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What Are You Saying?
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An interesting bit of outrage erupted on Slate when the Dear Prudence columnist (Emily Yoffe, writing as "Prudie") told a reader seeking advice about how to tell her family that she had decided not to have children that she should consider reconsidering this decision.
I saw the original column and knew this would spark all kinds of rage, which it did, and Yoffe ended up writing an interesting responseto her furious readers.
In my own life, I don't feel it very strongly- this extreme bitterness that exists between people who have children and people who are childfree. Before I had Felix, I experienced weird slights from mothers at parties who decided I wasn't worth talking to because I didn't have a child. This was annoying but falls into the No Great Loss category.
I would never tell anyone to have a child just because I have had a happy experience with mine and I hope no one would ask me to talk him or her into it because I'd have to leave the table and I really, really don't care if a friend has a child, as long as the friend is happy.
But back to Yoffe and the ire she inspired. She was, I think, rather forward in her advice, but I suspect she felt that the woman who wrote to her had given her something of an invitation.
My mother taught me that if you don't want to argue about something, you don't introduce it. She is astonishingly good at keeping her counsel. In this case, the writer wanted to know what to say when people ask her when she is going to have children, since she never intends to become a parent, and went on to list all of her reasons why she thinks motherhood is not her cup of tea.
This struck me because for the longest time, I never intended to become a mother, either. I am not particularly good with children, am impatient and clumsy. I never had dreams or thoughts of parenthood and always thought it didn't suit me at all. The circumstances of my life changed and so did my thinking, but I never blabbed my feelings to the world, so I never had to deal with this crap.
Now. The letter writer made a tactical mistake, which left a big opening for Yoffe. She gave too much information. She only wanted advice on how to shut people up without being too rude, but she elaborated too much. She gave her reasons for not wanting children. Not only was this not really relevant to her question, Yoffe took her reasons to heart. She felt the same way once, had the same reasons for wanting to take a pass on motherhood. Her change of mind sounds as if it was hard-fought but happily rewarding for her. She may have kept her mouth shut if she had not felt this kinship. This is not to say that the letter writer deserved to be "punished" for oversharing, necessarily, but as my mother would say: once you air your feelings to the world, people are going to make use of them.
Besides, it's useless to give reasons for having or not having children.
Having a kid is not a rational decision. By this I don't mean to imply that it is folly, more that it is such a large choice that all the usual ways people use to make decisions (those preposterous "plus" and "minus" charts, for instance) are useless. The good things about being a mother are wonderful to me in ways that I can't really talk about clearly and the things that are the stock laments (noisy, smelly, occasionally sick, distracting) are so plebian that they don't mean too much to me in the larger scheme of things. (A friend said recently that phases with children pass in a matter of weeks, and now that she has a second child, life is easier with the knowledge that unpleasantness won't be hanging around too long.)
Really, having kids is something one does or does not do. But the decisions relate to the most private feelings, which really are the business only of the individual- not family, not strangers, not friends, no one.
Why so much antagonism? It is beyond me, and kind of repellant. I have family and friends who do not have children and everyone kept his or her choices private.
To avoid unwanted advice and encouragement, apply Odgen Nash's counsel on dealing with big cats in his poem "The Panther."
The panther is like a leopard,
Except it hasn't been peppered.
Should you behold a panther crouch,
Prepare to say Ouch.
Better yet, if called by a panther,
Don't anther.
posted by Elise at 9:52 AM
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