Thinking About: Having Children

When I was visiting my Mother recently my brother and I drove over to see my sister and her kids. While we were there my oldest niece, who is 13-14, interrogated me about my lack of children. Growing up in a family of five other siblings it didn’t surprise me that she wanted to know why I didn’t have any children of my own. This is how I answered her:

I started by saying that I was 54 years old and felt that I was a bit long in the tooth to start thinking about producing any children at this late stage in my life. I told her that I had spent most of my life single and that my most successful relationship (which actually wasn’t exactly a poster for a perfect relationship) had lasted two years. Apart from some brief, and seemingly one sided, infatuations since we split up I have been pretty much left to my own devices. I told her that I thought that there are already far too many people in the world and that we didn’t really need another mouth to feed. She responded, rather intelligently I thought, with the idea that a child I’d help to produce might save the world someday rather than simply be just another consumer (I’m paraphrasing here) and I said that the odds against something like that were quite long. I said that the future is likely to be bleak and there are difficult times ahead for everyone. I told her that it was my considered opinion that the next generation, and maybe the one after that, are going to go through some bad times, indeed very bad times, and that things might never recover. It wasn’t fair, believing that, to bring a child into the world knowing, or at least suspecting, what was coming next. I said that bringing a child into the world is a huge responsibility and such a thing was not to be undertaken lightly. I said that I really didn’t want to be put in a situation where something I did, or didn’t do, could screw up another person’s life to the extent that a parent can screw up their child’s. It’s not the kind of responsibility I seek or would enjoy – or possibly cope with. Last I said that I didn’t particularly like children anyway, that they’re noisy and that they smell. That they’re always crying and are always so demanding of time, effort and attention. I really couldn’t see myself taking on that kind of commitment – at least not voluntarily.

To which my sister said: They’re just excuses.

Maybe so, but they’re good excuses. It takes two to tango. Even if I wanted to I cannot produce a child on my own. Presently, and it would seem for the foreseeable future, I’m going to be on my own. That kind of limits my options on the baby front. Luckily I’m not in the position where my biological clock is forcing me to think about such eventualities. For one thing there’s quite a few of my genes out there already with a brother, sister and 6 nieces and nephews. I don’t feel the need to add any more Cyberkitten into the gene pool even if, going from my sisters kids, they’re pretty good genes. I doubt very much if not having children is one of the things I’ll regret on my death bed if I get the opportunity to look back over my life. Not getting around to reading all of my books, yes. Not getting around to having children, no. It’s just not that important. Even if I met someone tomorrow, even if we hit it off right away, even if everything was as it should be the odds of children being in the (future) picture are, I think, very low.  So sorry, Katie. Never going to happen.