go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her

Like most of those my age who don't have children, I am continually tormented by the words of Shakespeare's Sonnet 2:

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

In our current society's focus on the family, it is seen as shameful to think of one's children as an extension of oneself.  A common criticism of non-heterosexual couples who produce children is not only that they are imitating the non-homosexual population, but that they are having children for selfish reasons.  I wonder what exactly is wrong with that?  When one comes to the realization that all one's dreams are dead (any time between the ages of 26 and 35), it is comforting to produce a new, replacement individual upon whom one can pin all of one's hopes.  A child can be like a scapegoat, but with failed aspirations attached instead of sins.  Also: not generally a goat.

The production of children allows one to cheat death, by indefinitely extending one's lifespan through one's descendants.  Otherwise, how else can you stand to pass the time before your seventy years (or, if due to strength, eighty years) are gone and you fly away?  We can, like Gerard de Nerval, throw ourselves into vulgar distractions, affect gaiety and lack of concern, and travel about the world, being foolishly fascinated by variety and caprice.  My Turkish friend, whose ancestor was the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire during the Tulip Era, recently organized a biking expedition to look at the New York City Waterfalls installation by Olafur Eliasson.  (How I wish we had things like Tulip Eras in the United States! I would even settle for a Dandelion Era. But instead we have Crap and Idiocy Eras.)  I suppose I could intersperse activities like that into all of the labor and sorrow, before I am granted (God wiling) a good end.  Still, finding new ways to amuse oneself can be tiring.

I wonder if the current fashionable style of parenting, which mixes extreme overprotection with a complete lack of discipline (think Bertolucci's The Last Emperor), is related to the failure to recognize the proper purpose of children.  My nephew Zack is basically treated like a little emperor himself, being allowed to do more or less whatever he wants.  I remember reading an interview with Fran Liebowitz in which she expressed incredulity at overhearing a woman ask her young child what he wanted to eat for dinner.  She suggested that spinach or brussels sprouts should have been the only choices offered, since that would have more accurately prepared the child for life, which is basically an extended series of choices between spinach or brussels sprouts.  I doubt that my nephew Zack is ever forced to eat brussels sprouts, or that he will be forced to learn to play the piano, or to memorize poems to recite at family gatherings.  I doubt that he will ever even be asked to make his parents proud.  I think most children of upper-middle class Manhattan families are repeatedly told how special and wonderful they are, and that they can be whatever they put their hearts and minds to, as they relax in their $600 strollers.  Lying is an integral part of the new parenting.

I do know a non-heterosexual couple who is raising their twin children in a more old-fashioned manner, sort of like the Von Trapps before Maria arrived.  I once went to their apartment for a Christmas Eve reception, and I witnessed the two children eating fish and potatoes with knives and forks, and using cloth napkins (they were two-years-old).  Before they went up to bed, they had to say goodbye to each adult and to give him or her a kiss on the cheek -- a charming custom -- even though a former coworker gave me a book called Polite Society at Home and Abroad, written by Mrs. Annie R. White and published in 1891, which states:

We have seen a family of children compelled to pass the ordeal of kissing every guest in a room when it was the hour for retiring.  It is a senseless custom, and means nothing.  It often creates disgust on both sides.  Children do not like to kiss every one, and many adults are not fond of saluting the little ones in this manner.

Still, I admired my friends for making their kids do this.

Of course, I have mixed feelings about wanting a son (or daughter) and heir.  Overpopulation is the cause of most of our environmental problems, so creating a child from scratch seems to be not so carbon neutral.  And, although it is horrible to view human beings like a tradable good, it has crossed my mind that even adoption ends up creating a demand for new children, in the same way that choosing a certain kind of apple at the grocery store can increase the production of that kind of apple.  But I am aware that it is terrible to talk about human beings in that way, just as my college genetics professor Richard Levin once stopped himself from using people in an example, citing the legacy of the Holocaust.  In any case, the world is so awful now, is it really a good idea to facilitate any new arrivals?  I can feel so overwhelmed with despair when reading or participating in the comments section of Joe.My.God, or catching a glimpse of "The Daily Ten" on the E! network, or seeing an episode of "A Shot at Love with Thien Thanh Thi Nguyen".  All these are the beginning of sorrows.

I have another fear about parenting; it is in opposition to everything I have written here.  The main reason I maintain an affiliation with Christianity is its focus on love.  Love seems to be unique among all commodities: we have infinite amounts to give, yet the smallest drop can satisfy.  Father Alfred Boeddeker, the founder of the Franciscan social service agency I worked for in San Francisco after college, said, “I see God as one act—just loving, like the sun always shining.”

