listen to "Pink and Blue" on Grooveshark
I don't remember ever wanting to have children. I have always been too selfish,1 too horrified by the potential of genetics and environment to create disaster, and not even slightly interested in making more people.
What's more, for all that I like children I find myself less and less excited about them. This may be because my friends' children tend to be smothered by swarms of adoring, as-yet-childless friends; I like making faces at very small children on public transport, and I like interacting with children that I meet, but I am not one to cluck and dote and I find that sort of behaviour unappealing in others.
The idea of bringing up a child has a certain savour, but I can't connect it to my own reality at all. I think that being an awesome parent is a hugely valuable thing to do — perhaps one of the most important things a person can do — but I couldn't feel right about doing it unless it became the primary focus of my existence. In the absence of a massive paradigm shift, that will not be happening.
And yet there is something reassuring in a song whose narrator finds himself with a brand new baby and not a clue what to do about it. Totally lost, he nevertheless does a thing and then another thing, because there is a baby that needs things done for it. It sounds to me as though they will get by just fine.
- I am not an especially selfish person, but I am not talking about some kind of high-flown, radical enlightened selfishness here. There are things that I am just not prepared to give up. [↩]
Man, I hear that. My gentleman friend is increasingly antsy to get started on the procreation, and I just, as you say, cannot connect the idea of childbearing/raising to my own reality. Maybe I could connect it to my own reality if I just went ahead and did it -- I dunno! -- but that seems like an awfully big leap of faith to take.
I also don't really get all of these people who say they "love children." What -- all of them, indiscriminately? I can't grok the idea of categorically "loving children" any more than I can grok the idea of categorically "loving people." (I do love most animals.)
From Demetri Martin:
"I love kids" is kind of a mean thing to say. Its like saying that you only like one group of people. "How old are you? 8? You're okay. How old are you? 14? Fuck you."
Saying you love children is okay to say as a general statement.
It's when you get into specifics that you get into trouble.
"I love twelve year olds."
@ Sylvanus Urban:
Oh dear! Perhaps you can fob him off with very realistic dolls? It is certainly not as though you would have the option of changing your mind. Once you add a person to the world, they are right in there affecting your continuity until at least one of you dies. Alarming!
Also, maybe people who "love children" just enjoy interacting with people who don't do some of the more wearying things that grown-up people have usually learned to do? Children don't do much complaining about the co-worker they hate or interest rates or how fat that dress makes them look. (In general, though, I think that you are right and it is strange of them. Some children are great. Some children are terrible!)
@ Yak Boy:
I was going to say something about staying classy, but it gave me a weird moment of déjà vu. Maybe I did that last time you left me a comment. It seems plausible enough.