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

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Those maiden aunts and bachelor uncles had their role in the family. And, of course, every so often one of them would turn out to be an Emily Dickinson or an Edward Lear.

My mother's family was well supplied with Victorian maiden aunts. They were formidable people- campaigners for women's rights and disarmament and other Quakerish values.

Not having children frees one up to do other things.

Most of my queasiness about surrogacy would evaporate if it was a option open to the poor.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Or indeed a Jane Austen...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Or a Lewis Carroll...