I had always thought of the love of a parent for a child as being the closest thing to this divine love -- unconditional and always shining.  Romantic love, on the other hand, is destructive and selfish.  At least one party is destined for a broken heart.  What has romantic love ever brought the world, other than war, murder, suicide and most literature, music, and art?

Only relatively recently, with the birth of my nephew, did I realize that the love of parent for child involves heartbreak too.  The love that one feels for one's child can cause panic and heartache a million times worse than the discovery of a lover's betrayal.  When you love someone so much you will do anything at all to protect them -- including sacrificing your own life -- this may be beautiful and wonderful and what life is ultimately all about, but it is also completely terrifying.

 

I did not know that.

Comments

[R J Keefe]

And to think how parental protectiveness is matched by the very healthy child's conviction that protection isn't necessary. (Most of the time.)

[Huntington]

You're lucky you didn't know that growing up, Sheepy. I did. My mother, while not overprotective (this was the '70s, in the country), often showed how terrified she was by the utter love she felt for us kids. I don't think she did us a favor, because I still tend to equate most kinds of deep love with deep fear.

[Birdie]

I have recently read an article about "raising adults" instead of raising children; the idea is to make them self-sufficient instead of self-centered. Not a new idea, but well worth remembering in this day when so many parents forget that a family must be run by the adults.

Speaking as a mother, I can say that if giving up my life would save my child, it is an easy decision that requires no thought whatsoever. Yes, it is different than romantic love; and yes, both can break your heart. But the difference with the love for a child is that, no matter what, that love never fades. The power that a child holds on your heart is like no other. And it doesn't matter how terrifying it may be.

As you watch your nephew grow, you'll feel it too. That powerful love isn't restricted to parents, you know. Or, you will know. And your heart will fill.

[Jeffrey]

Your voice comes through so powerfully in your writing but I bet it would be a real pleasure to be able to listen to you speak these words and hear your inflection, pacing, and emphasis.

[TED]

I am not so sure that allowing children to do whatever they want and raising them to think they can be whatever they want is such a bad thing, at least for the people who are doing it. I don't think it's at all a new phenomenon: it's simply that what was once a habit of the upper classes is now the habit of the upper middle class as well. I was raised in the lower middle class, and when I got to college and then in the working world, I was amazed at the sense of entitlement that my colleagues from wealthier families arrived with. These people were odious, but they mostly became highly successful, largely on the basis of attitude rather than ability.

I sometimes worry that while my children seem to have grown up/ to be growing up with a fair amount of self-confidence, they have no sense of entitlement, and they may therefore be somewhat less successful in capitalist America. On the other hand, they're happy and not at all odious, so there's that.

I cannot say that parenting has been an especially terrifying prospect, but it is certainly heartbreaking. If you do a good job raising a child to be self-reliant, she will at some point leave home to start her own life. Worse, she'll be thrilled about it, at the same time you're thinking that her leaving is the worst thing ever.

[Boomer]

Speaking as someone who was "raised as an adult," as Birdie mentioned, by parents who, though loving, did not want children to interfere with their lives, I would suggest that there is a big downside to this school of thought.

My parents got 4 highly successful, independent and productive yet highly neurotic (desparate to please and receive positive attention) children as a result.

[Aaron]

I think the best reason to have a child is because you want one. As long as the other reasons are corollary to that, all is fine.

Having children that you don't want is the problem. (Or those that you decide that you do not want later.)

You might be ready to be a father. Somewhere in Heaven, the souls of Baby Frankl and Baby Shlomo Sheep are waiting to be made flesh on Earth.

[Jason]

I second Aaron. A pure desire for a child whether genetically linked to you or not maybe as strong as to fulfill one's own calling in coming to the world. Of course, it complicates when that simple desire is added/burdened by other "needs", "purposes" and projected personal plans- those that would make the kid growing up sensing that the parent, however giving, has a seed of selfishness embedded in the raising. Hence, the cycle returns: the child will and must leave "home," go through rebellion, wishing to redeem parental imperfections, awakening, and the rest is history.
Perhaps there is no need to downplay the significance of "romantic love". After all, it's often the very beginning or cause of culminating a bodily existence in the world for the arrival of another mind/spiritual being. Romance does fade and that's ok. All children will surely assert their "independence" and defiance one day and that's also ok. These are "relationships" in the world: parents to offspring, lovers/spouses, authority figures to subordinates, siblings and non-blood related friendships. Love is seeing beyond all the transient special relationships in the world, and continues giving willfully, but gladly and always with that refreshing timeless kick.