From Meghan Daum at the New Yorker:
My husband was happy about the pregnancy and sad about the miscarriage. I was less sad about the miscarriage, though I undertook to convince myself otherwise by trying to get pregnant again. After three months of dizzying cognitive dissonance, I walked into the guest room that my husband used as an office and allowed myself to say, for once and for all, that I didn’t want a baby. I’d thought I could talk myself into it, but those talks had failed.
As I was saying all this, I was lying on the cheap platform bed we’d bought in anticipation of a steady flow of out-of-town company. The curtains were lifting gently in the breeze. Outside, there was bougainvillea, along with bees and hummingbirds and mourning doves. There was a grassy lawn where the dog rolled around scratching its back, and a big table on the deck where friends sat on weekends eating grilled salmon and drinking wine and complaining about things they knew were a privilege to complain about (the cost of real estate, the noise of leaf blowers, the overratedness of the work of more successful peers). And as I lay on that bed it occurred to me, terrifyingly, that all of it might not be enough. Maybe such pleasures, while pleasurable enough, were merely trimmings on a nonexistent tree. Maybe nothing—not a baby or the lack of a baby, not a beautiful house, not rewarding work—was ever going to make us anything other than the chronically dissatisfied, perpetual second-guessers we already were.
Apt. 11d 
Sounds like someone’s either taking up yoga or going back to church in the next year or two.
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Funny!
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It’s funny, I have several friends who have decided to not have children. The women I know of my generation struggle with it, while younger women seem to just be matter of fact about it. Maybe their time is coming.
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This was an honest and moving take on the foster care system, I thought. It’s great that rather than sticking with naval-gazing – not that there’s anything wrong with that, for a while – she’s helping kids without expecting to get anything back. But I’m afraid she’s going to be divorced soon if her husband really does want kids.
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They will get divorced eventually. These kinds of break-ups are the most heartbreaking because there is nothing really “wrong” with the relationship, the two people still really like each other, but they can’t come to an agreement about what it means to be together as a family. I’ve known a few people who’ve gone through divorces like this and everyone on the outside (including me) doesn’t understand why they can’t make it work when they seem to like and respect each other. It is because they lack a shared agreement on the purpose of the relationship and that is a hard thing for two people to reconcile without one of them giving up on their sense of who they are.
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If it’s going to end, the gentlemanly thing to do is to take up with an 24 year-old, ideally one who wears yoga clothes everywhere. Avoids all the “but you seem so perfect for each other”-type talk and a bunch of pointless time with a counselor.
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Oh, completely. I know a couple women who would be relieved to find out their husbands were having affairs so they would have a solid excuse to leave.
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I know three men in their forties who have settled down women women 15-20 years younger, and in all cases it was their wife who ended the marriage (though in all cases after two kids – that seems crazy to me).
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Those men are the true, considerate heroes.
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About 10 years ago, my mother’s friends and friends’ parents had a rash of divorces after about 25-30 years. Most of them had 2-4 kids and seemed like super solid perfect boomer marriages. In about 60% of the cases, the woman left the man for someone else, and the men shortly remarried younger women. In the few cases where the man left the woman, the woman also shortly remarried. Usually the women went older–5-20 years–but richer, and the men went much younger (10+ years). This doesn’t hold in every case, but enough to be a clear pattern.
Perhaps it’s my social circle, but I feel like I know as many people not wanting kids as I do wanting kids. In my own extended family (siblings and cousins), we’re approaching “Children of Men” like reproduction rates. (My grandparents produced a combined total of 11 grandchildren, and they in turn have produced 3 offspring. 4 are resolutely childless and past childbearing age; 2 are resolutely childless and of childbearing age; 2 have children and are past childbearing age; 1 is leaning towards no children; and 2 will probably reproduce in the future. If we assume that we get 4 more children, that will be 20 people (11 + 9 partners) producing a total of 7 offspring, giving my family a TFR of around 0.7). Once having children isn’t the norm and there aren’t young children around, I think it’s easier to decide not to have kids.
