Parenthood

[poliphilo]

I want to say thank you to everyone who responded to my post about surrogacy. It's been really interesting.

Here's a related issue. At the beginning of her article Melanie Thernstrom writes, "to be childless felt like being deprived of something essential: the primal human experience." This niggles me. To begin with I simply disagree. Parenthood is not the "primal human experience".   The primal human experience is engagement with the world- and whatever it happens to throw up; a childless life is not a second-class life. Secondly it comes dangerously close to asserting parenthood as a "right"- which I don't believe it is. Parenthood is a privilege- which many abuse. Children are not property or playthings or an extension of the parent, but  autonomous beings whom the parent is never going to fully understand. The greatest thing a parent can do for their child is to let it go. As Khalil Gibran wrote, "Your children are not your children."

I'd like to know what you think...

Comments

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I do feel that children are a primal human experience, but as part of Family. Family--that connection with other human beings, whether you were willing to be part of it or not--has always seemed to be one of the defining human experiences. To me, anyway. I try to conceive of being human without having family, and I fail. We did not evolve in solitude; interaction with others is part of survival.

Whether or not a single individual chooses to become a parent, the human chain created by parents and children who become parents who have children who become... that is an essential part of being human.

Is it the only primal experience? No, I don't think so. But reproduction is a pretty big deal, from a strictly mammalian point of view. :)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We have made a shibboleth of the nuclear family- mother, father, two and a half kids. It's a very constricting model. My neighbour- Samina- is part of a huge extended family- heaven only knows how many of them there are. I don't think I'd like it- but I can see the benefits. In a family the size of a village no-one need ever be lonely, or unsupported or utterly destitute.