One of the beautiful things about Christmas is that it's all about the birth of a baby.
Sassoferrato
I wasn't planning to post anything more today (except the traditional Christmas music post, coming soon), but after reading Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak yesterday and Mark Steyn this morning, I had to dash this off.Petula Dvorak specializes in columns about contemporary motherhood. Her favorite words to describe modern moms: frenetic, frenzied, over-committed, multi-tasking, beleaguered, overwhelmed, manic, exhausted, crazy-busy, et cetera. (Case in point here.) This busy-ness is as much a badge of honor as it is a claim to victimhood -- a win-win for post-feminist moms.
Ms. Dvorak is one of the mothers who couldn't figure out what to do with her kids during the enforced downtime created by the DC area blizzards a couple of years ago, so unusual was it to have unstructured time at home. She scoured the internet for projects to keep the kids "occupied." (That 21st century kids are so often unable to find ways to amuse themselves speaks volumes about our culture and the way we're raising our children, but that's an issue for another day.)
May I submit that if parenthood is a nightmare of overscheduled, restless, and largely meaningless activity, you're doing it wrong.
In her latest column, Ms. Dvorak reveals that she's painted such a dismal picture of parenthood that she's souring her readers on the idea of having any kids at all:
None of this amuses Jamel, a [28 year-old] communications manager at a trade association in Arlington who wrote that “the thought of having kids scares me to death. Children are expensive, needy, and time consuming. . . . What is the point of having kids if your life ends when theirs begins?”There's an answer to that question.
In his latest piece, Elisabeth’s Barrenness and Ours, Mark Steyn confirms that the guy above is not alone:
The developed world, like Elisabeth, is barren. Collectively barren, I hasten to add. Individually, it’s made up of millions of fertile women, who voluntarily opt for no children at all or one designer kid at 39. In Italy, the home of the Church, the birthrate’s somewhere around 1.2, 1.3 children per couple — or about half “replacement rate.” Japan, Germany, and Russia are already in net population decline. [ . . .] In a recent poll, invited to state the “ideal” number of children, 16.6 percent of Germans answered “None.” We are living in Zacharias and Elisabeth’s world — by choice.The notion, so aptly expressed above by Jamel, that giving one's goods, love, and time to one's children amounts to "the end" of one's own life, springs from a sort of spiritual death. Steyn:
The notion of life as a self-growth experience is more radical than it sounds. For most of human history, functioning societies have honored the long run: It’s why millions of people have children, build houses, plant trees, start businesses, make wills, put up beautiful churches in ordinary villages, fight and if necessary die for your country . . . A nation, a society, a community is a compact between past, present, and future, in which the citizens, in Tom Wolfe’s words at the dawn of the “Me Decade,” “conceive of themselves, however unconsciously, as part of a great biological stream.”And a shallow one. At the end, Steyn makes a compelling empirical case for Christianity: the alternative isn't working. In the most fundamental sense, Godless societies are failing because they have nothing to live for, and the result is a void, the absence of life.
Much of the developed world climbed out of the stream. You don’t need to make material sacrifices: The state takes care of all that. You don’t need to have children. And you certainly don’t need to die for king and country. But a society that has nothing to die for has nothing to live for: It’s no longer a stream, but a stagnant pool.
I've deliberately refrained from excerpting Steyn's conclusion so please go read the whole thing and then mentally insert his last paragraph right here.
Correggio
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I've often heard people say that about having children, that their life will be "over". That's always struck me as extremely funny because myself and most other people I know who have children think they "came alive" when their child was born.
ReplyDeleteWhen my kids made it into the world, my life had more purpose (trust me, before them, I had a great career, social life, etc) and suddenly seemed more bright and wonderful. What many don't realize is that a child allows you the privilege of seeing everything in the world for the "first time", and it's fascinating. I can't imagine my life without them, and know that, if I didn't have them, I'd be able to indulge myself and my wants more often, but my world wouldn't have the same fullness, light and laughter.
If it wasn't for them, I never would've stayed home and started my writing career. We have less money, but God's given me time to work on my book, blog, and watch every ridiculous thing those twins do during the day. Otherwise, I'd still be in that cubicle, selling my dreams to the insurance world...but that's just my Christmas thought.
But where the line is between busy and overflowing is sometimes a very fine one. My life as a homeschooling mom of 6 is already busy, just doing the laundry and meals and making sure they all learn something each day is a full time + job. Add in piano lessons for 4, Scouts, grocery shopping, doctor appointments, errands, blogging, exercise... and some days I want to tear my hair out and need a Valium (I don't do either, I self-medicate with Gobstopper candies). My children are my life right now, with small amounts of time carved out for myself, hopefully there will be time later for other things. But there is no denying that children are needing, expensive, and time consuming, you just have to decide that the future of the planet depends on you exerting the time and effort to continue the species.
ReplyDeletePaige, right. And nothing has higher entertainment value than a toddler. We miss that around here.
ReplyDeleteI think a lot of that attitude of "losing one's life" to kids comes from fear. Life is scary and messy, and always has been. Opening yourself up to parenthood means making yourself vulnerable and giving up (the illusion) of control of the most basic elements of life. In general, adults used to embrace that rather than recoil from it.
Children introduce a zillion variables into life. One common thread to modern 'frenetic' motherhood seems to be a desperate desire to retain control of time and events. It's not possible, or even desirable.
Kat, my kids are older now but I've been where you are. Sometimes there were ways we could simplify, other times not. I'd be lying if I didn't admit the house was usually a mess. That didn't make me happy. People always ask moms of large families "how they do it." Sometimes the answer is that we just muddle through. It isn't always pretty. I often worried about being up to the job but I never wondered whether it was worth it.
But regardless of the immensity of the responsibility and commitment parents, as a matter of course, have taken on through the generations, it wasn't until fairly recently that large segments of the adult population decided it just isn't worth it to have children, or even child.
I think if people were truly honest, it isn't so much that they believe their "life will end" if they were to have children, but that they would have to grow-up and become adults if they had children. Really, it's that their childhood would end.
ReplyDeleteSadly, just having children, though, doesn't seem enough to actually cause someone to grow-up. Being an adult means that you are able to make difficult choices for the greater good. Often that greater good is in favor of raising healthy, well-adjusted children. But, many people seem to think they can continue with their previous lifestyle by keeping the children so busy that the raising of them becomes someone else's job.
This could also have something to do with the current backlash against large families. There seems to be this notion that there is something wrong with a family with more than a few children... that surely it isn't possible to give each child everything they need... that it is a sign that there is something pathological about the parents... that they are a freak show that is to be wondered at, but not taken seriously. (As one small bit of evidence, there is President Obama's reaction in a town hall meeting at discovering a man in the audience had 10 children. If you didn't catch it, I put the link up at my blog: http://ordinary-time.blogspot.com/2011/04/open-letter-to-president-obama.html ) Of course raising many children is unworkable if you subscribe to the outsourcing-child-rearing method. Perhaps the presence of functioning large families makes some people uncomfortable because it proves that there are other ways raise children. But it also requires an true adult to do so.
I remember the incident well but just read your excellent post. :) Of course, we large families could run our necessary gas guzzlers for centuries for the cost of one Obama Hawaiian vacation.
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas and God bless.