What I've learned from frank conversation with parents
some thoughts on a contentious subject
Note: the last time I talked about the subject of child-rearing in public, a couple of people contacted my wife and said some annoying things. If you have objections to any of this, talk to me, not to her—if you engage her about this topic because of this blog, I will be very displeased. If you feel the need to tell her something, you can ask me to forward the message, and I may or may not.
I started having frank conversations with parents over the last year, in order to get more clarity about whether I should have children. What happened surprised me. After speaking to many parents, I came away less convinced that having children was the right decision for me and my wife. This isn’t to say that we won’t—my current stance is that there are possible worlds where it makes sense, and possible worlds where it doesn’t.
I didn’t do this because I wanted to write a blog about it. But, unfortunately, I go on Twitter sometimes, and I see shit like this, often from new parents with large social media followings.
Now, it’s part of evolutionary programming that new parents are especially bullish on parenting. That is probably a good thing, and I’m happy if they’re happy! And I, too, have said overly simplistic things on Twitter in order to farm dopamine.
However, this unequivocal “you must have kids” type messaging does not reflect the feelings of most mature parents I’ve spoken to, so I wanted to share what I’ve heard.
I’m not going to sprinkle this post with a bunch of caveat statements like “But parenting can be a transcendent joy also”—be aware that I know this, and am choosing to focus on something else.
Parental regret and ambivalence is likely more common than we think, and maybe it’s because of North American parenting
It is incredibly taboo to say that you regret having children, for good reason: It would probably be hard for anyone to hear that their parents regretted creating them, and also, kid-regret isn’t an adaptive meme for the continuance of our species. Thus, we should assume that it’s underreported, even on anonymous surveys.
This is not my original thought. It’s what a parent pointed out to me, in the course of mentioning that they’re not thrilled that they had children. They weren’t in despair about it—the attitude was more like, “I’d choose not to, if I could go back in time.” And they mentioned knowing other parents who also felt the same way, despite having happy kids and a stable financial situation.
Since this conversation, I’ve tried to engage parents straightforwardly about whether they’ve experienced regret. And I’ve heard really surprising things from more than a few parents, amidst more joyful reports from others. Statements like: “It’s a real problem that having kids is overrated.” “I think I had to have children, and I’m happy I did, but I think you would be miserable.” “All the things you want from parenting—connection, legacy, love, service—you can get without children.”
Unless my conversations were totally unrepresentative, the uncomfortable truth seems to be that even among fortunate people, for a significant minority, parenting can be an actual sacrifice, like, not one you feel was personally worth it in the end—one that is only seen as worthwhile if you set aside the importance of your personal experience.
One interaction in particular sticks in my mind. I went to a doctor one day who reminded me of my wife—she was sharp, observant, curious, to-the-point, and matter-of-factly kind. During normal doctor-patient banter, she mentioned her husband and kids. I asked: “Weird question, but I’m thinking about having kids, and I want to talk to parents about it—would you be comfortable giving me your honest opinions about children?”
She set down her clipboard slowly and locked eyes with me.
“Do you need to have kids?” she said.
“Need is a funny word, what do you mean?”
“Does your wife clutch her womb in pain when she sees a baby?”
“Not exactly.”
“Do you feel like kids are a requirement for you to live a meaningful life?”
“Nope.”
“Great. You’re free. Do not have kids.”
I assume my facial expression was one of surprise.
“Look,” she said, in response. “I needed to have kids. And I love my kids. But I say to my husband that I think my reproductive system betrayed me. There is no question I could’ve had a richer, fuller, more meaningful life without children. I lost almost everything about myself that I enjoyed, for a long time. Do you have siblings with children?”
“Yeah, on both sides.”
“That’s great. You can have wonderful, loving relationships with nieces and nephews, you can give them gratuitous kindness, and still have your own life.”
This account was emblematic of a few anecdotes about parental regret I’d heard—the primary complaint wasn’t the children themselves, it was the structure of modern American parenting. Indeed, modern American parenting seems awful. Expectations are sky-high, most people are raising kids in areas where they can’t run free without supervision, most parents neither have extensive state support nor extensive social support, many (most?) schools are terrible.
Relevantly, many of the parents I spoke to who were happiest had non-mainstream parenting experiences—some combination of financial abundance, flexible work, a lot of social support, insistence on letting their children be independent, et cetera. This seems like a good thing to know if you’re having children. Many of the people reading this can create some lifestyle optionality, and can probably opt out of the default parenting path.
The strongest “have kids” recommendation came from a friend who issued a strong caveat: “Just don’t be like North American parents, they are so stupid.”
Parental satisfaction is not straightforward
When I meet parents that report high levels of satisfaction mid-parenting, they don’t seem like other happy people I know. Like: They are often bedraggled, stressed, annoyed. I observe joyful moments, but I also observe that these seemingly take up a small amount of their waking hours, especially for parents of younger children—much of the time, measured in total minutes, parenting seems like a slog.
This doesn’t mean they’re lying. Looking back on my life, some of my periods of great satisfaction have been essentially uncomfortable. Like when I was working on my book: I was constantly anxious, often physically sick, understanding that I was fulfilling my childhood dream and yet that I was probably fucking it up somehow, that I was inadequate to the task I’d set myself. (I assume many parents could type the same clauses re: their kids.) And yet, I think of those years fondly, often.
