I love kids. I just couldn't eat a whole one. Isn't that how the joke goes? Or at least, it's the sort of comment a childless (or child-free as we like to be called) might make, accompanied by a nervous giggle when asked if they're intending to procreate. Because it's an awkward thing to admit, that you don't want a child of your own, so best add a bit of humour to your response just to show that you're not really dead inside like everybody thinks.
That's if anybody's really interested these days. I've read so many magazine and newspaper articles where a child-free person is rolled out to tell "my side of the story", about how they've been persecuted by their peer group for not wanting to join them in child-raising Hell and how people tut at them in the bus queue and throw fruit at them in the supermarket for having these wild, uncontrollably heretic views. Yet I haven't experienced much of this myself (and if I'm honest I'm mildly disappointed that I haven't; what's the point of having a 'controversial' point of view if nobody actually thinks of it as controversial?); just a malleable "fair enough" whenever I've stated, when asked, my intention never to have children.
That's not to say I haven't had the odd comment, and as I get older these are becoming more frequent. Such comments range from the harmless "but you'd make a great mother" and "Jon (my husband) would be great as a Dad - it'd be a shame not to" to the not-so-harmless "you drink so much black coffee, it's no wonder you're barren" (courtesy of my Nan) and a mother-of-three I'd only just met at the gym who snippily asked me if not having children made me "more selfish".
The "more selfish" thing is an excuse, granted. I think a lot of people do assume you're probably more selfish if you don't fulfil your biological imperative, especially if you're a woman. But is it our only biological imperative, to have children and then do nothing? Some people do appear to think so. I watched a documentary about teenage mums on TV once. It made me sad; not because these teenage lives were being ruined, but because it was clear that they felt there were no other options available to them other than becoming mothers. It was as though they now had the perfect answer for anybody who asked them "what are you doing with your life?" There was almost tangible relief that these mothers could now absent themselves from life's Big Questions simply by defining themselves as parents. Because it's what we're all supposed to be doing, isn't it? It's the stock, thoughtless answer to the "why are we here?" question - "well it's to procreate and continue the human race of course!" that renders the lives of the infertile, the homosexual and anybody with imagination utterly useless.
That said, I do think parents are amazing people. They do a job I could never do in a million years, full of wall-to-wall tedium and tantrums, as I see it, with the end result a lottery no matter how much care and attention is put into the parenting. Most of the parents I know handle all this admirably; in fact I'm full of wonder at exactly how they manage it. My Dad brought up my sisters and I practically single-handedly and I still don't quite know how he did it. I'm not sure he does, either. Maybe the key to good parenting is just taking each day as it comes; not thinking too far ahead. I think that if I were ever to become a parent myself, I'd spend half my life in a comatose state.
Tolstoy once wrote "People who do nothing must make people, the rest of us must fill their lives with happiness and enlightenment" I don't agree that parents do nothing except "make people", but I like his quote for the simple reason that it allows the child-free a real purpose in life.
No comments:
Post a Comment