"Now I'm a breeder!"

--The Monkees (modified)

I will not bear, breed, spore, or hatch.

Damn it. Do you want to know why? That's why I wrote this, so you'd know. Actually I wrote this as a compendium for myself. When I hear some horror story about parenthood, I randomly number it as an nth reason not to have children. I should keep track of those reasons; I know I have more than one hundred but I might have more than one thousand by now and should generate higher numbers accordingly.

I like children

Ask any of them.

I do not want to have any children

Ask any of them.

Another story about my mother

When she invited herself out to Denver in 1996, we trekked up to Wyoming to see her first cousin and her family. My mother and her cousin were very close when they were young and have seen each other I think once since Joan and her family moved west in the early '80s. So of course we visited--although I understand that my mother called Joan first to ask and did not simply call and announce that she was coming on this date and hoped it would be convenient, as she'd done to me.

Joan has two sons, both younger than CLH and I, both married, both married for longer than I, and one had a child by this time. Or should I say, a grandchild, because that was clearly the comparison drawn. On this day fell the grandchild's birthday and there was a small fête: the parents and child of course, the uncle and aunt, both sets of grandparents, some of the parents' friends, and my mother and I. So the air was fecund with the asked and the unasked about CLH's being single, RDC and my parental plans, the obvious tension between my mother and me (especially in contrast to my second cousins' joshing with their parents and in-laws).

I was on my best behavior with the cousins, and I liked them, particularly Joan and her husband and the younger son and his wife Helen (who had not yet produced a grandchild). My mother and I were not, as ever, on our best behavior with each other, and my mother found opportunity when we were alone with Joan and Helen to remark upon my "claim" that I'm not going to have children. Joan turned to me with a slight smile and asked, in a voice layered with implications, "Don't you think you owe your mother grandchildren, Lisa?"

I balked. My best behavior does not include conceding my mother's stupid ideas, as replying in any other manner but heartfelt honesty would have meant (to me). So I replied with honesty and bitterness, both heartfelt. Honest about my answer and bitter about others' expectations about me. And sarcastic in vocabulary.

"No, I don't think I owe my mother grandchildren. In fact I think that to have a child out of a feeling of obligation must be one of the most immoral reasons to spore. The main but not sole reason I don't want to have children is that I think I wouldn't be a good mother," at this point my eye roved toward my mother, "and I also think that if my mother feels so strongly about being a grandparent she could volunteer at Big Brothers/Big Sisters or something like that."

Either Joan or Helen promptly changed the subject. They were on their best behavior too, although their best was clearly better as well as easier to maintain than mine. Oops. But no one should ask a question whose answer she doesn't wish to hear (my mother) or that is both rude and loaded (Joan).

You know, I could handle the knowledge that my parents had children to have someone to rake the leaves in the fall. I am more secure in that possibility, that at least they had a plan and a reason, than I would be if I had realized in my leaf-raking years that in fact they didn't think about whether to be parents at all. They just became parents in an unplanned way, twice.

Adoption (another story about my mother):

I told my mother once that if I changed my mind after it's physically too late for me to gestate on my own that maybe I would adopt.

"It's not the same," she told me, implying it was lesser and wouldn't fulfill my sacred duty.

I was livid. Do people who cannot procreate physically love their adopted children less? That's a whole nother issue and I have rants about parents in general, not just my own, including adoptive parents. That rant doesn't belong here. What belongs here is that my mother thereby told me that if I adopted a child, "it wouldn't be the same" and she wouldn't be able to accept it as fully as one with whom she shared 25% of her genes. So that if circumstances were changed and I did want to reproduce but for whatever reason was unable to, she would be unsupportive of my desire to adopt or foster or otherwise fulfill my parenting itch.

Plus I hope I would hold true to my principles and not struggle to adopt a child that would match my hypothetical newborn in age or genetics. If I adopted a darker or older or iller child, neither of my parents would accept it.

There was a "60 Minutes" story about a family who adopted two children from the same agency; the daughter turned out okay but the son committed suicide in his 20s, about ten years after he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. The son (and maybe the daughter) was born to patients in an insane asylum. The parents thought the agency had lied, at least by omission, about the boy's origins and wanted to sue. A letter to the editor pointed out my frustration with the parents: why should adoptive parents be spared the same genetic lottery biological parents face? Unless you're going to be like Katharine Hepburn in "Bill of Divorcement" and realize you cannot have children (and in the context of the movie, cannot marry) because of the strong likelihood of insanity. Adoptive parents want to be parents, want to love a child: must it come with a guarantee, a pedigree? Possibly the parents wanted to expose the agency, to ensure it wasn't using the asylum as breeding system. That wasn't the crux of their biscuit in the news story though.

A Woman's Lot

My mother also tried to force-feed me this line, that it's "a woman's lot." Lot to become pregnant despite preventive measures, to carry the pregnancy to term, to rear the child, not to give it for adoption? At which point does carelessness become "lot"? Should a careless person be entrusted with a child? Or did she mean that it is a woman's lot to want to have children? That I am not a true woman without this desire? That any man who does want to parent is more true woman than I? (I say any man who wants to parent might be a good father, but he is not also therefore womanly.)

How do you dare speak for me? (You don't even know my language.)

My first cousin MWC is also younger than I (and therefore CLH) but has two children. This compounds by comparison my freakishness in my mother's eyes. At NSF one day, she and I stood in the water and chatted as we watched her sons play. She asked about RDC and me and parenthood, and I told her we didn't want to have children.

Whatever she thought of that, she didn't judge me then and there (one way or the other) but did exclaim, realizing, "Oh, is that why Aunt BJWL gave me that strangled look when I asked her about grandchildren!" Meanwhile another friend, my mother's age, had joined us.

"Yup," I snorted, wishing I had witnessed that exchange, "that'd be why. She's always angry at me about it."

"I would be too!" commiserated my older friend.

I turned and met her eyes, unwilling to respond to her as wrathfully as I would have to BJWL for the same offense (of assuming anger to be a reasonable response to a daughter unwilling to fulfill her duty) but nonetheless shocked at her judgment. If I had unleashed that wrath, I would have hurt more than she. I would have hurt her daughter and my best friend as well.

RDC and I independently chose before we met that we didn't want to have children. Therefore what a good match are we. But what if we did want to procreate but could not? Would my mother's anger and my older friend's sympathy with that anger still be just in their own eyes? After all, we'd still not be producing our quota of grandchildren. Is the anger engendered by our not having children or at our thinking for ourselves? I can excuse my friend's mother. Maybe, being about the same age as BJWL and with children about the same age as hers, her empathy is understandable. Perhaps she only spoke without thinking and meant to imply nothing more than her faith in our parenting potential. So I'm glad I didn't lash back. I can't excuse my mother because her offenses go on and on.

Reasons

1. I wouldn't be a good mother (This is the only one that matters, but if you want supporting arguments:
2. I am selfish
3. I am lazy
4. I am unwilling to commit
5. I am irresponsible
6. I wouldn't live up to my own standards as a mother and I would hate myself for that and also to the kid for proving my being less than perfect
7. (and so forth)
8. Reproducing is environmentally unsound
9. Episiotomies
10. What if I didn't like the kid?

Why to Be a Parent

There's only one good reason. Be a parent--procreate, adopt, foster, mentor a child--if you want to love, know, accept, nurture, inspire, teach, cherish, learn from, cavort with, despair over, another human being, if you are willing and able to recognize a child as an individual and not yours to command and if you are willing to struggle and sacrifice and compromise in order that the child may discover its individuality.