The agony of childlessness

I have to object again to tagging this as a Boomer thing. I see it as a Gen-Xer, and I'm sure you have, too.

This is sad. Children are a blessing. People we know have adopted children (e.g. from China), that's a good alternative for those who feel called and ready to do that.

I do feel bad for Favog -- both in his genuine desire to have a family and particularly given the excruciating CULTURAL pressure he and his sick wife must have been under as faithful Catholics.

Will I regret my choices? Quite possibly.

But I'll at least know (barring Alzheimer's/dementia) why I made them, so I'll have that small comfort in my rocking chair at the retirement home.

May God, the Father of all life, hear the prayers of all who struggle with infertility; and may TMF and his wife be granted, if they still wish it, the opportunity in the immediate future to adopt a child who will fill their home and heart with the joy they seek, and be a glad receiver of the abundant love they have to give.

That's true, Derek; also, this quote from the article:

"My better half says there's one question she wants to ask Jesus when she dies, being that we live in a country where there's so few children even to adopt because so many parents don't want to be . . . and can make that so..."

made me think that they had, indeed, considered adoption and perhaps even tried to adopt. Some infertile couples give up after awhile because the whole process is not only time and money intensive, but also emotionally draining. We don't know the whole story, here, but I doubt that people with so great a desire for a family, for children, would reject adoption out of hand.

Yawnnnnnn. How dreadful! To enjoy a life of quiet, of never having to worry about childhood illness or disaster. To not have to deal with idiotic school officials and bumbling relatives.

No wonder I've never missed the tiny roar of the damned nuisances.

They won't get any sympathy from me. They should enjoy their happiness and restful life.

The Mighty Favog, I am sorry that children were not granted to you. Catalonia, you are acting like an ass. Just because they were not able to adopt does not make them narcissists. Sometimes, things just don't work out. If this has never happened to you, then get on your knees and thank God Almighty. I was lucky enough to have two beautiful daughters, but that doesn't mean that I was a better parent than these people. I am everlastingly grateful, but I am not foolish enough to think that I "earned" or "deserved" my children. Many better than I have no children, and many worse do.

You owe TMF and his wife an apology.

God bless you and your wife, TMF. I cannot fathom the mind of God, but I can thank you for what you do for children that are not your own. I have a beloved aunt who could not have children, and she and my uncle (God rest his soul) are dearly loved by all their nieces and nephews, but I don't discount for one moment the pain that they must have experienced. May God grant you peace.

Rod, thanks for linking to this post. The Mighty Favog, thank you for sharing your testimony. God bless you and your wife. My wife and I had a lot of trouble before we were blessed with a child. Dealing with two miscarriages was a struggle. After years of struggle, our child is so precious and joyful.

It is so easy to make an assessment that is faulty or flawed - such as this couple does not have kids so they are selfish. Well, maybe they struggled and struggled and the Lord did not bless them in this way. For some it is easy, but for a lot more people than you may realize it is tough. We should be very careful not to confuse our own walk with someone else's and perhaps reserve judgment.

TMF,

The following will not be much comfort to you and Mrs.TMF, but just think how magnified the pain is for those who have aborted their children and now experience what you are going through, and for those who have lost a child.

At least you didn't have a choice. But those who did, and chose to abort their children, suffer so much more because they now realize what they have done. Those women, in many cases, suffer terribly. You may even have seen it up close, as have I. In some cases, suicide or insanity result. The Church tries to help, but many women are too ashamed to seek help.

And consider the excruciating pain and sense of loss for those whose child has been taken. The memories of Christmases past; the all too present ghosts; the echoes of laughter; the missing hugs; and the sense of what could have been are constants.

As you undoubtedly know, trust in a merciful, all-knowing God is the only relief.

Poor Boomers. They really have it tough.

Poor Boomers. They really have it tough.

If that's your response to the Favog piece, then something is deeply, deeply wrong with you.

