October 26, 2024
This is a weird thing that has happened to me. A weird thing about who I’ve become, someone I would not have dreamed I would become even twenty years ago. In retrospect, I recognize this is always the position I’ve held. I’ve only recognized, and embraced, that it was a deliberate conscious decision in the last few years.
There are no children in my life in real life. I see them only in movies. Whenever I watch a movie where the children are in danger, and even when they’re not, when they’re just dealing with the inherent struggles of growing up, I wonder, “Why would anyone want to have children? Why would anyone want to put another human being through that?”
And then I wonder why I would ask that question. Because any “normal woman” would never think something so horrible. Any “normal woman” would take delight in parents reproducing little humans that truly are the joy of the world. And I mean that with my entire heart. Children are the heart of a family’s existence and the joy of the world.
So why do I look upon would be parents and want to scream THINK! THINK! DON’T DO IT!
Is it because of the physical sensation of carrying, incubating really, a human being in your body until it comes out of you in a painful beyond what can be put into words, vagina-wrenching, vagina-obliterating way during which your body actually rips open to complete the process? Well, ya, kind of. But that had more to do with how I felt when I was of childbearing age and thought I wanted to have children; when it was actually a physical possibility. It sounded incredibly painful, and you’d have nine months of anticipation of that pain. But far more than the pain, it seemed one of the most daunting things one could ever attempt. Absolutely terrifying. So many things could go wrong. If I were to miscarry, I knew that I was so fragile mentally that it might destroy me. Chances are, it would have. I dreaded the whole incubation piece of the process. It was just too much to think about, all of the things that could go wrong, not to mention the pain of miscarriage and of birth. It was too much to bear.
Is it because our planet is dying? Well, yes, actually. That’s a significant piece of it. Why would anyone willingly do that to a child? In many ways, it’s abusive to do that to a human being, to call them into existence to live in a world like this, where everyone is worried about everything. Anxiety is epidemic with depression a close companion. Why bring children into a world where they may not know how long they can exist in an environment that becomes more inhospitable every season. And what of their desire to reproduce? The risks of having a child twenty years in the future are even more significant. Prohibitive, I think. Why would you succumb to the satisfaction of bringing a human being into this world knowing they would be deprived of the same satisfaction? Knowing that they, in fact, might not have the option to reproduce at all? Why would you do that to anyone?
Plus, it’s better to go to the pound and adopt a rescue than to buy a purebred. That sounds callous, to compare children to animals, but it’s an apt comparison. There are so many children languishing away in the foster care system, I think it’s incredibly selfish to incubate your own. So many children need loving homes. Why would you make a new one when there are children in the world in desperate need of the exact loving environment you are equipped to provide? That is the biggest reason, I think. Well, maybe not. Read on, dear friend.
And then there are the routine, systematic, persistent abuses of children by members of our “civilized society”. This really hit home just recently when an ethics professor at Brite was arrested for having child pornography on his – get this – work computer. Charles Bellinger is a theo-ethicist who has published books condemning violence.
Bellinger, Charles K. The Genealogy of Violence: Reflections on Creation, Freedom, and Evil. Oxford University Press, 2001. Cloth, 157 pages. Reads Kierkegaard and Girard together in offering an understanding of violence and social pathology.
Bellinger, Charles K. The Joker Is Satan, and So Are We: And Other Essays on Violence and Christian Faith. Churchyard Books, 2010. Paper, 193 pages. A collection of essays which focus on the task of thinking about violence psychologically and ethically, from a Christian point of view — featuring Girard and Kierkegaard.
Bellinger, Charles K. The Trinitarian Self: The Key to the Puzzle of Violence. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2008. Paper, 167 pages. “Bellinger has thrown a clarifying spotlight on the question of violence as the crucial intersection between our human sciences and theology, a dialogue that proves as fruitful in theory as it is necessary in practice. His telling readings of Søren Kierkegaard, Eric Voegelin, and René Girard are woven together into an interpretive framework that multiplies the diagnostic relevance of each one for our conflicted human condition. Ambitious, clear, and creative, this book is a welcome contribution to the theological understanding of humanity and to the struggle to ovrcome violence.” — S. Mark Heim
Bellinger is himself one of the most horrific perpetrators of violence against children. And he was discovered because he brought his addiction into his workplace. Can you even begin to imagine the cognitive dissonance this man lives with? He wanted to get caught. Obviously. I do not think an unnatural sexual attraction to children is a choice, I think it is a compulsion. Many child predators experience abuse in their own childhoods, but many more experience the same and do not develop this compulsion. Pedophiles are never rid of the compulsion to abuse children. There is no cure. There is therapy, but there is no cure. It's not that I think pedophiles don't deserve to live, of course I don't. But they can never be responsible members of society. They should be housed permanently in psychiatric facilities. I can’t wrap my mind around the sexual attraction to children. I absolutely can’t. And having been a victim of childhood sexual abuse myself, I can’t imagine bringing a child into a world where there was even the remotest chance they could suffer this type of abuse. Or any abuse. It’s too dangerous.
