnancy) – and then reduce it to a kind of philosophical exercise.

    Wanting to a have a child is like wanting to have a child – that’s the trouble. It’s hard to compare it to anything else, so coming up with the “right” reason for doing it is pretty damn hard. This is a process that involves the intellect, the body, the soul (assuming you believe in one), it’s emotional and physical, and denying that it has an irrational component – or that the irrational component simply doesn’t play a significant part if you happen to live in a developed nation – is silly.

    I also strongly disagree with the idea that “no one ever asks you why you’ve had that child.” Are. You. Kidding. Me. I’m routinely told that as someone with a significant amount of student debt, I should have been “barred” from having a child, or at least I should have acted “less stupid” when it came to having a child, or, hey, that I should, at the very least, have the child “taken away for his own good.” People who went to school in the 80’s, and had grants see them all the way through have bragged to me about how they owned their home and car before they had a child, how they were in perfect health, how they had “loving and caring” grandparents to fall back on – meaning that they deserved their kids, while my husband and I don’t deserve our son. Apparently, I “should have aborted” the second it became obvious that we were going to lose the family home and that my back problems had gotten severe. There are Nice Folk™ out there who get invoked every time that someone who’s not of the same economic bracket (or the same color, creed, religion, etc.) dares to pass their genetic material on (or dares to decide that they’re “good enough” to adopt, etc.).

    In general, procreation seems to work a helluva a lot better when women are given control over their bodies – and not expected to, say, produce eight kids to work the family farm. You can’t divorce this from issues of poverty, sustainability, womens’ rights, workers’ rights, and a more egalitarian society. Nadya Suleman’s decision to give birth to octuplets is a red fucking herring.

  35. Oh for Petes sakes! I’ve been repeatedly asked what on earth possessed me to have a child. And when I tell people birth control failure I get questioned about why I didn’t abort. You want to hear my justifications you’d better be prepared to listen to my entire life story and all the details I considered before I settled on not adopting my daughter out. And if I had chosen to have another child, the shaming and disapproval would really have hit full force. But society kindly allows me one mistake. We’ll just disregard the fact that it wasn’t my mistake.

    You know, higher education isn’t all that reversible either. Its not like I could do two years, change my mind and then someone else pays the loan back. If I change my mind I have to accept that I will be paying back a loan while working at a low paying job. People go for higher education all the time, and realizing that this isn’t the right path also happens all the time. And it affects the family and society at large too (especially if you default on loan repayments). So why do it? Well, because it gives you a deep satifaction with life. Or because striving for that goal forces you to stretch your capabilities and limitations, to grow as a person.

    And once again, this kind of article sets up a pecking order of “right reasons” to have children. And that kind of thinking isn’t based so much on ethics as it is morality or desirability of the potential parent. Whether or not to have children is based very much on emotion. Perhaps the question is more about when should you have children and a realization that wealth (or a partner, or whatever it is western society touts is mandatory before having kids) plays a smaller part than you might think. Kids need love, guidence food and shelter with enough left over to be generous with them. And if children learn that when times get tough the larger community is willing to help they learn to trust others. And if they learn to help their community when they see a need they learn they are valuable and they learn about compassion.

    They way we talk about parenting today you’re left thinking that children from every generation prior was raised by monsters.

  36. It’s really not just the headline of the article that is atrocious “breeding”? Really? “Breed” is a dog-whistle for hatred of people who have children, and hatred of those children.

    @Natalia, I once had two feminists tell me I should have aborted my babies once I found out they were male, and one of them even advocated killing them now that they’re here. Yes, they were extreme, violent views – but “nobody ever asks why you had that child”? HA. So I hear you, and I relate.

  37. … I once had two feminists tell me I should have aborted my babies once I found out they were male, and one of them even advocated killing them now that they’re here. Yes, they were extreme, violent views – but “nobody ever asks why you had that child”? HA. So I hear you, and I relate.

    W.T. actual F.? Tinfoil, what kind of company do you keep? One of your friends actually suggested you murder your son? You do know this is not typical behavior among feminists?