In China having kids isn’t really viewed as a personal decision, especially outside of the large cities, since it’s something you do for the family line. Most people have kids really young to get it out of the way, and give the kids to their parents or in-laws to raise.* The idea that having kids is a decision to make or not make is really weird to the women around me, as is the idea you’d delay childbearing for a career. I can’t count the number of people who told me I should have a kid ASAP so it won’t affect my research and writing my dissertation, and then I have to explain that my MIL won’t take on full-time childcare duties until the kid is 18.
*Rapid urbanization is throwing a bit of a wrench in the system, when early childbirth coincides with full-time employment. Retirement age in China for women is 50/55 so that they have time to raise their grandkids. This works out pretty well in urban China, where women tend to reproduce in their mid to late 20s. In rural China though, women tend to have children around age 18-20, which means that women become grandmothers in their very late 30s or early 40s. This was fine when they were farming or doing migrant stints in factories, but now that rural women are holding more steady employment, there’s a childcare gap of about 10 years where the moms and MILs are still working but the DIL needs childcare. Since rural women are more likely to have multiple children, this also limits the amount of attention a mother/MIL can provide to one of her kids.** This is creating a similar sort of dilemma for young women that Americans face. My guess is with rapidly expanding higher education this problem will sort itself out in the next generation, as formerly rural women will change their reproduction habits to match that of current urban women.
**In urban China it’s not unusual for a mother to quit her job and move across country to look after a grandchild, but when a mother has 3 adult kids and is needed as a breadwinner, she’s not going to make the same choice, particularly for a daughter.
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My guess is that the recently divorced former wives of these men are thinking, “good riddance, let someone else deal with him, only a younger woman would be foolish enough to fall for him.” That is what it seems like the female sentiment is in the two marriages I know of that are going down this path. Juicy gossipers inform me that one of these marriages had a bit of an implosion this past weekend and now seems surely headed for divorce. Both parties in this marriage in their 30’s so the situation is a bit different but I’ll be interested to see how things evolve for each of them in their single lives (assuming that a divorce happens).
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I used to think I was one of those young women who didn’t really want to have children. I was wrong. I don’t know if I would have arrived at this conclusion by myself, if I didn’t have children (maybe I would have embraced the reality). But, my personal experience has made me realize that the pull to have children is very powerful and that social systems that don’t include it will only work for a small minority of humans.
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And, yes, I would be concerned that the “central sadness” would end in divorce. I know several couples who thought they were in childless by choice relationships only to see the men decide in their forties that they do want children after all. My guess is that if you are a woman who truly wants to be childless, your best bet is to find a man who already has children. Otherwise, the practicality of reproductive biology will affect your relationship — men’s childbearing years are much much longer than women’s.
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I’m trying to think of any decision like “not having kids” that has such longterm implications. I’m curious if you can really imagine that life.
I’m far from “Leave it to Beaver” but there is something about being in step with your peers. And something quite isolating by being significantly out of step (choosing not to have kids).
I’m someone who was ambivalent about marriage and kids as I associated for many years my mother’s unhappiness with being a mother rather than her own issues. That was the Venn diagram overlap for me.
I met my guy later (if we could change anything, it would be to have met earlier!) and had a daughter under the wire. I’ve had the big jobs and the big career success and lots of amazing experiences (lived overseas, travel, etc.) but making a family has touched me in a way that nothing else ever did. It’s far beyond “oh I’ll have someone to care for me when I’m older”.
I think it’s much more primal and much more joy giving that many realize. Than I realized.
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“I think it’s much more primal and much more joy giving that many realize.”
Yes. I actually had this thought this very grey morning, when my 10yo crawled in next to me at 6AM to cuddle. And, when I held my newborn daughter and, suddenly felt connected with all the mothers who preceded me, including my own, in a way that I couldn’t have imagined before I was holding my own first born. I’d spent so much of my life thinking I was completely different from them (and, was, in so many outward ways).
I think there are people who don’t have children and have no regrets, but a mismatched pair seems like a slow moving disaster and, unfortunately for women, biological children quickly becomes a decision they can’t change their mind about, while men still can.
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Sandra and bj: I like your comments! I really enjoy and appreciate your intelligence.
Best,
J.
