Posted 9:39 AM by Blah blah

Should We All Have Children? (Thoughtful)

Salon.com just printed a provocative series of essays about wanting to have kids and whether we all need to or not. They make many good points. Why do most of us declare a desire for children anyway? Some people are really not suited or inclined to be parents. They'd rather be off travelling for their job or focusing on their spouse. For some couples, unhappiness and financial ruin arrive with the birth of their child, and the homes of divorce or constant arguing that result seem the worst environments in which to raise one. One of my college friends from Taiwan always told me she didn't want to be a mom, and her husband shared that childless view when he married her. Kiki is firm about not wanting kids. With what she's gone through in an unusual life in the U.S. and Thailand, I agree it's for the best.

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1. To breed or not to breed:

Studies show that couples who choose not to have children are happier than those who do. So quit leaning on me to spawn....

It turns out that people who choose not to have children (as opposed to those who desperately want to have children, but can't) tend to have better marriages, better finances, less stress, and are no more likely to be unhappy in old age than parents. Most people, and especially most women, have a physiological yearning to reproduce, whatever the costs, and are glad they did. Yet being born free of that desire can be a gift.

"Some women really do love mothering," says Madelyn Cain, author of The Childless Revolution: What It Means to Be Childless Today. "I happen to be one of them. I love being a mother. It's the greatest joy of my life, but what makes me happy and brings me fulfillment doesn't necessarily make everyone else happy."

The notion that different people have different desires shouldn't be a difficult one, but when it comes to motherhood, many people can't get their heads around it. Even Cain had trouble at first. She began The Childless Revolution in part because she was angered by the dismissive way her childless friends were treated, and because she was struck by the newfound social acceptance she experienced when she had her first baby at 39. Yet part of her still believed that "deep down every woman wanted to be a mother," a misconception undone by the more than 100 interviews she did for her book.

What she discovered was that choice, not motherhood, is the real key to happiness. Cain divides the women in her book into three groups -- those who affirmatively decide not to have children, those who can't have children, and those for whom circumstances never align to make motherhood happen. Citing her own interviews as well as books like Elaine Campbell's "The Childless Marriage: An Exploratory Study of Couples Who Do Not Want Children," Elaine Tyler May's "Barren in the Promised Land: Childless Americans and the Pursuit of Happiness," and Marion Faux's "Childless by Choice: Choosing Childlessness in the Eighties," Cain says, "The ones who decide they don't want children, they don't regret it."

Cain has come to believe that lack of interest in childbearing might be biological, like being gay. "Researchers have found that within mice there is a gene, the Mest gene. When it was in place in mice, and the mouse gave birth, it was a nurturing mother. When the mouse was Mest-deficient, it was a non-nurturing mouse. I think down the line we're going to discover that just as homosexuality is something that's physical, the same thing will be discovered about women. Why do some women melt at the sight of babies while other women are indifferent? It would seem to me it's something innate."

That's why Cain says women who don't want kids should ignore the well-meaning advice they're often bombarded with. "Don't second-guess yourself," she says. "Trust your instincts."

That might seem obvious, but the strange thing about being a woman without much interest in mothering is that many people you love and admire will tell you not to trust your instincts. Motherhood, they say, is, for all its struggles, an experience of such ineffable joy that those who've done it can't imagine life without it. Motherhood evangelists have a store of conversion stories. Either they, or someone they know intimately, had once been like me, cherishing their independence and impatient with children. But when bathed by the blissful hormones that accompany procreation, they saw the light and now their lives are richer and more meaningful than they ever thought possible. They say those who haven't parented can't even begin to comprehend its radiant satisfactions.

People do not behave this way about other pleasures. I enjoy sex with men, but don't go about badgering lesbians to see what they're missing....

"The happy people are the ones who wanted kids and had them or didn't want kids and didn't have them."

This is true even in old age, a time when many assume the childless will suffer alone while their peers are comforted by grandchildren. Tanya Koropeckyj-Cox, a sociology professor at the University of Florida who researches aging, recently completed a study based on surveys of 3,800 men and women between the ages of 50 and 84. "For years we have heard warnings that if you don't have children, you will regret it later," she said in a press release. "But beliefs about childlessness leading to a lonely old age are simply not supported by our study." In a previous report published in 1998, Koropeckyj-Cox concluded that there is "no significant differences in loneliness and depression between parents and childless adults."

Besides, what some parents gain in intimacy with their children, they lose in intimacy with their partners. Hanson says, "Research has shown that on the average the greatest challenge to a couple is becoming parents. Many marriages hold together for a few years when the child is young, but they've been strained beyond repair by everything that comes from having kids and the couple divorces, maybe by the time the kid reaches first grade. Some people think they will save their relationship by having children. It almost never happens." He cites a study by John Gottman, a renowned expert on marriage at the University of Washington, which estimates that couples have eight times more arguments after becoming parents. Hanson says he's seen this in his life as well as his practice. "Many couples overcome all this and having children brings them closer together. That's certainly true for my wife and myself. But during the early years -- our kids are now 15 and almost 13 -- boy, we quarreled and were emotionally distant and troubled in our marriage like we'd never been. We argued about all the issues that new parents commonly argue about -- how to raise the children, who is doing more, the inevitable lack of time for an intimate relationship."

Cain reprints one of those 1975 letters sent to Ann Landers in her book: "I am 40, and my husband is 45. We have twin children under 8 years of age. I was an attractive, fulfilled career woman before I had these kids. Now I'm an overly exhausted nervous wreck who misses her job and sees very little of her husband. He's got a 'friend,' I'm sure, and I don't blame him. Our children took all the romance out of our marriage. I'm too tired for sex, conversation or anything."

Such alienation is less likely when people don't have children. "Statistics show childless couples are happier," Cain says. "Their lives are self-directed, they have a better chance of intimacy, and they do not have the stresses, financial and emotional, of parenthood."

This assessment is shared by Shari Bennet-Speer, a 34-year-old corporate trainer in Richmond, Va. The decision not to have children, she says, "has absolutely 100 percent" improved her relationship with Geoffrey, her husband of 12 years.

Bennet-Speer says she'd never been very interested in children, but had assumed she'd have them because "that's what you do, get married and have kids." When she met her husband and he told her he didn't want to be a father, it hit her that parenthood was a choice, and she didn't have to choose it. "It sounded perfect to me," she says. "I truly was fine with [not having kids] as soon as he suggested it as a possibility."

"My husband and I are madly in love," she adds. "We hold hands, we cuddle in movies, we take long walks, we talk late into the night, we road trip every anniversary, just to celebrate our time together. We get to live spontaneously and we get to make life choices that are important to us. There are not many people who've made our choice, but I've never regretted it."

2. No baby on board: Why being an environmentalist prevents me from being a mom

3. Mama don't preach: I love my new baby, but don't worry -- I'm not going to tell you to have one.

4. It's not in our nature to nurture: Most people have a powerful wish, a yearning, for children. My wife and I don't.

5. Parenting on a dare: I had a child at 16 because I wanted to prove the world wrong. I was going to raise an extraordinary daughter and still live my life the way I pleased.

6. "I love my son, and I hate him." To breed or not to breed: A struggling mother and three other readers tell their stories.