I Am Selfish For Wanting Children

I recently came across an Instagram post that struck the EXACT chord in me that drove me to write this blog in the first place. Yes, I focus a lot on the slowly unfolding catastrophe of climate change and how our kids will live in a more hostile and resource-scarce world, but more than that I’m struggling to accept the fundamental selfishness at the heart of my wish to conceive, gestate, and birth a human being that is half Jack and half me.

This particular Instagram post comes from Dr. Ayesha Kahn and her handle is “wokescientist”. The first page reads: “Children are the most vulnerable, at-risk population in the world. That is why parenthood is a lifelong ethical responsibility, commitment, and service. Yet, childhood trauma is widespread because people often have kids for selfish reasons.”

BOOM. Yes, precisely. Anyone who can, as I so very crassly wrote in my previous post, “bareback fuck” can become a parent. That doesn’t mean they have stepped up to the demands and requirements of the lifelong task before them.

Dr. Kahn says it better. “Some basic facts we can all agree on: 1) No child chooses to be born. They are brought into this world fundamentally without consent by the laws of nature. 2) Adults in various capacities are solely responsible for bringing a child into this world and hence, are entirely responsible for serving the child’s needs and wants as caregivers. 3) Adults are not doing children a ‘favor’ by birthing them or raising them. Children did not ask to be here and raising them is the bare minimum ethical responsibility of bringing life into this world. Your parents shouldn’t guilt you about your mere existence being a burden.”

But as I continued swiping through the slides of her post, I realized that however well-intentioned I am in my desire to provide a stable, loving environment for a child as my parents did for me, I am ultimately and inescapably selfish for even having the desire to procreate. Dr. Kahn continues: “Why do you want to have children? No matter which way I’ve thought about this or which way people have answered, the answers have always been selfish to varying degrees: Because I’ve always wanted to be a parent. Because I love my partner and want to create a child that is half of each of us. Because my parents want to be grandparents and have me continue my family’s lineage. Because I think the idea of me bringing life into this world is a beautiful thing that I’ve always wanted to do. Because it seems like the next step in life is to have a family. Everyone does it.”

I have, if not literally written those words verbatim, expressed nearly every single one of those sentiments from my second post in this blog onward. I talk about how much I love Jack and want more of his DNA around in the form of a cute kiddo. I talk about my desire to experience the magic of growing life first-hand. I arrogantly presume that I will be a sufficient mother, and when I doubt myself I callously throw other struggling parents under the bus screeching, “At least I won’t fail THIS hard!” Every single “justification” I can concoct fails to stand up to scrutiny. Every single one of them is selfish. It centers me. My desire. My vision for my life. My want for Jack to blend his body with mine into a new human.

I am selfish. It cannot be described any other way.

I could VERY easily fuck everything up as a mother. I could very easily fail at every junction. Traumatize my kid. Fail to prepare them for the trauma of living in an ecologically collapsing world. A dying planet. The existential dread is almost too much for ME to handle. What if I pass on my anxieties to my children? What if their anxieties are even worse? It would certainly be understandable if that were so. Much of what we take for granted now will be gone or unrecognizable in just a few decades. And I want to ask my son or daughter to forgive me for my selfishness? I brought them to a dead planet . . . . because I wanted to play house? How can I be viewed as anything other than a self-centered bitch? I’m truly asking myself this question, every day. Constantly. Always thinking about motherhood and parenting and the swirl of emotion around it.

Then we throw in Jack’s hesitation and his own doubts and fears about fatherhood. More than anything he wants to love, protect, and defend his offspring, but he struggles with his temper in emotionally triggering moments. Hey, the guy literally survived a ton of childhood trauma. Years and years’ worth of it. I don’t blame or begrudge him one bit, knowing what he’s been through. He knows the lasting effects of physical abuse better than I do, and he wants to break the cycle and avoid passing it down at all costs. It will be a tall order. Rigorous. Demanding. Exhausting. Triggering.

But parenthood is also rewarding. Fulfilling. Humbling. Inspiring. Even when parents say they aren’t necessarily more happy than their childless counterparts, they do report overall higher levels of purposefulness and satisfaction when they look back on their lives and the growth and evolution of their children. I understand why people become parents, and I think there should be more financial and social support available for parents specifically to reduce the amount of childhood trauma experienced today. There has to be a way for us to ethically bring humans onto this planet without setting them up for failure and removing their ability to meet their own needs in the future. We obviously haven’t figured it out yet and continue to get knocked-up willy-nilly, so all we can do is work within the messy, inefficient system we currently have in place.

I feel simultaneously obligated to adopt and somehow resentful that it would fall upon me. My boss offered her point of view last week. “I don’t think you need to feel obligated, Megan. It would certainly be kind and altruistic of you to adopt, but there’s no need to feel morally forced into it. Have children if you want them.” Then I think of the literal hundreds of thousands of kids in foster care in the U.S. alone and I’m all the more aware of my own wretchedness, insisting that I have my own because I somehow think I’ll be successful and worthy of the venture.

I’m not a mathematician by any stretch of the imagination, but numbers do hold quite a bit of weight in my mind. How can this country have failed so badly that we have hundreds of thousands of unwanted children falling through the cracks of our broken, abusive foster care system? And why do I feel like the fate of each of those kids rests on my decision to get pregnant or not? It makes no sense. It’s not logical. I try to vote in a manner that increases funding for social programs. I advocate for reform. But it’s not enough and it certainly doesn’t feel like it’s enough.

I’m so emotionally drained, every single day. My brain is hard at work, thinking, bargaining, imagining, speculating, debating, visualizing. I work full-time writing CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) documents for clients, I teach six dance classes a week, I write for the Trinity Journal, and now I’ve picked up a few writing assignments for the S.A.F.E Newsletter (Safer Alternatives for our Forest Environment). I fill my time because what else am I going to do? If I don’t keep myself running at full bore, I’ll stop and cry for God only knows how many days.

To be a dreamer is to be perpetually broken-hearted, envisioning a world that could be so much better than the one we’re currently in, and finding the strength to cope with the crap that comes day after day after day. I love my jobs. I love every single one of them. I want to be spending my time this way. But the capitalist grind is wearing me down before I’ve even entered the prime of my earning years. I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. I know other people are far more worse off and burned out than I. I know people are still busting their asses for too little pay, with no benefits, no supports, and no safety nets. I’m so grateful for my husband, my parents and siblings, my friends. I’m grateful for meaningful work and multiple creative outlets. I’m grateful to have a roof over my head and food on my table. I’ve crafted a life that, if it weren’t for this damn global warming, is my idea of perfect. My vision. My dream.

But to fulfill the next stage of this dream, to find myself pregnant with Jack’s child, is more selfish than anything else I’ve ever done. And I’ve done a LOT of selfish things in my life. This post is already too long, so I won’t exhaust the list here, but I need to be gutsy enough to openly state how absolutely, inarguably selfish I am. What I want in life (motherhood) centers me, potentially at the cost of my offsprings’ mental health. Their physical health, even! And for the life of me, I just can’t come up with a good reason to have children, a reason that center’s our child and their needs and wants . . . and not us, the parents.

If you think of one, let me know.