Rod,
I agree; that's a pathetic response to a tale of personal triumph over deep pain on an individual level. The collective discussion of "To whom much is given, much is required" belongs elsewhere.
Blessings,

4-Sale: 3-year-old boy, potty-trained, low-milage. $2500 OBO.

This may be too late to consider for Favog and his wife, but there is an alternative that should be mentioned: adopting a fetus in utero.

I won't make a long post to cover the important details (like having or not having direct contact with the mother). It is by far the closest an infertile couple can get to the birth process, and can serve to alleviate the biological concerns mentioned above (hormones do play a big part in the "parenting instinct" aspect). It also is not necessarily a less expensive method, so the usual caveat emptor applies.

The Mighty Favog
Otherwise, pally, my generation and yours have aborted almost all of the children my wife and I could have adopted from this country. It's not like we didn't look into it and weren't told the odds were long, indeed.

Oh good grief. Believing there are not enough children for adoption is totally delusional.

The difficulty of adoption is entirely due a screwed-up system that thinks it's better for children to spend their childhood being shuffled from places to place in foster care, than it would be for children to reside in some 'less than perfect' home. And ignoring that fact that, under their standards, almost every family with biological children wouldn't be eligible to adopt their own children if they had to.

It has nothing to do with a 'lack of children'. There is absolutely no lack of children being shuffled around in foster care.

I second what Elizabeth said about those with small families, too. My wife's cousin and her husband have been unable to have more than one child, despite their best efforts. Which is a horrible shame, since the birth of their son changed the husband's mind about wanting to have more than one child.

You never know.

Well, the whole 'you aborted children that we could've adopted'.. That seems an odd argument. Its like someone who is very religiously conservative is encouraging the heathens to go around getting promiscuous sex and getting pregnant, so they can have children to adopt, though obviously aborting them is bad.

But there would also mostly be 'no children for them to adopt', mostly, in this country, if the parents weren't engaging in some form of unapproved sex and/or were not in the financial position to raise them.

What is happening in this country isn't so much that the children are being aborted at such great numbers. Its that even when the mother does not, there's not the social pressure to 'give it up' when they DO have their child.

So, in an ideal world, I'm afraid, there'd not be any children to adopt. Giving a child up for adoption is what happens when something goes wrong, often to the point of tragedy. The parents are legally, financially, emotionally, or physically unable or unwilling, to raise the child themselves.

There's never been a large pool of adoptable children in the 'healthy white child under the age of 2' category in this country mostly due to the original stigma of adoption, itself, then once that was gone, the means, and increased acceptability available (happening pretty much concurrently) to either not have (by either not getting pregnant in the first place, or abortion), or to raise (both by the growing acceptance of single parenthood and poverty programs) the child themselves.

For those who imagine that childlessness is uniquely a "Boomer" phenomenon, check out the fascinating piece on the front page of today's Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/01/14/ST2008011403217.html?hpid=topnews

"The majority of college graduates in their 20s in metropolitan regions postpone having kids until at least their 30s or never have any, according to recent demographic research."

Reporter Ian Shapira goes on to interview a number of middle class, college-educated couples in the DC suburbs -- 28 and 29 year olds -- who are constantly treated like freaks because they have (gasp!) a baby.

There are many reasons why couples do not have children or have small families, and as TMF's post illustrates, making assumptions about any particular couple is both ignorant and wrong. But demographically, the Gen-Xers and whatever the cohort behind them is called are going to be in the same situation as the Boomers.

First our society invented a whole stage of life called "adolescence." Now, through massive overemphasis of the need for post-secondary educational credentials, we've extended that period until around the age of 30, during which people believe they are "too young" to have kids. This is a deeply sick culture -- I just hope it's not terminally ill.

Simon, This is a deeply sick culture

True.

I just hope it's not terminally ill.

The culture is most certainly terminal.

But that doesn't prevent another culture (one that openly embraces God, family, and community) cannot not grow out of the ashes. Consider it "creative destruction."