  38. Wait – is the author actually trying to use two dramatic outliers, Suleman and the Duggar family, as some kind of proof of that, what, people aren’t having children “responsibly”?

    Seriously, this article is just a baby step away from a rant of “people should have to take a test to have children.” Cause everyone is an idiot, right? (Except you, of course.)

    Oh, and no one asks people why they have kids? Tell that to my 19-year-old sister and her 2-year-old daughter. Or even my 27-year-old sister and her 3-year-old son. (No one ever asks my 30-year-old brother about his two daughters, though..)

    The fact is, women are expected to justify EVERYTHING about their lives. Don’t have kids? WHY. Have kids? WHY. The public needs to know RIGHT NOW. Unless a woman is safe inside a heterosexual, middle-class marriage, she’s never free from scrutiny about her life. And even then, she’ll just get questions from the other side of the fence – “did you go to school?” “why not?” “why aren’t you using your education?” “why aren’t you working?” “why aren’t you a stay-at-home mom?”

    Women with children are no more free from the persistent clamoring of public approval than are women without children. Though I don’t have children myself, I know enough people with children to know that it doesn’t matter which side of the fence you’re on, you just can’t win.

  39. Natalia, I once had two feminists tell me I should have aborted my babies once I found out they were male

    o_O Tinfoil, wtf, seriously? I am so sorry that happened to you. What the hell kind of psychotic were they?

  40. Perhaps the question is more about when should you have children and a realization that wealth (or a partner, or whatever it is western society touts is mandatory before having kids) plays a smaller part than you might think.

    Amen.

  41. o_O Tinfoil, wtf, seriously? I am so sorry that happened to you. What the hell kind of psychotic were they?

    There are entire threads devoted to that topic on GenderTrender (one of the anti-trans so-called radical feminist websites), bemoaning the fact that there aren’t enough brave midwives willing to smother boy babies at birth.

  42. There are entire threads devoted to that topic on GenderTrender (one of the anti-trans so-called radical feminist websites), bemoaning the fact that there aren’t enough brave midwives willing to smother boy babies at birth.

    What

    No

    Seriously

    What

  44. I don’t get the reaction to this article. You should think before you buy a car, buy a house, take a vacation, get major surgery, get married….all of which pale in economic, environmental and personal significance to having a child.

    Yet to say “think before you have a child” is somehow alienating, wrong or offensive?

    Yes, I understand that a pregnancy can be the result of factors beyond your control, including birth control failure and sexual assault. However, getting into a car accident or being physically attacked may put you in the hospital, but no one would say you shouldn’t think about the procedures to deal with the consequences of that or your subsequent life choices.

    If everyone takes the blithe attitude that you shouldn’t be obliged to at least stop and think about the consequences of having kids, then….well, hurrah for a depleted planet!!

  45. This is one of the most arrogant pseudo-intellectual half-philosophizing takes on this subject.

    The author sounds actually superior.

    Get off it. Having kids may be an ethical question, but all people ask these questions all the time. Many people don’t think that much before buying a house or taking a job – let alone having kids. Get the hell out of their lives: Your superior attitude and intellectual pretentiousness has no place judging a single individual making any choice about when it comes to creating a family.

    Making babies is a biological imperative about which no other human being has the right or place to say so much as squat.

    There are all kinds of things you can say about it – but the tone of this article, as well as its approach, is filled with blazing contempt for the “others”.

    Get off it. Really, seriously, it has to be said: Get over yourself.

    Well-said by another commenter:
    :

    On the other hand…what a smug, self-righteous tone this writer takes. I mean, look at the opening sentences:

    As a young woman in my 20s I pondered whether or not to have children. Is there a way, I wondered, to decide thoughtfully rather than carelessly about this most momentous of human choices?

    No. There’s no way, and not only is there no way, white woman in her 20s, but you, yes, you, are the first and only person to have pondered the issue! Thank goodness for you!

    And then the whole thing about the “burden of justification” being on those who choose to have children. So the solution isn’t to get people to mind their own business about other people’s life choices, but just to change whose business gets minded? Bullshit.