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It’s interesting what different people are seeing in the article. For me (almost 50 – ack! – would rather have married and had kids but couldn’t find the right guy) I read it as: “stop whining about whether or not you have kids, there are 13 year olds out there for whom the most they will ever get from any adult – the most they ever even be able to receive – is a gift card from Target and a ride there to spend it.” That’s the tragedy, not some nice well-off white woman (okay, maybe she’s not white, I don’t know) not having kids, or even splitting up with her husband.
So while having kids is doubtless a joyful thing – I’ve seen it for people, and have had the privilege of being involved in the lives of nieces, nephews, friends’ kids, etc., in pretty major ways – maybe not having kids does not have to be a Constant Sadness. (It hasn’t been for me.) Maybe it gives you a little more perspective. Or, better to say, it gives you a different kind of perspective.
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The Constant Sadness wasn’t not having children, but the mismatch between her expectation and her husband’s. If not for the fact that a similar mismatch would have existed between me and my spouse if we didn’t have children, I can imagine having been happy with no children. I’m certainly not falling into the trap of thinking every woman wants to have children and would give up everything else for that one primal need. I do think that a mismatch between your life and the life of your peers creates dissonance, though, and some people having a harder time bridging the gap. Sometimes, they’re not interested in bridging the gap (say, of dealing with a child in diapers) and sometimes there’s a bit of sadness in not having what someone else has. The same mismatch can occur when people’s jobs change, or their economic situation, or their level of success.
But, I didn’t get the “I should stop whining because 13 year olds in group homes are much worse off.” There’s always someone worse of (or, at least, almost always, and, frankly, if there isn’t, you’re not spending much contemplative time), I always disregard that lesson because I don’t think one person’s pain is made any less by the fact that others are in more pain.
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I didn’t word this quite right, and shouldn’t have used the word “whining” here. Having children can make you less selfish – you realize that you are not the center of the world – but it can also make you more centered on your own immediate family, and make you think that your own decision to have kids, or another’s decision not to have kids, is the Central Thing, Joy or Sadness, in their life. Not just very important, but the Central Thing.
I actually don’t think the author of this piece quite realizes it, but what I got from it, personally, is that existential angst over one’s own childbearing choices, making it the Central Thing, is a mistake. It’s true that your pain isn’t any less because of other’s pain, but it’s good to have some perspective.
Of course there are all sorts of interesting and complicated arguments people have made about this, e.g., family really is the only important thing in life, being a parent is what gives life meaning, etc., and the competing arguments (you see this in all major religions in one way or another) that you should care for a stranger as much as you care for yourself or your own child.
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I’ve also always hated that truism, cliche, whatever we want to call, it that no one ever says “I wish I’d spent more time at work” when they’re dying. Maybe not, but I’m guessing lots of people wish they’d accomplished things they missed because of time spent on caregiving (even if they wouldn’t give up their children for those things).
I do believe that having children has made me more selfish in a number of ways. I’m way more likely to grab the last brownie for my child than I was for myself and more importantly, I’m going to make sure my kids’ needs are met before I give up resources for others (and, my definition of need is broader than it was when it was just me defining the needs).
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Yep.
1. I bet Einstein had a lot of physics stuff he wanted to have figured out before he died. (I don’t this stuff, but wasn’t there a big problem with quantum mechanics vs. relativity?) I bet a lot of people have died wishing they could have cured cancer or done more on some particular project. If you have an actually important job, you want to get more done.
2. I think I’m also both more and less selfish since having kids–less selfish about my personal needs but more selfish with regard to my kids vs. the rest of the world. As a single gal, my life was on the one hand much more altruistic and I was much more available for general do-goodery, but on the other hand, much more self-centered in terms of total use of time and resources. There’s also the complicating factor that as a single gal, I was at the same time 1) more zealous to do good and 2) less aware of ways in which I was inconveniencing others.
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I bet a lot of people have died wishing they could have cured cancer or done more on some particular project.
For starters, everybody who died of cancer.
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I have many friends (both male and female) who have always said they didn’t want children and then in their forties, move from a definite “no” to a feeling of ambiguity. There’s something about the forties– the decade that makes you look back on your life, and forward, and assess who you are and what you’re someday going to be leaving behind.
On another note, I really enjoyed this follow-up interview with her: http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/getting-program-interview-meghan-daum
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I just read that Meghan Daum’s marriage is over, the first thing I thought of was this thread:
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