On Not Having Children

A friend of mine recently complained, again, about someone remarking on her and her husband’s decision not to have children. It wasn’t a kind remark which makes me wonder what business is it of anyone’s what people do with their lives. Oh, that’s right, Nietzsche’s Will to Power. And that’s just one of the reasons my wife and I have similarly decided not to have children.

People don’t ask me if I have children very often; it’s almost as if they know better. When people do ask if I have children and I say ‘no’ it seems I’m let off the hook because I’m a man. Judging by how often they talk about it, though, women are under much more pressure to have children as if it were some sacred duty. With the planet’s population approaching nine billion, I call bullshit. There are many reasons not to have children, the least of being overpopulation, which I’ll address shortly. Here are some other reasons why I don’t think it’s a good idea to have children:

-       1-I refuse to bring children into a world that is in the midst of social and political upheaval. True, this has always been the case historically. But it will continue to be true. Authoritative regimes are on the rise around the world. Even in the U.S. the evangelical right continues to labor to turn women back into property. Why would I risk bringing a daughter into a world where too many men don’t understand that raping a woman or a little girl is immoral on every account? Why would I risk a child’s safety in a world where they can be assaulted just for being different from their peers? It must be a nightmare to care for a child’s safety in today’s world.

-        2-I refuse to bring a child into an increasingly poisonous environment. Countries like China and Indonesia think almost nothing of trashing their environment. In the U.S. the GOP is practically going out of their way to destroy the environment. The oceans are full of plastic waste. And no one is doing anything about climate change. It’s practically child abuse to make a newborn face the future environment now.

-        3-Back to overpopulation. Frankly, children annoy me, as does anyone under the age of 18. There are too many people everywhere as it is and we don’t value life as much as we should because of it. The world population is approaching nine billion – I don’t think there’s any danger in humans going extinct. Unfortunately. There are too many people and it shows both in overcrowding and pollution. There’s practically nowhere you can go anymore to enjoy by yourself or not find trash there. Well, unless you’re rich, of course.

-        4-On a more personal note, I have things I want to do; I enjoy my free time. When people say this is selfish they’re saying I have an obligation to have children. Says who, society? The dictates of society are for the weak and the easily controlled. And wanting kids is just as selfish, so why is the kettle calling the pot black?

-        5-Children are blackholes of money. I already work hard enough for myself and my wife for us to enjoy what we have. I don’t want to work endless hours a week because my kids have to be fed, have to have health care, and get a decent education. I want to be able to go on vacation without it being a hassle or to be more kind, without it being a challenge.

-        6-Oh, but it’s different when it’s your child, Breeders argue. So, what, I got my genes into the next generation? Big whoop. There’s no evidence that my genes/my child will be any better than I am. Oh, but I can give them a better life than I had? No, I can’t, because the rest of you are fucking the place up. And I would expect my child to grow up working as hard as I have. I would have no intentions of coddling my child and giving them everything they ever wanted because they wouldn’t stop misbehaving or crying. (Oh, but we can’t spank anymore because liberals.) Any fool without contraception can have a child. I’m content to leave it to the people who really want them and not say anything if those people will leave us non-breeders alone.

-        7-Breeders seem to value the idea that having a child forces you to love someone unconditionally. I don’t believe in unconditional love; it’s a ridiculous concept. If my wife and I had the next Hitler, I’d try to kill the child myself. Isn’t a love for humanity more important than anyone’s desire for their own crying sack of projected neuroses? If you think there’s nothing your child could do to make you surrender your love for them, I’d say your potential to be a danger to the human race is high.

-        8-Pregnancy usually changes a mother’s body for the worse. It doesn’t have to, of course, but 99% of women who get pregnant never get their old body back which for us men was probably one of the top reasons we wanted to have sex with our partners in the first place. I like my wife’s body the way it is. So does she. (Though of course we both have to face aging. But why screw things up ahead of schedule?)

In my opinion, most people aren’t sound enough on any number of accounts to be having children. There should be some kind of a test or license to have babies, but, oh, we can’t say that because that would be fascist. We’re just not allowed to say who should or should not have children even though it’s clear many people are unqualified or aren’t in a position to care properly for them. But what do I know? I don’t have children. And that’s how I sleep at night.

The Irrationality of Procreation

A recent article asked the question, “Is modern life making us irrational?” My first thought and subsequent post related that people are irrational by nature and that the desire for children is an indication of this. Predictably, I was lambasted for such a comment. “WHAT’S IRRATIONAL ABOUT WANTING CHILDREN?” and this was coming from so-called rational people (they being the target audience of the article). In order to defend myself, let’s take a woman in her mid-30s as our example: When a woman starts to feel as though her biological clock is ticking, that time is running out to have children, this is not a feeling based on any rationality; it’s a matter of biological urgency. A feeling, an internal longing or desire, or what have you, is the opposite of being rational. This is not just a matter of semantics; this is simply the way it is.