    I also think she radically misinterprets the quotation from the novelist that she says she is writing against. The novelist compares having a child to writing, and says “you just need to.” That’s not a decision based on whimsy or why not-ness or everybody-else-does-it, as this writer seems to suggest. It’s a decision made because you would be radically unhappy if you didn’t do it.

    Which I pretty much think is the only justification for having children. I have yet to hear of somebody who wanted to have children desperately, and then decided not to for ethical reasons, and all the ethical reasons in the world wouldn’t make it right for someone who didn’t want a child to have one. So I pretty much think the ethical dimensions are a sideshow.

    THIS.

    High horse: Get off.

  46. the fact that there aren’t enough brave midwives willing to smother boy babies at birth.

    Wait, so does this mean there are at least some midwives doing this??

  47. Hmm.

    Well, this article was published in the NYT, so OF COURSE it assumes a default white, middle-class point of view (and really, a well educated and upper middle-class point of view). I sometimes feel like NYT opinion articles about women (and the whole of Sunday Styles) would be a lot more reasonable if every article were preceded by, FROM MY WHITE PERSPECTIVE…

    Okay, I’ll stop snarking.

    I didn’t think it’s a terrible article, because parenting (how you do it, even more than whether you do it) is of course an ethical decision, EVEN IF the desire to parent is in many people so strongly and instinctively felt that figuring out where it came from is near impossible. I date knowing I wanted children to being eight years old, sitting by my mother’s side as she read a book aloud to my brother and me. I remember thinking, “I want to have my kid be as happy as I am right now,” and ever after I knew I wanted babies (though I’d loved nursing baby dolls ever since my brother was brought home from the hospital).

    Now, I have a diagnosis of a severe mental illness, and the history of a long and traumatic adolescence and young adulthood behind me. I’ve done family trees, and more than half the people on those trees have been diagnosed with a mood disorder of some kind; everyone in my nuclear family has one. This knowledge is chilling to me: I desperately want to be a mother, but I also do not want to raise a child only to watch them sicken in the mind, knowing that it was my genes that gave them the propensity to such a horrible disease.

    So, yes, when I get to the point where I’d want to have babies (financially independent, etc) it will be a SERIOUS ethical consideration for me whether to reproduce. Can I give my child a good life? Is the risk of passing on my illness so severe that I should not have a biological child, but find another way to parent or help to raise children?

    And yes, it’s true that society puts a helluva lot of pressure on ‘undesirables’ not to reproduce. The author thinks that’s wrong, I think that’s wrong, we all think that’s wrong – but that doesn’t mean that we all don’t have an obligation to consider whether or not to have and raise a child, whatever the pressures upon us, for or against child rearing, may be.

  48. I can’t engage with that piece seriously.

    Access to reproductive health care is NOT increasing – and particularly not in the US. That assertion indicates WHATISTHISICANTEVEN levels of privilege and/or ignorance. That’s even BEFORE you get to the realities for people outside the US/UK/EU or people who are otherwise marginalized .

    The “nobody questions your choice to have a baby” was just ridiculous. Thankfully, it’s been ridiculed already.

    The premise sits right on top of the “Stupid hos can’t keep their legs closed” P2K script. Really? Some significant proportion of people don’t give serious thought to being pregnant and or having children? Or is it just that they aren’t thinking the *right kinds* of thoughts? I mean, I might agree with the idea that many people don’t really unpack what is underneath child having and rearing expectations. But hell, the author didn’t even do it, as evidenced by her buy in to misogynist, classist, and racist memes.

    Until there is functional reproductive choice for everyone, the *ethics* (ahem) of an individual pregnancy is a DISTANT concern. Even granting that it’s overpopulation *per se* that is the problem (which I do not), that’s a *systemic* issue, and the solution to it does not reside inside my or anyone else’s uterus.

    The whole piece made me want to take tiny plungers to my face and suck my own eyeballs out.

  49. Wait, so does this mean there are at least some midwives doing this??

    I hope not. I’d like to believe that it was all just wishful thinking.

  50. What gets me the most is the overweening self-appointed air of elitism this entire piece projects.

    This is reminiscent of the very worst armchair philosophizing done by the worst kind of champagne socialists.

