The Curious Habits of Man

Why I Don’t Have Children

I never doubted for a moment that this day would come. At some point in nearly every introductory conversation I have, the topic of children comes up. Do I have any? None, huh? Why is that, exactly? Then, sensing discomfort and awkwardness, we tacitly agree to move on to some different, safer topic of conversation. It’s at these moments that I frequently feel compelled to retort with something like, so, why did you decide to have kids? How would you rate the pros and cons? Would you do it again if you had it to do over? We live, though, in a society that regards childbearing as so self-evidently worthwhile, indeed necessary to the advancement of civilization, that daring to scrutinize the process with anything approaching objectivity is on a social par with offering to show a friend your collection of pipe bombs.

Much of the time, I write with the goal of either informing or entertaining readers. In rare moments of clarity, I might even pull off both simultaneously. But every once in a while—like now, for example—I find myself writing solely for the purpose of explaining something about myself to myself—explaining, in this instance, encompassing, as well, related concepts like rationalizing, reflecting upon, airing out, possibly apologizing for. And I have to confess that this children thing does, indeed, enter my mind from time to time, usually in response to one of two primary stimuli. The first is when I witness the all-too-common meltdown in a public place of some two-year-old who has been raised to believe that the world revolves around him, and that failure to get his own way about what sort of cookies his mother should buy merits a tantrum that will communicate to the entire world the sort of despot he has been cursed with as a parent. In these instances, I invariably react (to myself) with a feeling best described as a satisfying blend of self-congratulations and personal vindication. Only then, just to confuse things, there come those occasional (typically non-public for some reason) times when one witnesses moments of immense sweetness, pride, and apparent joy on the parent’s part, which cause me to rethink the whole thing, at least for a minute or two.

I should state here, for the record, that the opinions expressed herein are based on actual experience, and not mere word of mouth, either for better or worse. I have had a great deal of exposure to kids during my life. I have no shortage of friends and relatives who have them, covering the full age range from newborn to adolescent to those who have grown up and gone off to college. I've encountered, at least as a spectator, pretty much all of the good and bad moments that a parent can experience, at least as far as I know. I have seen children tell their parents they love them. I have seen those same kids scream at their parents how much they hate them and wish they would die. I’ve seen the aforementioned meltdowns more times than I can count. I have seen sons who had to be bailed out of jail by their fathers at one in the morning. I have seen two three year-olds stand toe-to-toe and repeatedly punch each other in the face like Ali versus Frazier. I could go on.

There are, in my estimation, many reasons for having children. Focusing for the moment on the intentional ones, all of these reasons, save one, are bad. People have kids because of peer pressure, because of pressure from their aging parents who want grandchildren and won’t shut the hell up about it, and from a society that expects them to produce progeny lest they die bereft with a houseful of cats. They have children because their skill set does not support them doing anything else aside from raising children. They have them for legacy reasons—meaning they feel the need to perpetuate a family name, a gene line, whatever. The list goes on ad nauseam. But, I submit to you that the only valid and sustainable reason for having children is because, down deep inside, you really, really want to have them. And there, returning to the opening paragraph for a moment, is the rub. Deep down inside, I have never once felt anything beyond a passing curiosity as regards children. At no moment in my life has the thought “Gee, raising kids looks so awesome I just have to give it a try” ever passed through my head. It’s often occurred to me that one of the foundational pieces of information I’d like to have in order to fully process my reaction to children is the knowledge of what percentage of the adult population feels like I do on this matter. You can’t simply look at demographic studies of who does and who does not have children. As I’ve already suggested, there are all sorts of reasons for having them and for not having them. And it’s also not the sort of thing, I suspect, that a lot of people would be terribly honest about if you just came out and asked them.

I should add here that I have encountered a few people in my life who were willing to state that they too had made active choices not to have children. Of course, you will get as many reasons for not wanting to have children as there are for having them—again, many of those reasons bad ones. I know disillusioned people who think the world is going, or has already gone, to hell, and who don’t want to bring children into such a wretched place. I know people who wanted children, but who felt they weren’t equipped to raise them effectively, either psychologically or economically. I know people who had one form or another of bad upbringings themselves and who felt that this would somehow taint their own ability to raise children without repeating the mistakes they endured during their own childhoods.

All of which is to say that not only have I given this issue rather a lot of thought over the years, I’ve also conducted (mostly involuntarily) a good deal of field research into the subject, which, while largely anecdotal is, nonetheless, informative and generalizable. Having spent a great deal of time aggregating and distilling that research, I feel I am prepared, at last, to put forth for general consumption (and no doubt a hefty dose of vituperation) some of my conclusions concerning children.