Death by children

Another interesting op-ed.

Some people (notably my mother) wonder why I don't want kids. I think this kind of article is why. So much literature and popular media is aimed at stressed-out parents who are looking for anywhere and everywhere to save money, save time, stay young, and keep their relationship alive. Parents, their eyes ringed with sleep-deprivation circles and looking rather pale, will tell you that child-rearing is a lot of work, requires great energy and sacrifice, but is "worth it." I have to wonder.

How much of it is simply a combination of biological drive with fending off cognitive dissonance? What if you had a child and allowed yourself the thought that "god...this isn't worth it." Can you even imagine it? Could you go on if you allowed yourself that thought? It's not like you can pay an early-termination fee and get out of the whole child contract thing. You have to think it's worth it to keep going. Along the other path madness lies.

It just seems like you have to give up everything...absolutely everything...to be a parent. There are those detestable yuppies who don't, for whom children are simply part of an image and a conversation piece, who aggressively pursue hollow careers as some stranger is paid to care for their poor latch-key offspring. Offspring who then, we might note, have to find emotional fulfillment in one or all of alcohol, sex, drugs, academic or business achievement, or materialism. And thus the dysfunctional cycle of life continues.

But if you do everything for your children...be there emotionally for them, provide for them, fight all the fights of rearing a child like finding schools, finding health care, etc. etc. etc., you have no more life. You work to support your child, and any remaining time is spent with the child. And hence all the media and marketing attention gets paid to reclaiming small bits of your former individual existence.

It just seems so depressing. One of my greatest fears is to find myself locked in a suburban existence with my 2.3 children, a wallet-pinching mortgage, and a marriage that has become so utterly lifeless as to be more like an uneasy business alliance on the joint venture of The Children than anything resembling an emotionally fulfilling, passionate union of two people. It makes me feel hollow inside just thinking about it.

Maybe it would be different if I liked children. No one believes me that, basically, I don't. Generally I find them annoying and self-centered. Not that children aren't supposed to be self-centered. I understand that's how they're supposed to be. It is Good and Right to be self-centered as a child since you can't provide for yourself and have to call the attention of others to your needs. Doesn't mean I have to enjoy being around them.

I just have this unavoidable feeling that people tend to try to find the emotional fulfillment in their lives through children that they haven't found in their careers, which is, imho, stupid. It's idiotic to believe that there is something you can achieve in your business or academic career that will bring you contentment...and yet, so many people around me seem to believe that is true. They work their asses off for...something. And the something is different for each person. But the philosophers of the world have been telling us for thousands upon thousands of years that there is no goal, at least in this world, that having achieved it will bring you inner peace. It's a cliche that is nonetheless true: the journey is the important part, not the destination. And yet people continue to delude themselves into thinking the destination is at all relevent, that things will somehow be better when you get "there," despite the fact that if you force them to look back on their lives, it is inescapably the case that there were many "there"s in their life, and they were no closer to personal fulfillment upon achieving any of them.

People are dumb and don't learn from their own experiences.

Unfortunately, it is also the case that the vast majority of the world cannot get satisfaction from their work per se. Note I say cannot rather than do not. It is a great myth of management that everyone can find satisfaction in their work if only they try. Bullshit, and particularly insidious bullshit at that. Americans are the only ones who are deluded enough to believe that who you are as a person is defined by the way you earn a living. If we made public policy that acknowledged this basic fact, I think a lot more people would have better lives.

That's why I find it particularly frightening that people look to child-rearing as the answer to finding meaning that they can't find in their occupation. What a vicious circle that creates. Your job leaves you hollow, so you have children, which utterly drain you, forcing you to work harder at your job to provide for them, so you see your children less, etc. etc. etc. Horrifying. Find fulfillment elsewhere. Find a way to express yourself, and find something to do that you enjoy just the process of doing. There's so much to do and see in the world that costs so little in terms of money, effort, and time.

I dunno...maybe work in the modern world is becoming so onerous that you have to have something so major and so positive in your life so as to justify what you have to put yourself through anyway in order to survive. That just feels like an argument that feeds on itself to me. Children demand more work to support them. Work demands more children to make up for the emotional gap created by the workload. And so on. It feels like an addiction mentality.

We just have such a child-centered culture. And consequently, a marriage-centered culture. It's no wonder that the rate of infidelity is so high. I don't advocate mindless hedonism, but damned if I don't think people would be a hell of a lot happier if they would just quit spending all their time compiling building blocks of some illusory future gratification and spend some of that energy on things that actively bring them joy. There's no reason everybody needs to have so many goddamn mid-life crises. I know it's an utter and insulting oversimplification to say "follow your bliss" as Campbell is famous for saying, because there is a certain inescapable core hardship to life unless your particular bliss happens to pay well, but nonetheless fucking find things that make you happy. Slaves found joy in music and singing; the poor and destitute can find happiness in storytelling and the company of others...I guarantee that with a little work you can maneuver yourself into a situation that you find at least tolerable and allows you some respectable portion of your life to go running with your bliss every so often.

I just think in my particular case having to change a shit-filled diaper isn't going to help me find that bliss. It costs millions of dollars to raise a child. It only costs me about $10 in gas to go watch the sun set over the waves of the Pacific ocean while listening to the surf lapping against the shore. Guess which one makes me truly, soulfully happy?

I don't give a shit whether I leave a legacy or not. The world is welcome to forget me when I'm gone. I have no need to pass on my genes. Fuck 'em. I am more important than my genetic code. Evolution endowed me with some degree of self-awareness and self-determination. I choose to care about me rather than my DNA or anything about me that might persist beyond my existence itself. To care about such things is to try to find external validation, and if you think your happiness depends on external validation, you're already fucked.

(case in point, I really don't give a shit whether anyone reads this. :) I enjoy the process of having to write these little rants. If they happen to entertain anyone else, hey, all the better...)