    What’s shocking is that this is not the first time this particular author has written in this tone.

    The words “get real” have some honest application here.

  51. Champagne socialists and armchair philosophy.

    Is there such a term as “champagne feminist?”

    The most sanctimoniously elitist and self-righteously judgmental thing I’ve read in months.

  52. mea culpa, by the way: it was radfem hub I was thinking of, not gender trender. Gender trender is 100% about the trans, radfem hub deals with other issues as well.

  53. I hope not. I’d like to believe that it was all just wishful thinking.

    I get the feeling there are a lot of people who wish society would go back to when we left infants on hillsides, or in the woods to die (while we convinced ourselves they were changelings and not our kids) regardless of sex.

    Some would want female infants left to die, others male. Some would want deformed or disabled left to die and a whole lot wouldn’t mind if brown infants were abandoned in large numbers.

    We live in a sick world. And well meaning people say we shouldn’t feel obligated to fight hate and stupidity on blogs. What the hell else is left if not fight it?

    Brings to mind the motto of our local HS football team-

    Fight them until Hell freezes over….then fight them on the ice.

    Today is one of those days where buying land in the middle of nowhere and surrounding it with a fence and gun turrets seems like a right fine idea.

  54. W.T. actual F.? Tinfoil, what kind of company do you keep?

    The same kind you keep, Fat Steve. Internet company. It was on a “feminist” blog.

  55. The same kind you keep, Fat Steve. Internet company. It was on a “feminist” blog.

    Ah, because you said they told you, I took the word ‘tell’ literally and assumed this was in conversation. Bearing in mind that the comments were made in the safety and anonymity of the internet, that kind of vitriol doesn’t surprise me (unfortunately) at all.

  56. tinfoil hattie@37

    It’s really not just the headline of the article that is atrocious “breeding”? Really? “Breed” is a dog-whistle for hatred of people who have children, and hatred of those children.

    The word “breed” was only used in the headline.

  57. If everyone takes the blithe attitude that you shouldn’t be obliged to at least stop and think about the consequences of having kids, then….well, hurrah for a depleted planet!!

    Fuck that. No, really, fuck that. The industrialized west is responsible for resource depletion, and it has an incredibly low birth rate. Individual “good choices” that involve people denying themselves something they need to be happy cannot compensate for systemic corporate greed and government policies. Systemic problems need systemic solutions.

  58. @bagelsan—-

    sorry about the late reply—dont get 2 use the computer just any old time i want

    totally with U on laws that protect children—everything needs checks and balances, including parents—-that being said, U can pretty much count on the enforcement of said laws 2B inconsistent and biased—one need look no further than the parents accused of child abuse cause their child was fat—and social services sending an endangered kid back home 2 their death is almost a proverb

    ppl can B pretty much counted on 2 mind other ppl’s business when they shouldnt—and stand around with their fingers up their noses when they should intervene

  59. I have a friend who hates kids. Like *hates* them, if we are in a restaurant and a baby is crying she freaks out. One time she went on vacation with her partner and for some inexplicable reason they had no birth control and getting some was just too hard. Apparently, I didn’t ask.

    After the romantic vacation where they totally did it, she was worried that she might become pregnant. But, she told me, despite the fact that she hates kids, if she got pregnant, she would have to keep it, because it would be “a product of our love, of (his) and my love!”

    Reading things like this always remind me of that incident, because 1) it’s the perfect example of a situation where one would have kids without really thinking it through and 2) it’s one of the dumbest things anyone has ever said to me and almost every single person I’ve ever met would put more reasonable thought into any decision, especially one so life changing.

    The only real point of this anecdata is that this person, the one who makes such a decision so flippantly, does actually exist – I know her personally. I assume she is an unusual specimen, fortunately.

  60. matlun, I didn’t really finish my thought, which was that the entire article sucked. It was offensive, condescensing, prejudiced, and boring.

