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

[chochiyo-sama.livejournal.com]

I wanted to be a parent for as far back as I can remember. I was just a child myself when I started collecting children's books and cookie cutters and Christmas ornaments to enjoy with my babies.

I became a teacher--and then, it seemed, I was married to my job and all my students WERE my children.

The life I had envisioned for myself never even remotely came true for me. I never married, never had children, never even dated that much.

I always intended that someday I would have kids--even in my 40s--until endometrial cancer led to a complete hysterectomy. No kids for me...not even in the realm of possibility.

I was very sad when the dream died, and I questioned the value and validity of my life. I wasn't sure if I wanted to be alive any more. However, I came to the notion that if I had given birth to my own children, I would not have had the ability to give myself so fully to my students. My attention would have been focused on my family.

As I believe I have made significant differences in many many kids' lives, I decided that the sacrifice of a life of my own in order to make the lives of a lot of kids better was okay.

Now that I am nearing retirement, I wonder what is going to become of me in my old age. I will have no children to come home for Christmas. No grandchildren to bake cookies for. No heirs to pass my books and "treasures" on to.

That makes me sad.

But, life continues. I have cats. They are my children now.

As far as my feelings about children, I like what Kalil Gibran has to say about them:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

(this is only a partial quote of the poem, but it is the part that encompasses my beliefs about kids.)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You have been a devoted teacher- and that is a remarkable thing to have been.

I think of the great teachers in my life- and one in particular. This man never married, he never had children of his own- but he was mentor and role model to many generations of boys. His influence on me was as deep and beneficial as that of my own natural father.

I've always liked what Gibran has to say about children. You can't hang onto them, you have to let them go, you shouldn't expect a return.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

That inevitably evokes the final words of Goodbye, Mr Chips, which are relevant to your post in general: "I thought I heard you say 'twas a pity, a pity I never had children. But you're wrong...I have...thousands of them...thousands of them...and all boys!"

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The man I'm thinking of was a real life Chips- who served at the same school from the 1920s to the 1960s.