Cleveland wrote:

"As you undoubtedly know, trust in a merciful, all-knowing God is the only relief."

Would this be the same God who denied TMF children and gave his wife cancer? Some relief.

Especially since a girl's "maturity" had nothing to do with being married off to an older man by her parents for most human societies. She had absolutely no say in it, since the marriage was primarily a transaction between father and husband.

Simon, That has been the norm in human societies since the beginning of time, and it's obviously more consistent with biology than the modern custom of waiting 2 decades or more after puberty.

Peter, because they live longer...girls have a say in their life. Pretending kids were automatically more mature is just an easy cop out.

The big cultural difference between now and then: we are first individuals, and reject the idea of family. And once this happens, the only choice left is marriages in the later years.

IOW, family-based culures don't see themselves as rank individuals, making their own personal decisions with autonomy as we do today. They knew that a young boy or girl was not experienced enough to make lifetime decisions at 13 or even 20, and so the parents generally made those decisions with them. Not so today.

It's an interesting phychological question. Can an individualistic culture have enough children to survive over time, or is it necessarily slated for extinction? Is the human brain configured in such a way to require a multi-generational system of courtship in a structured civilization (where everyone is not just rutting like animals)? I would be interested in studying the pre-Jane Austen culture, or perhaps African culture, and explore how they did/do it. There is a very strong correlation between later marriages and below-replacement populations (i.e., extinction).

Yawnnnnnn. How dreadful! To enjoy a life of quiet, of never having to worry about childhood illness or disaster. To not have to deal with idiotic school officials and bumbling relatives.

Wait, wait.... If I hadn't had children, I wouldn't have to deal with my mother? Or my father-in-law? Or my 2 brothers-in-law with Asperger's? Really? I never knew that forgoing children was going to erase any obligation or connection to bumbling relatives.

I guess it would have stopped me from caring if other people's kids got sick or met with disaster as well? Wow. To think I could have been completely callous and had a life free of all suffering. (cause we know that tragedies only befall those with children.) Well, guess it's too late now.

Sounds fairly plausible to me.

"we are first individuals, and reject the idea of family"

Of course, in the "good old days," women weren't even viewed as individuals allowed to make decisions about who they married or how many children they have. That's primarily an invention since about 1850 and many women in the 20th Century would argue it was less about "the idea of family" but instead about the inability to have a say.

Of course, in the "good old days," women weren't even viewed as individuals allowed to make decisions about who they married or how many children they have.

Bingo. Birth rates go down when women are empowered.

Daniel, women in the 20th Century would argue it was less about "the idea of family" but instead about the inability to have a say.

Fair enough. Your moralizing doesn't answer the question, though: can women have this say without going extinct? 200 years worth of data seems to say they can't, but who knows.

Perhaps the female homo sapien has evolved to perish without the patriarchy nearby. How did the Jews say it in Genesis? In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you. Go figure, I always thought it was "publish or perish!"

On the Washington Post article to which Simon links us, which I read today, again, there is likely more to the story of the couples profiled and described than we can assume under the procrustean beds of our snap judgments. Kudos to the couple who chose the bold step of having a child young. In the Metro DC economy and housing market, and in the Metro DC culture in which they live (and where I now do), it is possible that they will defer much and do without other things as a consequence of their choice.

Richard, I certainly wasn't making any judgments about the couples profiled in the Post. On the contrary, they come across as perfectly ordinary and probably admirable people.

What prompted my remark about the sickness of our culture is the fact that the decision by some college-educated couples in their late twenties to have a baby is considered so unusual today -- literally, front page news.

As my earlier comment indicated, I make no judgments about anyone based on the size of their family. To assume that a person with few or no children has made a "choice" because of "selfishness" is be crass in the extreme.

