On Having Children, or the Apparently Unhappy Duty of Parenthood

I hope those of you who know me well know that I would never really complain about being a parent. Being a dad is about the best thing I can imagine. Owen has enriched my life in so many ways and completely shifted the way I see the world and my place within it. He is adorable, fun, surprising; every day is different. He is at an incredibly fun age and I spend most of my time around him trying to take meaningful mental snapshots of moments that I perceive all too well are only fleeting.

At the same time, I get the burden part of parenting. Especially when Clara was working nights and I was on baby duty. And I complained in the way people complain about a job they really like, but feel bound by the code of the American workplace to complain about from time to time, but I never really had a big beef with the parenting thing. It was unpleasant to get woken up at 2:30 in the morning by a screaming, hungry baby who would much rather partake in the nourishment his mother could provide rather than sit in my awkward arms and suck on a bottle. But there was this beautiful, little creature in your arms that you are completely responsible for. And he closes his eyes and rubs his fingers through his hair or strokes your hand as you hold the bottle and somehow it is all perfect. 

Clara and I watched the movie What to Expect When You're Expecting the other night and this issue was brought up. A father-to-be starts hanging out with a group of dads who use their time together to complain about the less desirable parts of parenthood. The father-to-be mistakes this venting session for the whole story and imagines parenting to be a nightmare. But then the dads tell him the truth: that they love their children incredibly but sometimes it is hard. One dad says, in a line I can relate to well, "I love my kid so much I am afraid I am going to eat him."

It was with this in mind that I read a recent article in the Atlantic about parenting called “Not Wanting Kids is Entirely Normal” byJessica Valenti. I feel like there is a lot to take issue with in her argument. One of the most obvious to me is the insane notion that the idea about parenting most prevalent in our culture is that it is a fun-filled thrill ride. I don’t know what pop-cultural presentation would tell someone that about raising kids. Almost every example I can think of seems to portray parenting at best as controlled madness and at worst as life-ending drudgery. There might be some mommy blogs out there talking about how fantastic it is to change little Christopher’s poopies, but the general message is that this whole thing kind of sucks. Therefore even basing an article on the idea that women in this culture are totally encouraged to be content little babymakers is ludicrous.

That point aside, on to some more substantive criticism. Valenti quotes approvingly a mother who claims that although she was opposed to abortion before having a child, now that she has lived through the waking nightmare of parenthood she would run to the abortion clinic if her body did its job again. This woman is used to make the claim that a lot of parents hate parenting and therefore the notion that one ought to be a parent is wrong because some people don’t like it. It really is as circular as that. Since when is people sucking at something evidence that the thing they suck at is not worthy? This is the argument of children, not of adults. I’m not good at the piano. Piano sucks. Running makes my cankles sore. Running sucks. Dostoevsky is hard to read. Dostoevsky sucks. And reading, too. I don’t mean to entirely conflate the notion that sucking at parenting and being unhappy with parenting are of a piece, but it seems to me to be the case. Attitude is largely a matter of choice. As an adventurous friend told me on my first backpacking trip, “The difference between ordeal and adventure is attitude.” Being unhappy and unfulfilled in parenting, then, is largely a choice as well. A difficult choice, no doubt. Certainly more difficult than doing whatever the hell you want all of the time (though the people I know who do this never seem quite as happy as the parents I know). But every parent knows that when that baby wakes up and you’re tired and don’t want to get up, it is your choice how to react. And every parent has reacted in that situation both positively and negatively and can tell you the difference between the two.

If only she knew how unhappy this was really making her

Valenti further charges parenting with committing that most egregious of modern sins (no, not opposing homosexual marriage): removing selfhood. You are now a mother, not an individual. In other words, and this really is quite appalling, you are seen in relation to other people instead of your own, unique-as-a-snowflake self. My goodness! Before having Owen, Clara was Clara Jean Coffman, R.N. Now, poor woman, she is Clara Jean Coffman, Owen’s mom (and R.N.). And let me tell you, this loss of self has been paralyzing. Where before she could get up at 5 a.m. a few days a week to put on scrubs and drive to a hospital to take care of other people’s kids, now she is caged within the four walls of our apartment (or at the park, the zoo, or elsewhere) hanging out with our child. It is really terrible to see the road she is going down. Now I will grant that we’re not really the people Valenti is targeting (though I am not too sure who those people might be; those who carry unexpected babies to term are, generally speaking, not readers of The Atlantic Monthly; she is writing, no doubt, for the noble cause of raising awareness). But whether you’re rich or poor, married or not, young or old, all parents have to make the same basic decisions. And your attitude toward your children is not dictated by socioeconomic standing.

I think the reason this article so deeply offended me as I read it was that it denied there is a better alternative, apart from better family planning. There was no, “Hey parent, stop being a selfish dipshit.” The remedy is all external. Plan better. Know that it’s OK to resent your children. Pretend humans aren’t integrally linked to one another in community. Above all, be your own true self. In his classic work Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neal Postman (a nonobservant Jew) observed of our modern ethic that where once a drunkard (his example) was told to despise himself and find God, today he is told to find himself. In other words, change that once required an emptying of self, a release from the bondage and tyranny of self, now rather requires one to find one’s own true self (an interesting object lesson in the way the individual has taken the place of God). In Valenti’s case, this consists of coming to terms with not wanting to be a parent instead of asking if there might be some deeper aberration underlying this odd denial of both biology and human history and community.

Parenting is hard. So are most things worth doing. The woman who decides to forego motherhood to climb the corporate ladder is also going to run into difficulties along the way. The couple who decides to forego children so they can take all of the vacations they want in their 20s and 30s are going to be lonely at some point as they age. That, and they will probably also lump their affections on to the children of their own siblings, pretending that being the cool aunt (in their own eyes) is more important than being a parent. Valenti is wrong from the beginning, as I pointed out a few paragraphs back. Parenting is not valued in our culture, broadly speaking. The response to this that Valenti interprets as normal is nothing but a reaction to the broad message that parenting is tedious and unfulfilling compared to being a businessman or a lawyer. It is self-fulfilling prophecy. And it is wrecking a lot of families.