I was looking for a new doctor, my GP having retired. It was my first attempt, with a female doctor in the same practice, and I’ll never forget our first (and last) appointment.
After several familiar questions to establish my medical history, she asked, “How many children?”
“None.”
She double-checked my age, then put down her pencil and frowned at me. “Is there something wrong with you, or, like, are you just really selfish?”
Don’t remember what I said back, but I aimed for “coldly polite,” and I searched for another doctor as soon as I got home.
Is there something wrong with me? Not physically, no. I have never financially felt stable enough to support a child, until, well, recently, and then I needed to put those thoughts on hold to help someone dear to me, my niece, who I have now adopted as my child.
Throughout the custody proceedings, my sister kept saying, “But she never wanted children!” as if that was an argument against me.
Am I selfish? It’s true that being childless has given me more time to focus on writing and my career, to make myself financially stable. I haven’t had to deal with the myriad medical problems of pregnancy. Yet I do give money and time helping other people’s children, babysitting, tutoring at-risk youth, donating to youth programs, paying my fair taxes, voting for every school levy– so no, I don’t think my lack of having children is driven by selfishness.
People have children for selfish reasons: to propagate their genes, to propagate their values and opinions. My sister said she wanted to have a child “so that someone loves ME unconditionally.” Talk about selfish!
Also that is rather… the opposite of reality? It’s the parent who must love unconditionally; a child’s love is allowed to be selfish as it grows. We were still kids when we had this conversation, I could have been around 12? I remember asking her, “Do you love MOM unconditionally?”
And she scowled. “Of course not, but for me it’ll be different; I’m going to be a GOOD parent.”
(Good parent, in this case, included not enrolling her child in school for months, not letting me take her to the dentist, other forms of neglect, abuse, and finally standing in court and claiming she did nothing wrong because “she was a bad kid.”)
When I was still a child, I learned about the overpopulation problem, and though I had enjoyed playing with baby dolls and always saw myself as a someday-mother, I started to think that it would be selfish to add to the problem. When I said this casually to a woman I babysit for, she gasped, “But we have to have children. It’s our duty because we’re educated.”
I stared at her, wondering how “high school junior” made me “educated”? And I was pretty sure she hadn’t gone to college?
I would learn later that “educated” is a dogwhistle for “white.” She was arguing for white people having babies, seeing overpopulation through a racist lens. GROSS. If you’re having kids so that “your side” has a numerical advantage that is the height of selfishnessl you don’t love humanity or children, you love yourself as reflected in people like yourself. Also: gross.
Having a child is a commitment to putting that person first, until they are able to live independently. Nothing of mine is too precious to sacrifice for my child’s comfort, be it my time, my work, my home. Part of my not having a child before was my awareness of this weighty cost, and I think that’s true of many childless people I know.
I was also aware that my genes carried Schizophrenia. Until I reached 35, I couldn’t be sure I wouldn’t succumb to the disease that defined so much of my mother’s life, a disease that hit her after my birth, and rendered her unable to care for me. Would I be unable to care for my child? Then, well, I was playing football, and I had Crohn’s disease, which landed me in the hospital for almost a year and a half, and there went my thirties?
The point is: some people end up not having kids even if they want to. Maybe their partner doesn’t want children. Life gets in the way. That’s okay, too.
Children need aunts and uncles. Having your own kids takes your time away from your niblings. So much of what made me a well-adjusted adult despite a schizophrenic mother and irascible father was a wide range of friendly adults sharing the load, both parental siblings and avuncular friends, providing role models and care.
Which is all to say: Don’t judge people for being childless by choice. Rejoice in the additional aunties and uncles they are providing the world. (We need a gender-neutral word for parent-sibling? Any ideas?)