  62. There’s nothing wrong with thinking hard about whether to have a child, or not. Neither should there be any problem in having an opinion as to whether someone else should have a child. Making a personal judgement about this is not the same as preventing someone having a child, or making life difficult for them when they do so. On the contrary. I may think it’s a bad idea for a teenage girl to have a baby. But, my response to that should be to ask how we can ensure that the mother and child are given every opportunity to have the best life ever.

    That’s my I think it’s unsatisfactory to respond by saying that it’s none of our business. It’s our business, and it’s the business of government to ensure that marginalised women get all the support they need. Saying it’s none of our business is well- intentioned, but it gives us an excuse for government not to help people. When people are vulnerable, it is our business.

  63. Here’s another problem with the article: it only focuses on the birth. So great! I thought about having a baby! Hurrah, I can set aside all those thinky thoughts for the rest of her life right?

    Wrong. Parents generally tend to think about the long term and ethics of child rearing from the moment they know a baby has been concieved. Its called parenting, its not done on auto pilot and only a small percentage of parents don’t give a shit.

    What is with this hyper focus on child birth and damn the rest of the lifespan? And why would she think even for a moment that this particular piece of the life cycle hasn’t been analyzed to death? How long has western society been squabbling over contraceptives and abortion? Has she failed to study any history (eugenics anyone?) or modern politics in the world?

    And I’m suppossed to be the poorly educated and unaware person….

  64. Yet to say “think before you have a child” is somehow alienating, wrong or offensive?

    DP- The offensive part is the assumption that people (read: women) aren’t thinking before they decide to have children. That’s it’s just something people go along with because, pff, what else are you gonna do with your life?

    I do think that it’s important for there to be more role models for people who don’t want children and for there to be more acceptance of people who choose that life, but it’s offensive to frame those of us who have/want children as just sheeple going along with the crowd, especially for women who have trouble conceiving, are part of the “undesirables” who have been actively forced/encouraged not to have children, people who have limited access to contraception and abortion, and people who choose to have children at ages and times where there is substantial social stigma. That’s a big chunk of people.

  65. Macavitykitsune, your use of “psychotic” is super ableist and hurtful. I have had and could have psychotic episodes sans meds, and it’s never given me the impulse to pry into other people’s lives.

    Back to the post, I’m going to second everything Natalia said and add that stats say that 50% of children are unplanned. I don’t think that translates into poorly thought through. A lot of significant decisions in life are made by gut instinct, and, all classist “intellectualizing” aside, I think ultimately there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

    I also think those that assume that women have children because they’re “supposed” to need to back that up with evidence rather than engaging in what sounds an awful lot like judgmental speculation. In my 38 years, I have yet to hear that from a mom, and it’s not my place to pry into their decisions based on assumptions made without support.

  66. I think it’s safe to say that although a lot of pregnancies are unplanned, birth and child-rearing is rarely unplanned (except for the odd sensationalized ‘omg I just had a baby in the toilet’ incident).

  67. The offensive part is the assumption that people (read: women) aren’t thinking before they decide to have children.

    This actually happens all the time. It’s not like the entire planet is populated by discerning, responsible, and intelligent Feministe readers who deeply consider every critical life choice. Some people really are dumb enough to get pregnant without any forethought. When you consider a global population of 7 billion, the scope of human variation allows for substantial instances of mind-bogglingly stupid behaviour of any imaginable description. Thoughtless childbearing is really one of the least weird human behaviours, when you really dig into it…

    But, even leaving aside those cases where the parents are literally not considering the consequences of childbearing, an individual’s choice to have children is so demonstrably affected by current social norms that it is fairly naive to act as if prospective parents are purely making their decisions based on logical, rational consideration. (In other words, thought.) Even if we hate admitting it, people really do just go with the flow more often than we realize, without thinking.

  68. Neither should there be any problem in having an opinion as to whether someone else should have a child. Making a personal judgement about this is not the same as preventing someone having a child, or making life difficult for them when they do so. … That’s my I think it’s unsatisfactory to respond by saying that it’s none of our business. It’s our business, and it’s the business of government to ensure that marginalised women get all the support they need.

    Having a personal opinion and keeping it to yourself is one thing.

