What Do You Say by Making a Baby?
Jul 3rd, 2008 by Micah Tillman | 14 Comments |
One of The Wife’s jobs has her working with babies. So every day she comes home from that job (it’s not a Mon-thru-Fri deal), I get to hear about all the cuteness.
We love babies. A lot. We go to church on Sundays so we can baby watch. They’re so cute!
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And one of these days I’m going to write a book on the phenomenology of babies, to figure out why its so much fun to be around them (when you’re not the one who has to take care of them, anyway). There’s something about the innocence and newness of their experience of the world that affects your experience of the world.
It’s like when you watch a movie you’ve seen a million times (and would never want to watch again) with a friend who’s never seen it, and get all excited about watching it again. Seeing something with someone changes your experience of it. And phenomenology is the philosophy that deals with these kinds of issues.
But I haven’t figured it all out yet, and thus will have to sit down and write a book about it someday.
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Despite all this, The Wife and I refuse to have children (at least for the foreseeable future) because by having a baby, you say two things which (at the moment) we cannot say :
(1) “I can take responsibility for the care and formation of another person for the next 18 years (i.e., I have the financial, spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and social resources/maturity to actually fulfill my responsibility to my child),” and
(2) “Given that I can take responsibility for another life, I actually want to (because life has been so awesome for me that I want to make more of it, give it to someone who hasn’t had the chance to live it yet).”
I find it surprising that anyone can make both those claims. In fact, I find it surprising that anyone can make either of those claims.
But I’m a cynic, and don’t trust myself to actually see issues like this very clearly.
So help me out. What do you think people are saying by deciding to create a new human?
The statement made by having a child is as nebulous, wide-ranging, and morally grey (from commendable to confused, from wise to weird, from pragmatic to poetic, from conventional to psychotic) as people themselves are. Why, consider the range of possible justifications people can offer for agreeing with the following statement:
“I always put on trousers before I leave the house.”
I guarantee, you’d get some loopy reasons for doing so, just as you could get some logically-intact and morally-forthright rationales for doing the opposite.
It’s not even so much the having of a child that says something about a person; it’s what they do with (or without) that child that counts, because therein lies what they bequeath to the future. “I may die, but this, my representative (or lack thereof), shall serve as a reminder of me.”
I was recently wondering if one of the reasons that babies are so much fun is that they don’t know about etiquette. They are a breath of fresh air because they will just stare at you for ten minutes. Or smile at you, or pull on your beard. Stuff that grown people don’t do to each other for a variety of reasons.
There is the novelty factor in all this and also the mere fact that it’s kind of nice to be smiled at… However, if I walk around with prolonged eye contact and smiling at people all day long they are likely to think all sorts of creepy things about me.
I have three kids. With the first my statement was “I’m to spiritually, emotionally, and financially insecure to ensure I’m not going to have kids through abstinence outside of marriage.” Thank you, God, that everything worked out with the mother of that child and we eventually married and went on to have two more, in better circumstances.
If it was all on me we never would have had the second kids. On my own, I could never be responsible and whatnot enough to be worthy of that profound responsibility.
For me, it’s a God thing.
There are tons of responsibilities I have that I’m not up to under my own power. For example, as a teacher, I am no where near worthy or mature enough to handle the responsibilities I have in the class room, under my own power. (I feel this particularly accutely as my students are emotionally disturbed and therefore incredibly vulnerable.) I wonder if the ultra-rich feel this way. (I think they probably should): God has entrusted them with a tremendous responsibility that they are no where near up to on their own.
Dear friend, NO ONE is ever ready to have a baby. :D
And it is one of the hardest and most AMAZING things you will ever do in your life.
Dear Son,
If a couple who’d known me for many years happened upon you for the first time and if this couple then decided to have THEIR first baby, they could very likely be saying, “Boy maybe we can have a child who grows up to be as neat as Micah!”
I like my dad’s answer best! :-D
Seb–
I think you’re right that people have kids for all kinds of different reasons. But do you think there’s any kind of basic assumption that everyone makes (even if it’s something like, “Having sex is worth doing, no matter what happens because of it,” or something like that)?
Good point about the legacy issue. Though I think the initial choice reflects on a person. What was it Jesus said about “counting the cost” before you start in on something?