Basically, I’ve never met anyone who has given a rational reason for having children. Of course, we might ask what a rational reason would be for having children, and the answers I can think of are few: Perhaps children are necessary to have someone to care for us in our old age or to have a potential organ or blood donor should an organ or blood need replacing or replenishing. Or, perhaps children are more entertaining than a dog or cat, although I would not agree with that sentiment.

Usually, though, like the woman running out of time to have a child, the reasons for having children are irrational. When someone says they want children, it is because that is what society or culture demands of its participants or because someone wants to raise a human being to be better than they ever were or have more than they ever had. I’m not saying having irrational reasons are wrong or immoral, just that such reasons are based in biology, or, has psychological underpinnings. So-called rational people never admit they are irrational, though, for that would undermine their belief that they are, ahem, rational people.

For the most part, I have never wanted children. In the rare cases I would have consented to having children was due to either the fact that my partner at the time wanted children and I thought they’d be a fit parent (meaning they’d be better at raising a child than me) or because I believed – irrationally so – that the combined genetic make-up of our offspring would somehow, ambiguously, be ‘superior.’ But when I see how difficult children can be, the headaches they cause both figuratively and literally, I see no reason to want children. When I see how much time is dedicated to raising a child, weighed against my desire for free time, I see no reason to want children. And when looking at the cost of raising a child, well, do you have any idea how many cases of good beer I could buy instead? At least my desire NOT to have children is rationally based.

It is often claimed that the desire not to have children is selfish, though this assertion is clearly illogical given that the desire not to have children is no more selfish than anyone whose goal it is to have children. Of course, by not having children I am robbing the world of my exceptionally good-looking offspring whose good looks really amount to nothing more than bullying, or, robbing the world of my exceptionally intelligent offspring who the exceptionally good-looking kids would beat up in school. Either way, it’s a no-win situation, so why waste endure the headache, waste the time, and subject myself to large quantities of cheap beer? Because if I’m not already an alcoholic, I would be after having a child. Sparing my liver seems quite reasonable to me.

It takes brains not to have children, once again pointing out that rational people are usually nothing of the sort.

You're Kidding Me

I do not understand many things, among them the onus a society places upon its denizens to bear children. Actually, I take that back; from an evolutionary standpoint, demands to bear children make complete sense. But with around 7 billion people on the planet now, you’d think people would cut others some slack for not having children or not having children by the proper age as dictated by a given culture. But the nagging persists: “When are you going to get married and have kids? You do want kids, right? How many? Time’s running out!” While I can’t help people whose biological clocks are ticking – their drive towards procreation is on them at least – I wish to help people with nagging relatives and friends. How? By nagging back. (What other solution did you think I was going to propose?)

Let’s face it; it’s 2013 in America and bullying is no longer accepted. Frankly, that’s what nagging someone to have kids is these days; bullying. So no one, when asked, “When are you having kids?” should shrink like a violet. I propose fighting back in the face of such interrogations. If someone asks you, “When are you having kids?” there are any number of clever or snarky replies, such as

* Why is it important to you?

* Yeah, um, whose life is my life?

* Never, seeing how well you raised kids.

* As soon as you stop asking me about it.

* Seven billion people isn’t enough for you?

* When there is such a thing as job security again.

* When you die and need to be replaced.

* When they’re 18.

Personally, I’d reply with “Why is it important to you?” because the person you respond to with it isn’t going to have anything close to a rational answer as to why it’s important to them. I can almost hear the irrational guilt trip answer, “Because I want to have grandchildren before I die,” already. Furthermore, the person wanting to know when you’re having children is probably religious, which opens the door to educate them on why they really think you having children is important – the compulsion of genes to replicate themselves as far into the future as possible.

I have never been for the viewpoint that the pinnacle event in life is to have and raise children, because if so, one is living an arguably pointless existence once a child is born, seeing how a biological parent is not currently necessary to a child’s survival. And if the point of having and raising children becomes the point in life of the children to have and raise children? This is descending into idiocy from a thinking standpoint. (Though, I guess we can’t expect a biologically based drive to be subject to reason.) Besides, after the childbearing years doesn’t a person become useless if having children is all there is to life? Maybe not; I guess someone’s gotta put a dollar in the birthday card.

Yes, families are great and we all love one another and our respective children, but no one should be made to feel they are less of a human being because they haven’t done their procreation duty. Coercion, guilt, shaming – we don’t do these things anymore in freedom-loving Western industrialized countries. That is so last century and two billion people ago. And that’s why I don’t have kids, ‘cause I’m a modern man who loves freedom and free is the last thing you are when you have kids.

[To be more exact, I don’t have children because I think of them mostly as demanding, noisy, germ-infested, stress-inducing, sleep-deprivation machines that never stop when you want them to. Besides, my cats are a pain in the ass and they’re only half the size of a baby. Why the hell would I double my trouble? And no, it wouldn’t be better just because they’re mine. I know me and I sure as hell wouldn’t want to raise even a half of me.]