None of this is an original observation. This is an excellent Twitter thread on the subject of the mixed nature of parental satisfaction, and you hear similar sentiments if you ask around. From my discussions, it seems like the median report is something like: parenting is the best and worst thing ever, transcendently fulfilling but also crushing.
Also, none of that seems like a bad thing to say, or really, a vote against children—difficult-but-meaningful experiences are necessary for a good life. But it does contradict messaging I sometimes see about having children along the lines of, “It’s a joy every day,” or “You’ll never regret it.” I think messaging like that either comes from lucky people who have unusual experiences, or is a lie. Either way, such messaging is probably a disservice to most people who are considering having children.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be about happiness
Some of the people I talked to who were most content about parenting did not view it as being about personal satisfaction. Instead, they had a frame of duty, either coming from religion or a prosocial sense that reproduction is simply what humans have to do. In this frame, whether it’s ultimately “worth it” from a personal perspective or not, you should reproduce—if you’re doing something else, it might be nice, but it’s not a proper life-shape.
I see how this frame could be the source of a lot of endurance and meaning, which would be helpful for acts like parenting. But fundamentally this is not my frame on life. I see my life as a creative process: As a bubble of consciousness, I am free to make choices about what experiences will fill that bubble, and my choices are an attempt to balance many concerns, like fun, fulfillment, curiosity, service to others, and so on. Probably society would not work if everyone had this frame, and thus I’m not bothered by other people having different frames, or judging my frame inadequate.
After these conversations, I have a kind of clarity, but not the kind I wanted
During many of these conversations, I laid out my particular non-standard life arrangement for parents, and asked: “If you were me, would you do it?” A few said no, a few said yes, but most of them said, I don’t know, sounds like it could go either way. Many of them pointed to the amount of variance involved: You can’t choose which kid you get, you don’t know how you’ll react to the unique stresses involved, or what effect it will have on your marriage.
By having these conversations, I was hoping to be assured about which decision would ultimately lead to a better life. I now don’t think that assurance is possible. Probably, there will be real mourning to do if it doesn’t happen, and also if it does. That’s unfortunate, but it’s good to be clear-eyed about the horrifying ambiguity.
Photo credit goes to Robert Frank.
As you know, having children was top priority for your father and me. Around the time I met him, I read an article that said that when it came to having children, "You're either indifferent or obsessed" and advised doing it only if you were obsessed. We were obsessed. (An old friend and her husband decided, after some years of marriage, to be a very good aunt and uncle to the children of their several siblings rather than having their own. He hotly denies that they were "indifferent," and he has a point.) Having children made us a family, which I found intensely satisfying. Those were tough years (mainly because of financial pressures)--but the marriage lasted, I think, because we shared the unspoken assumption that our main job in life was to get you and your older brother to the point where you no longer needed us: we didn't feel it was wrong to have individual dreams and aspirations apart from that, but where those clashed with your best interests, they took second place. And I don't regret the decision at all. That said, I often repeat my First Law of Motherhood, which is, "No union would allow this job." And among the six to eight women I consider my closest friends, about half of them are in long, apparently successful marriages where the couple have chosen not to have children.
My mother came across a study late in her professional life of long-married couples who hadn't had children--I think, but am not sure, that this meant by choice. (She was a demographer specializing in long-term changes in family patterns.) Most of them didn't regret their decision, which surprised her.
One of the problems now, for women at least, is that bearing children IS a choice--an overwhelming one. Our GP at the time told me that most of the accidental pregnancies she confirmed were in middle-class married women--and that once she said "Yes, you're pregnant," the feeling in the room was one of relief, because the decision was out of the woman's hands. (Legal abortion was a bit more difficult in those days.)
I don't feel particularly wise about the subject, except to say that having children is not for the faint-hearted, and you should be very cautious about undertaking it if you have any serious doubts. You should be at least equally careful if your partner has doubts.
One memory stands out from that era. I had taken time off work to take either you or your brother to an appointment. It was raining, we were hurrying on foot to the subway station, and whichever one of you it was (can't remember--Bad Mother) was holding my hand and crying. Life was chaos, as usual. And I suddenly realized that I was happy. There was nowhere else I wanted to be.
Love, Mom
My experience is that there is actually no way to know whether you’re going to be pleased to have kid(s) until you become a parent. Some people, like your physician and tons of my friends, KNEW they wanted to become parents beforehand, only to find out they aren’t particularly satisfied by their choice, or would even go back and make a different decision, if they could. I, on the other hand absolutely KNEW I did NOT want to become a parent. I wanted to spend hours buried in piles of books at the law library, researching obscure laws for a CA Supreme Court justice, taking the last BART train home at night, or if I missed it, sleeping on the couch in the lawyers lounge at the courthouse, starting all over the next morning with a 6:00 am coffee at Philz. And yet, the person I loved wanted a kid, so we did that. And I found something I never had in life, no matter how many important social issues I worked on, no matter how intellectually satisfying my life would have been had I stayed on the other path. I learned what it is to love someone else so much more than oneself, to experience an absolute melding with universal love that MDMA and mushrooms had only hinted at before, to know that without an instant’s hesitation I would die for this person. And the actual raising of the little human that contains this taste of the infinite is a hell of a lot of work, and requires parents to (sometimes) set aside the full actualization of their individuality, at least for a few years. Which, actually, I now recognize was what was needed for me. I’m not just adulting anymore, I’m an adult. And that feels better than I would ever have thought.