Parenthood and Survival

Children make us better, honor our ancestors and help secure the future

Photo by Isaac Quesada on Unsplash

More and more I hear young people talk about the difficulty and cost of having children. About how raising children robs young men and women of the fun they should be having and takes away money that could be spent on lavish travel or toys. They go on about how youth is meant to be enjoyed, not saddled with the responsibilities of family. Often, advice to this effect comes from older adults who already have children.

‘Don’t do it! They’re too expensive! Enjoy yourselves!’

And the truth is, children are costly. And they do take a lot of time. In fact, in some ways, once they’re born they own your time, either in actual time spent with them or in emotional time spent worried about them. Or in time spent earning money to provide for them. What I think some people miss is that the cost paid in time and treasure purchases more than copies of ourselves. It purchases the very essence of survival.

I speak from experience. My wife and I have four incredible children, all of whom are now adults. We have three sons and one daughter, in ages ranging from 22-28. We started our family late, after I had finished residency training and Jan boldly bore these children in a rather short span of time.

They are incredible people. Our lives remain interwoven with theirs, bonded by love and genetics, even though they are moving off into their own careers, relationships, struggles and adventures.

Jan and I were discussing our journey as parents just today. One of our sons asked her what decade of her life to date was the best. That’s a tough call for anyone to make, having had a joyous life, but she said that one of the best was likely the first ten years of our experience as parents.

Now, those were times of trial, of course. They were the days of pregnancy and its difficulties (which she handled magnificently). They were times of head-colds and fevers, teething and colic. There was exhaustion and sleeplessness when dreams could be interrupted at any moment by a child in pain or in fear; or standing over the bed in the dark looking at us like ghouls. (Most parents have experienced this.) They were times when we had to vacillate between disciplining our children and laughing with our heads turned at the things they said. They were times of terror as we spent so much time keeping them from accidentally injuring or killing themselves…as children (especially males) seem hell-bent on doing.

But they were also times of sweet joys. Times of spraying the water-hose in the yard, of early toddling hikes through falling leaves or sliding on new snow. That was a season of cuddles and play, of bedtime prayers which we said aloud and whispered over their small forms long after they were asleep in hopes of blessings and safety.

Those were the years we read treasured stories at bedtime, the same ones often over and over. When Goodnight Moon could put us all to sleep, and we would often wake up in the wee hours, having drifted off after one said, ‘mama, will you lie down with me a while?’

There is too much wonder, too much joy in the raising of children to scratch the faintest surface of describing it. Suffice it to say, parenthood took us, shook us, and remade us into more full humans. It forged us into a team as a couple. It taught us to live for the struggles of the present and the hope of the future; but not some vague future. It made us focus on the future of those four little humans who were part of us and who would carry on the life we had on earth. Our physicality, yes, but also our insights, our experiences, our lessons, our own histories. They would be archives of us and of the new things they experienced along the way, arks launched into the future.

With children we learned that we, mother and father, were just not nearly as important as they were. That their needs, fragile and vulnerable as they were, had to come first. This can sound burdensome to those who have not fallen in love at the first glimpse of their newborn, but in fact it is undeniable. Parenthood, when done properly, is a re-ordering of one’s individual universe, in line with the way things have always been.

However it is also a process deep and ancient, that at its root is about survival. It is about the survival of a family and the genetics (and thus skills and traits) passed down since humans were first humans. The survival that honors those who struggled so hard to survive before us, who made sure that we were here today, who sacrificed, fought, scraped, starved, hunted, farmed, froze, sweltered and dreamed that their line would go on when so many had not. (I wonder, sometimes, if they watch me, or speak to me in my dreams.)

It is also about the survival of the race of man, this collective of ours. Its existence in total requires our survival in individual families and children. I’m not sure that we get that these days.

Young men are having vasectomies, and young women tubal ligations, in devotion to reproductive rights or over concerns about global climate change or because they have been told that humanity is on the brink of starvation due to overpopulation. (In fact impending demographic decline is a much bigger concern now.)

Some say that the world is too hard, too dangerous, to raise a child and so they choose not to reproduce. And many cultures now are far more worried about the right to abortion than about the fundamental importance of fertility. Among physicians I hear far more concern about preventing pregnancy than encouraging it.

But for the human race to survive we need humans. (As simplistic as that sounds.) Not just as genetic contributors but because humans shape the natural world in positive ways, create new technologies, build, manufacture, heal, feed, protect. Human thought propels humanity forward and along the way, in a sure and steady progression, makes the world at large far better.

When young people consider it a burden to reproduce then I can’t help but assume that they really aren’t serious about survival except as an abstraction, or perhaps they mean the survival of living things other than human so that the planet can be free of the ‘virus’ of humanity.

When they think that adulthood is so much better without children, I wonder if they understand what adulthood means after all. For with or without progeny, true maturity, true adulthood, requires us to move beyond ourselves. There are many ways to do that, but none as sure-fire as having a spouse and bringing children into the world.

I know that some people have very good reasons not to have kids. I know that it can be the heartbreak of infertility, or the wounds of an abusive relationship or difficult childhood. I understand that the monetary costs can be high.

However, the world at large, and our lives individually, also gain great riches from taking a chance, growing up, putting aside self and bringing beautiful, brilliant children into the world to give it hope.

If we are to go on, and rise higher, I certainly hope that up and coming generations desire children as much as they desire wealth and comfort. If they do not, the doom of mankind is just over the horizon.