And here’s the most controversial of my opinions. Don’t hate me for it. Try to understand me for it. I don’t think deaf people should have children. My mother is deaf. She is intelligent. But she has no true sense of what it’s like to walk through this existence hearing everything. Her deafness protects her from some of the worst aspects of society. She watches the news but doesn’t catch much of it. She’s aware that Trump is an awful man but intends to turn her ballot over to my brother to complete. Even if she took the time to study the voting pamphlet, comprehending the material and turning that into informed choices is beyond her ability. She wasn’t able to help me with my homework, even in the first grade. (My father wasn’t either, but he lacked all intelligence.) She didn’t understand the pressures I faced growing up in the 60s and 70s because she didn't hear about them. Because she didn't know, she didn’t have the ability to comfort me, to advise me in ways that were meaningful and helpful. She told me all of the things I shouldn’t do along with the menacing message “Jesus is watching you.” Actually, she got that from her mother, but she wasn’t introspective enough to recognize how damaging those messages are to children, and especially teenagers struggling with choices about their sexual expression. Mind. Fuck. I blame a lot of her inadequacies as a mother on her deafness, but there are other components. She knew about my father’s abuse, and chose to do nothing. This one I can kind of understand. In the 60s and 70s she didn’t know she had options. As my father’s wife, my abusive father, she had little agency. She could not have found a job that paid enough to support me and my brother. Nonetheless, she failed me. She chose the easy way. She failed me, plain and simple. So much of who I am, who I have become, has to do with her abdication of responsibility. By some miracle, I’ve made it to the age of 61. But it is a miracle. I was not equipped for life in the world in my family of origin. I left home at 17 horribly damaged, without any of the tools I needed to gain a right (dare I say healthy?) perspective on the horrors of the world. I was set up to fail by my own parents. I was unable to process abuse of any kind – against me or against anyone else - in ways that precluded me from succumbing to my inherited bipolar depression. I still can't process it, even today. Living in my mind has been a living hell. It truly truly would have been better had I never been born. It may have been better had I been the child of a hearing mother. (But you'd have to throw in a father who wasn't a pedophile.) I don’t know. I’ll never know. But I’m here now, still here, and I Persevere. But I’m tired. I’ve worked so fucking hard to stay in the world. So fucking hard. Every moment, every day, I fight to stay in the world, to be present, to process the depraved acts of human beings in a way that doesn’t take me down. And it’s hard as FUCK. Negativity consumes me. But I continue to fight.
The bipolar is the primary reason I didn't have children. Bipolar is hereditary. I struggle relentlessly with mental illness and I didn't want to pass that onto my children. I didn't want my children to have to deal with the impact of a parent's bipolar mental illness on their lives. It is enough I struggle with it, subjecting them to it would have been child abuse. I didn’t have children because on some level I knew of all of this. It was an unconscious choice - but it was absolutely the right choice. (And here's another controversial statement: I don't think people who struggle with mental illness should have children either.)
OK. Sorry to subject you to that little glimpse of my unrelenting pain. Sorry to horrify you with my most politically incorrect opinion that disabled people - physically or mentally disabled - should refrain from reproducing. Back to less serious musings. (Although still pretty twisted in many aspects.)
Why do I call it “incubating”? That’s weird. Maybe it’s the way I carve out the most physically taxing part of having children, referring to it in the most emotionally detached way possible, even though it’s completely incorrect even from the most sanitized perspective. I think it’s how I detach from the horror of it. Because to me, bringing a human being into this world is a horrible proposition from conception. And incredibly selfish. Probably the most selfish thing a person can do.
No offense to all you biological parents out there. I can't condemn you for your choice. I just don't understand it.
So, J.D. Vance, I’m a post-menopausal Childless Cat Lady. I made a deliberate choice not to reproduce. That makes me a drag on society, a woman with no worth. But, all things considered, aren’t you glad that was the choice I made?