Among other things, young college graduates who have children face severe penalties imposed by an economy that effectively requires a 4 year college degree and in many professions one or more graduate degrees merely to enter the workforce. In areas like DC, NY, LA, SF, etc., they also face preposterously high housing costs -- and most people do not have the luxury of moving to the rural Midwest and being able to count on finding employment. And almost every basic, popular financial planning book that a young couple might consult will misinform the reader that a child is an enormous financial liability, that each child will cost umpteen hundreds of thousands of dollars by the time he or she reaches 22, and that having children without meticulous and cautious planning is irresponsible.

A society that so thoroughly disincentivizes child-rearing -- the most natural of all human aspirations -- is deeply sick.

"And almost every basic, popular financial planning book that a young couple might consult will misinform the reader that a child is an enormous financial liability, that each child will cost umpteen hundreds of thousands of dollars by the time he or she reaches 22, and that having children without meticulous and cautious planning is irresponsible."

Bingo! These are the same kinds of financial planning books that tell us we all need to be millionaires to retire. Because, of course, we will all be jetting back and forth from condos in the Cayman's to time-shares in Colorado.

Someone should write a more realistic guide for the young. Based on how we got through the 90s, I'd start with: Look around for other people with children. Have coffee together and watch how they interact with their children. If you like what you see start having supper together. Pretty soon your kids will be best friends and you will have a self-selected "village" of adults with shared values, who help each other if a child is sick or a mother needs to take a part-time job.

There is a very strong correlation between later marriages and below-replacement populations (i.e., extinction).

Undoubtedly, for cases where there is sufficient data and the parameters confined, history adds much fuzziness however. Later marriages and replacement ratio still have to be seen against the backdrop of resource competition, disease, ideological competition, weird environmental changes like average global temperatures changing and catastrophic deluge's of the Black Sea and Mediterranean types, and the complexities of 'civilized' society.

Give us a global catastrophy and you'll find liberals embracing more conservative family values and you'll find conservatives grow more puritannical due to the lack of liberals. The need for deviancy is endemic to the human condition afterall.

IOW, I don't think civilizations collapse on a correlation.

::Thirteen was hardly the societal norm in your great grandmother's day.

But no, it's not sick if a teenage girl is psychologically mature and prepared to have children (which, FWIW, I don't believe is possible for ANY teenager is our society). That has been the norm in human societies since the beginning of time, and it's obviously more consistent with biology than the modern custom of waiting 2 decades or more after puberty.::

It was post war, immigrant ghettos and such. I wonder if they had trained psychologists then, to determine my great-grandmothers psycho-maturity?

My grandmother married at 16, didn't have kids till 19 though, perhaps it was because my grandfather was quasi-feminine, being Protestant baptist and all, whereas my Catholic great-grandfather, now he did manly masculine things, chivalry and all. All those manly characteristics you guys are always talking about.

Mighty Favog, thank you for sharing your story, although I will admit that I have never gotten so irritated at comments on a forum as this one.

First off, all you smug people who have never suffered through the pain of infertility, and who are making smart remarks about how infertile couples are "narcissistic," or uniformly "responsible" in some way, all I can say is that I hope you never have to "walk the walk" someday.

For you righteous ones, who think that everyone should run out and adopt - it's not always possible. You cannot judge why a particular couple in an article didn't adopt. Further, it's not the job of infertile couples to take on all the social problems of the world as a consequence of their infertility (drug-addicted babies, abused children, etc.)

As for the snide comments about Boomers, it's just exasperating. Many younger people suffer from infertility problems too. Educate yourself on PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome), for instance. It starts AT PUBERTY. You can't blame it on evil feminism or careerism or narcissm. The metabolic derangements persist through life. And not only Baby Boomers get it. There are many young women who have it, and who are probably looking at years of struggle with all the attendant medical issues, not to mention the condescension and remarks - because obviously ONLY Baby Boomers have infertility problems, because they're "so selfish, you know."

If you did have children yourself, consider yourself lucky and thank God for it.

And for those taking pot shots at this writer and indirectly at other infertile people - before you blab on line, take ten seconds to think about the REAL people on the other end of the wires reading your remarks, and ask yourself if you would really say these things to their faces.

elizabeth, Somehow the upper classes continue to survive, despite their low birth rate...

