Point no Point
In October 2002 my mother and I each wrote a short essay on the topic of children and risks and bothers. Here was her take.
Point no Point on Vancouver Island, a careless summer day. He, a friend of mine, and I loitered on the beach. Out of the blue his voice declared, "For me, raising children is not worth the risk or the bother". Putting on my neutral oma face, I had wanted to mutter airily, "my dear, I don’t give a damn", but out slipped the twin quotation "I’ll think of it all to-morrow. … After all, to-morrow is another day". He questioned me, was I not in for a heated debate? "Nope," I bluntly evaded the bait, "it’s too hot for discussing fundamental risks and bothers. Tomorrow."
Unfortunately, that thinking scheduled for tomorrow did not come easily.
The following night, at 3.33 AM, the neglected statement woke me up. At 4.44 AM it haunted me as I still could not grasp the sense behind my friend’s words; 5.55 AM found me, mother of two, pondering another mother’s lot. Niobe, parent of 5 to 20 children (depending on which version of the Greek myth you prefer), had jeered at Goddess Leto who had produced only a boy and a girl: fertility score mortal to goddess -- twenty to two. Hubris, of course. Niobe lost her children and was turned into a rock. What if I jeered at my voluntarily childless friend, score two to zero? Not belonging to the vindictive Olympian family, his response would be different, of course…
Is boasting of your offspring a transgression? Are parents wrong in hoisting themselves on pedestals, in seeing themselves as flagships of Homo sapiens, which the childless-by-choice are not?
After more than three sleepless hours, I was still unable to pick my way through that friend’s lucid observation which so carefully included the restrictive words ‘for me’. Were he and I, while having a million things in common, fundamentally different? For me, raising children had been worth risk and bother. Or if I had ignored risk and bother, had lack of forethought silenced my fear of failure and, hence, avoided failure? Did I just get lucky? Or, in denial, am I shying away from some irrationality, from animal instincts satisfied long ago?
I pried into my past but failed to find closure…. Then into my mailbox dropped Canada’s Weekly Magazine, Maclean’s timely publication of a poll indicating that 96% of Canadian parents feel their children are ‘happy and well-balanced’.
Hey, risk and bother averse friend – read the news!
My vivid imagination immediately cast a chill over my triumph. I heard my friend’s voice and his rebuttal: "ha, only 4% unhappy-unbalanced children? See, it shows my point -- unrealistic, maybe even stupid, people become parents. Not me…" My dear comrade, I agree. You, and even I, would not feel at home among these optimistically deluded parents.
So the nagging statement continued to nag.
To pump new energy into my thoughts I read Steven Pinker’s new know-it-all volume The Blank Slate. The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Steven, "young Mandarin and cognitive science psychologist", offered me what I was looking for. Although parenting industry and government assure us that a bad environment produces bad children while well-adjusted parents produce well-adjusted children (see those 96% of deluded parents, above!), Pinker and his friends convincingly argue that we are talking here not about causation but about correlation. Meaning, most likely certain parents produce certain children because of their, the parents’ genes. The child’s environment has a minor influence on the child. Which would imply, my childless friend, that the ‘bother’ caused by a child could be limited – no need to spend stressful hours preparing your offspring to become literate in the crib, to play soccer or pay dearly for piano lessons – it’s mostly peer pressure and societal frills that drive parents to exhaustion. Parents, not the environment they create, are crucial. Breathe a sigh of relief and choose your mate carefully!
If ‘bother’ could be limited and managed, then how about ‘risk’?
Obviously, risk, chance, is part of life. Any life. Your child might ruin you, she might save you, anything in between. You might hate your child, you might love him, anything in between…. Once again, think of the parental genes – what are your positions as regards your own parents?
Although an insecure individual, I now realize that when electing to be a parent I could rely on myself and the father of my children – our genes. Taking two enormous chances by producing two children, would make life more exciting, more challenging and more worth living. I am glad we took risks and managed to limit bothers.
Point no Point – my friend’s opinion is valid for him. Not for me.
(PS: = 777 words, and please notice my other palindromes devoted to the year 2002!)