More debate on broodiness
Jun. 17th, 2015 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
djpsycheMainly in case ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ford_prefect42 doesn't come back to my previous post.
"I kinda figure that everyone has an inborn compulsion to reproduce. It's kinda evolutionary."
It's an interesting theory and I'd like to pick it apart.
If you could define "an inborn compulsion to reproduce" as "a curiosity as to what their offspring would look/be like," then yeah, I do think that everyone has probably pondered on this at some point in their lives.
The fact is that I am an exception. I have no compulsion to reproduce; never have. Only a few moments in my life has a viable argument in favour of breeding entered my head:
- Once, in my late 30s, when it occurred to me that having children is the only means of preserving any bit of one's youth and vitality.
- Once when I felt a tinge of regret that my musical talent wouldn't be passed on to any future generations.
But those arguments were quickly overruled by logic: In the first case, I reasoned that this was as may be, but still didn't make all the downsides worthwhile; in the second case, I realised that there was no guarantee any child of mine would be musically talented, and in the split second thereafter I realised that this is where so many parents go wrong -- having expectations for kids that aren't even born yet, and who inevitably disappoint them by not exhibiting the combination of inherited traits the parents desired.
What Bill's question prompted me to ask myself was: If I were male, would his theory apply to me? In other words, do I actually possess an "inborn compulsion to reproduce" which has been decisively overruled by my stronger desire to not go through pregnancy and childbirth?
In my two previous long-term relationships, my male partners have expressed the desire to have kids. Easy for them to say, was my reaction. But I loved my grown-up partner enough that I actually considered whether there were any conditions under which I'd be willing to become a parent, for their sake. The absolute conditions on this would have been: I don't have to give birth (so adoption); we could skip the earliest, neediest years, before the kid could communicate verbally and use the toilet on its own (so adopting an older child); and they, not me, would be the primary caregiver. In other words, I could never be a mum, but perhaps I could be a dad. In the end the deciding factor was that even if all of my conditions for parenthood were met, if anything happened to my (actual or hypothetical) partner, I'd end up being a single parent to a child I never actually wanted. And no child deserves that. So thus ended the thought exercise.
A hypothetical "inborn compulsion to reproduce" could be overruled by other factors besides not wanting to endure pregnancy and childbirth. For instance, there's the cynic's argument of not wanting to bring a child into a world which is facing imminent ecological and economic devastation. There's also the survivor-of-abuse argument; some people's parents were so horrible as to put them off even the idea of ever being a parent themselves. These motivations are not gender-specific. I've known people in both categories, and am firmly in the first camp myself. Are these motivators sufficient to override the "inborn compulsion", or are they evidence that this "inborn compulsion" is in no way universal?
Because it's really hard to overrule actual inborn compulsions. Look at people who are gay and try to suppress it, for instance. If people were actively suppressing a compulsion to breed, rather than just not having one in the first place, then pretty much everyone would at some point change their mind about having kids, or regret missing their chance. And not everyone does. So no, I think the existence of people who are truly happily child-free into old age disproves the theory.
Counter arguments?
ford_prefect42 doesn't come back to my previous post."I kinda figure that everyone has an inborn compulsion to reproduce. It's kinda evolutionary."
It's an interesting theory and I'd like to pick it apart.
If you could define "an inborn compulsion to reproduce" as "a curiosity as to what their offspring would look/be like," then yeah, I do think that everyone has probably pondered on this at some point in their lives.
The fact is that I am an exception. I have no compulsion to reproduce; never have. Only a few moments in my life has a viable argument in favour of breeding entered my head:
- Once, in my late 30s, when it occurred to me that having children is the only means of preserving any bit of one's youth and vitality.
- Once when I felt a tinge of regret that my musical talent wouldn't be passed on to any future generations.
But those arguments were quickly overruled by logic: In the first case, I reasoned that this was as may be, but still didn't make all the downsides worthwhile; in the second case, I realised that there was no guarantee any child of mine would be musically talented, and in the split second thereafter I realised that this is where so many parents go wrong -- having expectations for kids that aren't even born yet, and who inevitably disappoint them by not exhibiting the combination of inherited traits the parents desired.
