On Babies

Is there more baby chatter these days, or is my radar suddenly attuned to all things procreation? Jennifer Aniston is in some movie involving a turkey baster, Neil Patrick Harris and his partner are expecting twins, and this season’s new crop of pregnant starlets will soon be sporting baby bumps on tabloid covers and perfect post-pregnancy bodies a few months later. Then there’s this: a case for babymaking that doesn’t revolve around finding meaning in life or glamorize childbearing as a cure for the apathy of affluence.

The typical baby making dichotomy goes something like this: either having kiddies is a biological imperative and the most fulfilling, important thing one can do, or your offspring  (though much loved) will suck you dry until your resentment replaces your sense of self. In “In Defense of Having Children,” Melissa Lafsky has a different take on why we want kids. She writes:

“You’ll always risk the chance that your baby will grow up to be an asshole, or that your spouse will leave you after seeing your stretch marks, or that you’ll go broke on SAT tutors and squash lessons. Maybe those things weren’t going to provide you with happiness/meaning/purpose anyway. Simply play a bigger game—enjoy your participation in the continuation of the species. What these baby-struck parents are really gazing at in wonderment is the capacity of the human race to grow and evolve—all playing out right there in their living rooms.

It’s just about the only thing that gives us hope that adults can grow and evolve the same way. After all, we’re really just big children.”

Like Lafsky, I too find myself thinking about children – and the hope they might bring – quite a lot, and I find it strange. Yes, I want them, but I have no idea why. As a teen, I figured I’d never willingly create a second generation of my dysfunctional family. At twenty, I thought a baby by thirty was a given. I’m now twenty-nine and there’s no bun in the oven (there’s not even a baker yet). Still, children are no longer just a romantic, baby powder-coated idea anymore. They’re a real possibility because “someday” is almost here.  And that worries me.

I agree with everything that Lafsky wrote, but it is not just the sense of wonderment a child brings that makes me want one. I think the real reasons I’d like children are even more selfish. I know a child isn’t a vessel of meaning filled with life’s answers.  Its existence, however,  just might be reason enough to make me keep searching for my own. A child is a reason beyond myself to work on myself: if I had a child, I believe would hold myself more accountable to the ideals and dreams that have eroded with age. I would keep trying to be a better person and stop allowing myself to be defeated because that is not the kind of person I’d want my child to grow up to be. If I am ever to have a family that evolves with me, I will have to create my own. I don’t care enough about the traditions and rituals of my childhood to integrate them into my busy, media-enhanced life. I would, though, if it was my responsibility to teach them to someone else.

I suppose I should preface this entire thing with perhaps. Maybe it’s simply the indestructable biological clock ticking. But I also grew up knowing I was a pain in the tushie, and though I knew my mother wasn’t going to sell me to gypsies or anything, I’m sure she was tempted. To learn how to love regardless is something I’d like to learn.