    Agitating for a stronger social safety net or pushing for parenting classes or whatever you think would improve the world is just fine.

    Going around in your own life asking people why they’ve had kids as if they need to justify their lives to you? That’s a real problem.

  69. Yet to say “think before you have a child” is somehow alienating, wrong or offensive?

    Someone assuming that I didn’t. That’s offensive.

    You don’t know, from the outside, how much thought anyone has put into anything. You can guess, you can assume, but you can’t know.

  70. It’s not like the entire planet is populated by discerning, responsible, and intelligent Feministe readers who deeply consider every critical life choice. Some people really are dumb enough to get pregnant without any forethought. When you consider a global population of 7 billion, the scope of human variation allows for substantial instances of mind-bogglingly stupid behaviour of any imaginable description.

    I am the first to concur that people are mind-bogglingly stupid, but it seems to me that the consistent way that child-bearing rates drop as soon as women in a given society have access to reliable birth control and can be reasonably sure that their children will live to adulthood strongly suggests to me that, in fact, child-bearing is a decision that people give quite a bit of thought to as soon as there is any point in doing so.

  71. macavitykitsune

    Yeah, remember every ZOMG OVERPOPULATION thread in the history of the internet? Exactly like that. It’s fucking tiring, trying to introduce the incredibly complex idea that “it’s a resource problem, not a people problem, so to centre it on marginalised populations is raging bullshit” to most people’s brains.

    I most certainly do! Nobody wants to hear about that, it’s so much eaiser to tell the POC that they need to cut this population growth shit out than to say, maybe we use too much energy, burn too much gas, cause too much pollution etc. Far easier to say, do us a favor and sterilize yourself “by choice”

  72. Unmarried black parents, for example. People with disabilities.

    Not just the unmarried ones, there are people who knew me before I was married and still call me Ms. HisLastName as opposed to Mrs. HisLastName while they refer to married white women as Mrs. My children are replicas of their father , my husband, as a toddler yet I’ve been asked (by a gyn I decided not to use) whether or not he was my children’s father, despite the fact we’ve been married longer than my children have been alive AND he was right there. There is this idea that black women DO NOT get married, ESPECIALLY not young educated black women, and they most certainly couldnt marry a black man who is educated and successful.

    Racy T

    I have a friend who hates kids. Like *hates* them, if we are in a restaurant and a baby is crying she freaks out. One time she went on vacation with her partner and for some inexplicable reason they had no birth control and getting some was just too hard. Apparently, I didn’t ask.

    There are PLENTY of women who cant stand to hear someone else’s child cries but come running with an arsenal of tissue, hugs, kisses, toys and money for icecream if their own child so much as pouts. It is an ENTIRELY different ballgame when it is your child for most people. Me, Im kind of the opposite. I dont like it when my children whine, because I know they’re spoiled by their grandparents but if someone else’s kid is crying, I dont assume they’re spoiled and hope they’re ok.

  73. Even if we hate admitting it, people really do just go with the flow more often than we realize, without thinking.

    I hate admitting it – but most people in the world are pretty poor and restricted in their choices. Most have to work a LOT just to be able to put food on the table. Most don’t own large properties and tend not to have a helluva lot of rights. To anything.

    When you’re in that situation, having long, ponderous conversations about “but will my child be happy if I bring them into this world” is a luxury.

    It’s a particular luxury for women who, in more conservative societies, can face scorn and even abandonment should they fail to produce offspring.

    While the OP was focusing on people in developed nations, extrapolating that to “well, most people are just kinda stupid” misses the point, I think.

  75. We are fortunate that procreation is more and more a matter of choice. Not always, of course — not everyone has access to effective contraception and accessible abortion, and some women are subjected to enforced pregnancy. But the growing availability of reproductive choice makes it clear that procreation cannot be merely an expression of personal taste.

    Huh?

    Also, I feel like people have been dealing with this question since the beginning of time, but in that case it was, “Why have sex?” instead of “Why have kids?” And then sex was demonized depending who had it, how and why….now that has transferred to kids to a certain extent.

  76. Pingback: The real reason why you should be careful in your discussions about mothers « blue milk

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