How do you reconcile your values with the need to protect your family?
March 30, 2005 5:59 AM   Subscribe

The debate surrounding this post on Infoshop led me to a series of reflections on my personal choices. I am a 25 year old woman, and one of the reasons I have not had a baby, and probably won't, is because I don't want to be forced, as the Infoshop server owners have been forced, to make a choice between the well-being of a dependent family and my personal values. Have any other MeFi users taken their political circumstances into account when deciding whether or not to have a family?

Another part of my question solicits information, experience and reflection from those of you who have dependent children or aged relatives and are forced to make a choice between the security of those dependents and your personal values. I'm eager to hear anecdotes from people who have made these hard decisions as well as reflections from those of you who have considered such a dilemma in advance.
posted by By The Grace of God to Human Relations (16 answers total)
 
Well I'd like to tell you that I've thought about it, but I won't lie to you. Sure there have been times I thought it would be crazy to have a kid in this messed up world. Now that I have a 6 month old girl, I can only hope that I will be around to raise her right. I guess I have to trust that either I'll be around to raise her or my wife or extended family will pick up the slack and she would be proud that if I decided to sacrifice either my livelihood or my life for what I believe in.

My thought on this is that it would be a shame for folks to not have children. I know that many kids do not share the same social/political/religious beliefs that their parents had, but that isn't stopping a lot of hard-core christian types from breeding like rabbits. I see no reason why the right should win by default because they out-bred the left.
posted by Numenorian at 6:12 AM on March 30, 2005


As I recall, there's a section of the '70s book "The Geography of Faith" (Berrigan and Coles) which deals with "Compassionate and Political Man" and talks at length about the difficulties of family units when one is at odds with institutional society. You might want to check that out.

As I recall, Berrigan seems to think that family units in the "underground" or anti-establishment movement need to come together and support each other. But he's kind of vague about it. Still, it's a good read.

I've been reading some books written in the 70s of late and it's amazing how relevant they continue to be.
posted by selfnoise at 6:37 AM on March 30, 2005


It's nice to see that at least some young people still feel passionately about their beliefs. So many of them seem overly focused on money and the rest of the world be damned. Nevertheless, I think you can have your cake and eat it too here. Just don't get yourself thrown in jail (at least for more than a weekend). Kids who have radical parents always on the edge of legality in their fight against the man seem to grow up just fine, perhaps better than fine. You can usually do more good by staying out of jail anyway.
posted by caddis at 6:56 AM on March 30, 2005


does this make sense? you're not having a child because your ideas are too important. so your ideas are more important than the child. so why not have the child and simply continue in that state? if someone threatens the child, but your ideas are more important, then, well, goodbye child (sorry that sounds flippant - before people email me, i'm just working this through and so please finish reading first). or, if the child is more important, give up ideals. but in the latter case, does it make sense to not have a child just because they would become more important than ideals? isn't that "cutting off your nose to spite your face"?

in other words, it seems to me that you can argue that you don't want a child because you dn't want the pain of (possibly) losing something you love when you have to choose between child and ideals. or you have the child anyway, because children are more important than ideals.

but it's not consistent to refuse to have the child because it would be more important than ideals. at least, as i see it.

having said all that, we don't have children, and don't intend to. but that's largely a personal, emotional thing and not motivated by politics.
posted by andrew cooke at 7:28 AM on March 30, 2005


Best answer: I'm the same age as you are, and I am very unlikely to children for what I consider political reasons, though not exactly in the same way that you visualize them.

For me, I find the societal requirements for parenthood--most particularly for motherhood--to be in conflict with what I consider necessary to make my life even slightly bearable. That is, one can either take the single mom route (which my mother did) or do the couple thing. In the former case, you have severly limited choices regarding employment & income. Your entire life must be that child, and if you really want one, that's fine, but if you aren't totally into it, that's out. In the latter, you have to battle the reduction in separate identity that still accompanies women in marriage and motherhood. Plus you get much greater pressure to believe in monogamy.

I consider these constraints political in the sense that they are about the organizaztion of society. If I didn't find the current state of American workplaces inhuman, being tied to a traditional job would not be so bad. But the coporate cube-farm makes me want to slit my wrists, so I cannot commit to choosing financial stability over flexible working conditions.

Likewise, American parental culture, with its high-intensity child-obsession and utter lack of cultural support for independent parental identity (both in the sense of norms and in its lack of actual public structures) is in direct opposition to my image of a life that's worth leading. At the same time, if I did have a child, I can't help but think it would be harmed by my unwillingness to take part in the high-intensity system.

Then, there's the whole thing where women still make less than men on average, which subjects them to the "does your job make more than the babysitting will cost" dilemma and the "your job is more fungible so you have to do more of the childrearing" bind. The right to creative work that I believe in is too central to me to put myself in those situations. As I would have to be extremely successful to avoid these issues in our current social climate, I am afraid children are right out.