What Bill's question prompted me to ask myself was: If I were male, would his theory apply to me? In other words, do I actually possess an "inborn compulsion to reproduce" which has been decisively overruled by my stronger desire to not go through pregnancy and childbirth?
In my two previous long-term relationships, my male partners have expressed the desire to have kids. Easy for them to say, was my reaction. But I loved my grown-up partner enough that I actually considered whether there were any conditions under which I'd be willing to become a parent, for their sake. The absolute conditions on this would have been: I don't have to give birth (so adoption); we could skip the earliest, neediest years, before the kid could communicate verbally and use the toilet on its own (so adopting an older child); and they, not me, would be the primary caregiver. In other words, I could never be a mum, but perhaps I could be a dad. In the end the deciding factor was that even if all of my conditions for parenthood were met, if anything happened to my (actual or hypothetical) partner, I'd end up being a single parent to a child I never actually wanted. And no child deserves that. So thus ended the thought exercise.
A hypothetical "inborn compulsion to reproduce" could be overruled by other factors besides not wanting to endure pregnancy and childbirth. For instance, there's the cynic's argument of not wanting to bring a child into a world which is facing imminent ecological and economic devastation. There's also the survivor-of-abuse argument; some people's parents were so horrible as to put them off even the idea of ever being a parent themselves. These motivations are not gender-specific. I've known people in both categories, and am firmly in the first camp myself. Are these motivators sufficient to override the "inborn compulsion", or are they evidence that this "inborn compulsion" is in no way universal?
Because it's really hard to overrule actual inborn compulsions. Look at people who are gay and try to suppress it, for instance. If people were actively suppressing a compulsion to breed, rather than just not having one in the first place, then pretty much everyone would at some point change their mind about having kids, or regret missing their chance. And not everyone does. So no, I think the existence of people who are truly happily child-free into old age disproves the theory.
Counter arguments?
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Date: 2015-06-18 10:05 am (UTC)Except that describing every exception as "an exception", and insisting on the rule, is not a neutral act. It's actively making it harder for exceptions to exist, and creating an imperative for people who might well be exceptions in a neutral environment to go along with the flow. If you've got people who are determined to reproduce at six, and people who are absolutely definitely hostile to the idea of reproducing at 0, and equal numbers at every point in between, you're lumping 6-1 together, isolating the 0s, and making it harder for anyone in the low numbers to say, "Actually, I don't think I..." Confirmation bias like woah.
Go back a hundred years, and it's easy to argue that lesbians, or women who simply don't want to be dependent on men, exist but are "an exception to the rule". Being an exception to that rule is an exceptionally hard and difficult path of constant uphill struggle. It most likely means poverty and risk of violence. You have to really, really want to be independent from men to adopt a single life, or to really, really desire women, to make it worth the risk and sacrifice.
Fast forward a hundred years, and it turns out that once it's a fairly common pathway and reasonably well-protected, and women can be educated and compete in the workplace on equal-ish terms to men and own property in their own right, actually a pretty substantial minority think that sounds pretty good. Change the dates and you can make exactly the same argument about people who are happy to fit into a cis male/female gender binary and people who aren't being minor "exceptions" and effectively ignorable.
In a context where you are insisting that "most people want X", and the minority who don't are swimming upstream, you're defining other people's experience. It's not very cool.
(I have a baby. I would say I'm at 5 or 6 on the wanting-a-child scale: I am in a gay relationship, and I wanted a child enough to jump through MANY hoops to get one, and if I lived in a society where that wasn't possible I'd almost certainly have made sure I ended up in a relationship with a man because I'd prioritise having a child. I can't imagine what it's like to not want to have a child. But I believe people who tell me they don't because Jesus they know the insides of their heads better than I do and I really do hate the idea of "biological imperatives".)