Modern societies are pretty
much in agreement on this score:
having children is one of the most meaningful and
delightful moves anyone can make. Couples who do
not – for whatever reason – have children tend
to be automatically almost universally pitied and
are assumed to have been denied the chance to have
offspring by biology. That one might freely choose
not to have children, and yet be reasonably
content with one’s choice, remains one of the
most disturbing and unfathomed of all modern
positions.
The basic dynamics of whether or not to have
children follow the very same pattern that we see
across a range of other so-called great choices
in emotional life: whether or not to get married,
whether or not to stay faithful, whether to follow
the path of reason or the calls of the heart…We
observe a very strong desire to try to identify
the ‘right’ choice accompanied by a frighteningly
utopian belief that, once this choice has been
located, we will be able to flourish and find
peace.But the reality is very different, much more
sombre and more interesting: the large dilemmas of
emotional life generally have no ‘answer’ in the
sense of a response that doesn’t – somewhere along
the line – entail a great loss and an element of
extraordinary sacrifice. Whatever we choose will,
in this sense, be wrong, and leave us regretting
some features of the choices we did not make.
There is no such thing as a cost-free choice,
a line of argument which continues (oddly) to
create surprise in contemporary life. Making a good
choice simply involves focusing on what variety of
suffering we are best suited to – rather than
aiming with utopian zeal to try to avoid grief
and regret altogether. Consider, for example,
the varieties of suffering that are on offer
on both sides of the faithful/unfaithful ledger:
both options will at moments be very miserable,
so – when weighing up how to lead our lives – we
should work on knowing as much as possible about
our specific taste in misery.
Let’s look at a table; Monogamy:
the Misery, a Sense of Confinement, a Correct
impression that ‘life is elsewhere’, Irritability,
Narrow horizons, Sexual abandonment,
What about on the other side: Mulitple partners. What will be the misery there?
There will be chaos, angry ex’s, loneliness long term, Damaged children, Guilt. The very same
kind of trade-offs exist over the question of
children. No honest experience of parenting
is complete without an intermittent very strong
impression that in some ways children are both the
meaning of one’s life and the cause of the ruin
of one’s life. Children: the Misery Disappointment
with oneself as a parent, Disappointment with how
they turn out, Guilt, exhaustion, lost opportunity
Sense of perpetuating human suffering,
House sticky everywhere. What about no Children:
What’s the Misery there? Society’s constant message that one has ‘missed out’ Loneliness/boredom Lack of constant
distraction/calls on one’s time… Sentimental
longing for comfort of children by the time one reaches the nursing home.
The insight that all choices are, in a sense,
hellish, was best expressed by the early 19th
century Danish Existential philosopher Soren
Kierkegaard, who summed up our options in a
playful, but bleakly realistic and exasperated
outburst in his masterpiece, “Either/Or”:
“Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you
will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you
will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s
foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it,
you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s
foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both.
Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe
her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself,
you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you
will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang
yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether
you hang yourself or do not hang yourself,
you will regret both. This, gentlemen,
is the essence of all philosophy.”
We deserve pity – as does everyone
else. We will make disastrous decisions,
we will form mistaken relationships, we will
embark on misguided careers, we will invest
our savings foolishly, we will spend years
on friendships with unreliable idiots – and
we will get it mostly wrong around children.
But we can we be consoled by a bitter truth:
there are no painless options, for the
conditions of existence are intrinsically
rather than accidentally frustrating. We can’t
get through the tunnel of life without a mauling.
For those of us contemplating whether or not to
have children, the message is dark but consoling
in its bleakness: you will be at points very
unhappy whatever you choose. With either option,
you will feel that you have ruined your life – and
you will be correct. We do not need to add to our
misery by insisting that there would have been
another, better way. There is, curiously, relief
to be found in the knowledge of the inevitability
of suffering. It is, in the end, never darkness
that dooms us, but the wrong sort of hope in
that most cruel of fantasies: ‘the right choice’.