So basically, I find that the current social climate makes it impossible to have children without giving up the alternate or not utterly mainstream way I have chosen to live. In the sense that politics are how we decide to organize society, then I would say this is a case of choosing my politics over children.
posted by dame at 8:30 AM on March 30, 2005


Also, I have a friend who is child-free because he refuses to add another overconsuming American to the world. So that's another instance of choosing political ideals.
posted by dame at 8:33 AM on March 30, 2005


i almost said this to the original poster, and dame makes it seem more relevant - have you considered moving to a different culture? (i suspect the monogamy thing is going to be hard to solve, though, even so). certainly here in child-care seems more relaxed, and shared over a wider family. not hugely, but it's certainly noticeable. and this place is still "western".
posted by andrew cooke at 8:36 AM on March 30, 2005


here in chile, child-care...
posted by andrew cooke at 8:37 AM on March 30, 2005


"How do you reconcile your values with the need to protect your family?"

This is why they (you know who) call 'em 'family values'. As a parent, I do not agree with most of what they consider family values, nor do I agree with most of what Family And Children Services (the other and even more insidious they) consider family values. However, protecting your family (however you do perform that) should transcend 'family values' to its own distinct place in your value system.

Perhaps your question should be "Can I protect my family in accordance with my personal values?" In that case, yes, but expect to have to fight for your values.
posted by mischief at 8:51 AM on March 30, 2005


Mohandas Gandhi had children. Martin Luther King, Jr. had children. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had children.

Whatever your political beliefs, I can't imagine a world were they would preclude having a family. If you don't want children, that's fine. But children should not prevent you from having the courage of your convictions, and to my way of thinking, they are the only real reason to try to improve our world. Your children may suffer for your convictions, but I don't think MLK's kids would complain about that today.

By the way, there are great tracts of land in the world where you can live fairly self-sufficiently without interference from anybody. In the Northern hemisphere, the Yukon and parts of Alaska jump to mind immediately.
posted by McGuillicuddy at 9:41 AM on March 30, 2005


By the way, I have kids. They impact the small questions far more than the big questions. I can't quit my job and become a vagabond anti-imperial rebel at this stage of my life. But someday... I support the peace movement, but I don't protest because given today's police tactics, I don't think protests are a good place for toddlers. When my kids are older and can more or less fend for themselves, I may become a more active proponent for social change. Or I may move to the middle of nowhere and live free.
posted by McGuillicuddy at 10:05 AM on March 30, 2005


Mohandas Gandhi had children. Martin Luther King, Jr. had children. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had children.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but they also had wives. I'd be fascinated to know what percentage of the child-rearing each of these men did. I just saw Ray and was sort of surprised, though I know I shouldn't be, at what a crap parent he was when his kids were little.

My reasoning is a lot like dame's, I'm a bit more committed to my catch-as-catch can lifestyle that doesn't have a steady income or location, and even though I know I could easily have kids and do this, my idea [and possibly society's idea] of what you should provide for a child -- things like health care, stable home-life, and schooling, etc -- are not things I could guarantee at this point in my life. More to the point, I'm just not gung-ho on having my own. My friends have some nice ones and I get to hang out with them and have the free time to do some babysitting.

To the question about politics, I feel comfortable making choices for myself to be sort of a fringe-dweller in many ways, but I wouldn't feel comfortable making those same choices for a kid who was too young to have veto power.
posted by jessamyn at 11:18 AM on March 30, 2005


Correct me if I'm wrong, but they also had wives.

Exactly, exactly, exactly.

Having children is a very very very different decision for men than for women, in terms of how it will impact their lives, how people will see them, and what their lives will be like afterward. Even now, even in this supposedly enlightened day and age, and even if the man in the relationship is taking the lion's share of the child care.

Personally, probably not going to have kids, but I want all my friends to have 'em so I can stuff them full of cookies and buy them inappropriate toys.
posted by jennyjenny at 12:31 PM on March 30, 2005


I wouldn't feel comfortable making those same choices for a kid who was too young to have veto power.
i had no veto over being brought up in middle class suburbia.
posted by andrew cooke at 2:33 PM on March 30, 2005


I certainly don't let something as petty and ultimately irrelevant as politics get in the way of my own enjoyment of existance.
posted by angry modem at 3:29 PM on March 30, 2005


Parenthood is much different for men and women. And by naming their husbands, perhaps I slighted the enormous and at times unwanted sacrifices made by Kasturba Gandhi, Coretta Scott King, and Natalia Solzhenitsyn. In the case of Gandhi and King though, there was a mutual acknowledgement that the ideas being asserted were worth whatever consequences may befall the individuals involved.

Not wanting kids is a perfectly rational and understandable position. My point is that if you have kids, you'll likely act more cautiously and worry more, but it won't prevent acting absolutely freely in accordance with your conscience. Despite rampant social and political turmoil and all the unintended anguish you might cause your children, any anger that they harbor about being born will never seem like a legitimate complaint. Suffering may be the human condition, but most genuinely prefer it to the alternatives.
posted by McGuillicuddy at 10:31 PM on March 30, 2005


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