Children

A blogger whom I otherwise admire included this passage in a recent post:

It’s impossible to anticipate, before you have children, the range of things you will give up for them and because of them. Of course, there are many much greater things you gain, but sometimes surely all parents have wondered where that other person, the one they used to be, has gone – along with that other life they used to lead!

That "of course" is doing a lot of rhetorical work there, and I took exception to it in a comment. The "of course" seems to indicate the author's belief (but see my Update, below) that it is self-evidently true that there are "much greater things that you gain" by having children than by not having them; therefore, to remain childless makes you foolish or incomplete. Well, I pointed out, there are many of us who did not find it at all impossible to anticipate the things we might have to give up for and because of children; and who decided, on that basis as well as others, never to have any. Both the natalist and anti-natalist positions can have merit at the micro level, the individual level; given our increasing environmental concerns, the anti-natalist position has perhaps rather more merit at the macro level -- in other words, the planet could probably stand having fewer people. However, as far as the decision to have children, live and let live, I say (well, up to a point; I do have it in for those "Quiverfull" Protestants who are having 18 or 19 kids and then making reality shows about it).

There is a subconscious bigotry against the childless which is all too common, and that many who remain childless have to spend a good deal of energy enduring. It should stop. To the possible comeback that the blogger's comment was merely casual and not meant to carry weight, I would reply that she is a literary scholar who analyzes tiny juxtapositions of words for meanings that their authors probably did not "intend," and it is not unfair to scrutinize her own words as closely.

UPDATE: The blogger in question did finally respond graciously to my objection:

Patrick, you’re right about that “of course”–it misleadingly suggests I take as a general position something that I meant purely autobiographically, that is, in my own experience of parenting the things I have gained have outweighed the losses.

I am very glad to have that clarification. I have slightly revised my post here, but have left it up rather than taking it down, because the underlying issue is an interesting one.