A friend of mine I haven’t seen in years texted me out of the blue asking if I would ever want to get married and have kids. I figured I had two options at this point: turn the question back on her and find out what she was worried about or give a knee jerk answer without any tact. I opted for the latter, saying that I had no desire to ever get married or have kids and this sentiment was borne of a combination of cynicism, atheism, and pragmatism.
This seemed to answer her question sufficiently, but it got me thinking. Why is it exactly that I see no reason to adhere to these social norms. In just about any organized faith, pairing with a mate for the purpose of procreation is viewed as the end all be all of living a virtuous life. A lot of fundamentalist dogma is informed by this. Discrimination against homosexuals, restriction of birth control, pro-life (which in my mind equals anti-woman); all of these human rights non-issues are being politicized by religious organizations who want their vision of right and wrong compulsory for everyone. In the eyes of God (which one seldom matters) you are not a complete person unless your ideal life is getting married to someone of the opposite gender and steadily producing children.
So in the absence of any spiritual or religious requirements, what case remains for marriage and procreation. Since the former is often seen merely as a means to the latter, I’ll be focusing child rearing. The first argument is the oldest: propagation of the species. This one can pretty easily be discounted since it doesn’t look like humanity is going to die off any time soon. A lot of environmental and social problems stem from the fact that there just doesn’t seem to be enough resources to go around. Some have and some go without as a result. Of course there is the old Judeo-Christian ideology that how many kids you have is a sign of divine favor that goes hand in hand with the acquisition of wealth (curious since Jesus clearly had neither.)
After this last argument, some of the others seem downright selfish. Carrying on the family name is one I hear often. This plays off the fear that after one is dead and buried the world will go on as if they didn’t exist. It will be as if nothing they did mattered and no one will remember them. Well I’ve got bad news for them. It’s probably going to turn out that way anyways. Unless you’ve invented, discovered, written, or done something else that has shaken the world, there’s probably no one who will know (or really care) who you were one hundred years from now. It’s cold, it’s scary, but it’s the truth. How many people do you know who continuously extol the virtues of their great-grandparents, and honestly, don’t you find them kind of annoying? Having kids won’t make you famous.
I can’t even go on about the other reasons without starting to seethe with resentment at those who consider them valid. You want to pass on what you’ve learned in this life? Write a book rather than spawn a captive audience. Maybe it’s because you think it’s the natural next step after getting married. Fuck that. Start a charity; do volunteer work; get politically active; find SOME way to improve the state of humanity in some way besides its sum total. I’m sorry if it isn’t as instantly gratifying and intuitive, but that should make it that much more rewarding. You say you want to take care of and nurture something? Then adopt. There’s nothing as lost and in need of nurturing in this world than an orphan with nothing in the world and no one who cares for them. There are fewer things that would be as noble and charitable as such an act. This isn’t enough for some people though. They feel the need to have a little them staring back up at them assuring them that they’re influence and ideology will survive them.
Comic courtesy of xkcd
Other images courtesy of the internets
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