Jeff–
Great point about being able to handle more responsibility with community/help/partnership/God. Shows you something about what it means to be human that we can’t survive without each other. Except for maybe mountain men, or whatever :-)
Amanda–
So do you think people are seconding Benedick’s claim when they do this thing they’re none of them ready for? :-)
On a more philosophical level, there’s a variety of decisions which require us to make an individually irrational decision in order to be collectively rational.
Voting was always the one I noticed. It really is on some level an irrational act to vote. But the more that we as a society act rationally on an individual level (i.e. not vote.) then the more we actually are irrational on a collective level (i.e. the result of the vote does not represent the will of the people because most of the people didn’t vote.)
The relevance to baby-having is probably tangential.
But here’s the thing:
Nobody has ever been ready to be a parent. Nobody has ever been worthy of the responsibilities. Nobody has ever possessed enough resources to make it a rational decision.
(Clearly there are some people who are so lacking that they definitely shouldn’t have kids. I suppose that will take some ferreting out to figure out where that line is, but go with me for a moment here)
If everybody acted rationally (in this case) nobody would have kids.
If one holds that having people in the world is a good idea, then one is forced into acting irrationally.
I realize this is probably too abstract to make much of an impact on a personal level (Gee, honey, Jeff is right! We have to go make babies for the good of the human race!) but thought I’d throw it out there.
Jeff, I don’t vote because I do indeed think voting is irrational. However, the irrational scenario you envision never comes about. If a small enough number of people voted, then it would be rational to vote and I would start doing so.
Micah,
I would take one step back and ask the same two questions about marriage.
Jeff–
Those were all excellent points. And for someone like me, they do have a personal-level impact. But maybe that’s just cuz I get paid to do philosophy :-)
Given your opinion and Amanda’s, it seems to me like the fundamental questions are two: (1) Is it better to have humans and all the crap that goes with it, nor to not have humans? (2) Is it a duty for any of us individually to ensure that there continue to be humans?
Andrew–
Don’t vote, eh? I’ll have to write a post on that issue some time.
Steve–
The difference is that in marriage, you have two consenting adults. In conception, you have two consenting adults, and one non-consenting child. You have not the joining of two extent lives, but the creation of a new life.
Marriage is a, “We’re here, so let’s make the best of it together” deal. Conception is a, “We think it’s a good idea to saddle someone else with a life of making the best of it.”
(2) Is it a duty for any of us individually to ensure that there continue to be humans?
Yup. :D
Ensuring that there continue to be humans involves not only making more humans ad infinitum, but also ensuring that humans can survive with sufficient resources & social delicacy that we can preserve language, art, knowledge, and science - those qualities & practices that elevate us above being base mammalian bipeds, scavenging & scrambling to survive a hostile environment.
It’s hardly controversial to declare that there are too many humans already. The good news is that we’re sophisticated enough to craft egalitarian solutions to the imbalances in our world, without having to resort to draconian measures (e.g. the Chinese “One Child” law). The bad news is we’ve yet to agree on what these egalitarian solutions are…
I find it surprising that anyone can make both those claims. In fact, I find it surprising that anyone can make either of those claims.
But I’m a cynic, and don’t trust myself to actually see issues like this very clearly.
So help me out. What do you think people are saying by deciding to create a new human?
I am surprised at your surprise. I know plenty of people who can easily make both claims (justifiably, in my opinion). Granted, I know very few people in their early 20’s who can make the first claim. (Though if you broaden it to older than 25, then I can think of several.) I suspect, if you really thought about it, that you’d realize that you do know people who can make the first claim. I do not disagree with the sentiment behind statements like “Nobody has ever been ready to be a parent.” Indeed, I applaud the sentiment and the humility that it expresses in the face of an awesome responsibility. However, it isn’t actually literally true, unless all it is saying is “nobody is ready to be a perfect parent” as distinct from a merely good one. In which case it is trivially true. Humans aren’t perfect.
As for the second claim, obviously you are currently of a melancholy disposition. I hope that you’ll get past that eventually, for your own sake, but of course some people never do and this certainly doesn’t make them terrible people. It does make it impossible for them to make that second claim. But, yes, life has indeed been tremendously good for me and I believe I could pass on advantages (financial, moral, emotional, intellectual, and social resources/maturity) which will hopefully make life even better for any children I might have.
I suppose it’s people like you, Mr. Stevens, who are the reason for there continuing to be a human race. It’s nice to know there some of you out there.
[...] Mr. Stevens claims voting — at least as things are now — is irrational. And it’s hard not to agree, even if you don’t want to. [...]