Actually, they don't. Every year, the upper classes shrink, and their ranks are replaced by the lower classes.

It's like saying that people who commit suicide before breeding continue to survive, because hey, we keep seeing them. No. They are a biological dead end.

aaron, IOW, I don't think civilizations collapse on a correlation.

Keep in mind the number of extinct humans far, far exceeds that of those who make it. Going extinct is the norm, not the exception.

It's shocking how fast one culture can wipe out another, and certain genetic material not conducive to survival fades rapidly once exposed to competition. Look, for example, at lactose tolerance, which as evolved very recently (since farming) using different genes in Europe and Africa. Blue eyes are less than 10,000 years old (and based upon current trends, will be extinct in another 10,000).

Other examples: every human of non-African decent can trace himself back to a single tribe 50,000 years ago (genetic studies). The entire North American Indian tribal group as well to a small tribe 20,000 years ago, and they have been pretty much wiped out over the last 500 years.

But today, we are witnessing a voluntary extinction of peoples on a scale and type unknown in human history, because very suddenly people found an easy way to control fertility. For the last few million years we humans have selected pretty much for caloric intake and breeding just happened, but now we are selecting merely for the desire to have children. The genetic and cultural shift is sudden and massive. Libs are toast.

MDavid- by your examples, you seem to support my point, unless you seem to think I missed the switch from an isolated correlation to the complexities I described.

Good heavens, what is so terrible about not having children if one doesn't want children? Don't we have a free choice about anything anymore? I am 43, single and childless, and have never had a very strong interest in parenthood, for some reason; but I do NOT intend to "die alone and unloved", as if I had no ties to any community. I do feel for infertile couples who want children but are unable to conceive; but there's no point in slinging mud at individuals and couples who are childless by choice. It IS still a free country, is it not, where adults are free to structure their lives as THEY choose...??

"Cleveland:
Per your 7:27 p.m. post, you believe only people with diagnosed mental illnesses can be pro-choice?" Larry

Is that an example of the logic you were thought at Georgetown?

I'm 41, happily married and childless, but we're not at all disappointed in our decision. If at any time we choose, we can adopt. We aren't without our associations with children though. We're actively involved in church where I have a brand-new teen girls' ministry. I absolutely love it. I have plenty of surrogate daughters now. I will neither push them to or discourage them from having children in their adult future. I think that's a personal decision that needs to be addressed by every engaged couple before they marry. That's how we handled it. That way no one's upset that they married the wrong person.

All we really need is a little of your genetic material from time to time, and we can reproduce and survive quite nicely on our own--especially in this era of frozen sperm banks and incipient cloning technology. It is, in fact, men who cannot reproduce without women. This is why some men are panicking and trying to convince women that we cannot get along without them. They fear being made obsolete.

My theory is that one of the unintended consequences of same-sex marriage is that straight women will start to marry each other to form stable families for raising children. And if polygamy is ever legalized, they'll marry more of each other to form little child-raising communities. Of course, most women like the companionship of men and will continue to love and nurture them, but not necessarily as husbands. Conventional man/woman marriage won't go away, but it will not be the norm. As time goes on, men will be more and more marginalized as sperm providers and labor. And then at some point they will be so freaked out at finding themselves on the outside that there will be violence, and the pendulum will swing back to men actually "owning" women. Probably in some form of super-conservative religion.

I really hope that there's some kind of afterlife that will let me look down and watch this as it happens.

Mrs. Pringle

"Marry me and let me be boss! Or we'll form a gang and treat you like a piece of meat!"

Gosh, it's SO attractive when men talk this way. It just makes me go all weak in the knees. Oh, please, please can I have your babies? Dozens and dozens of them!

Or, on second thought, I could just change my own oil.

Mrs. Pringle, I like the way you think. And it sounds as if you have the makings of an intriguing science fiction novel there!

"Cleveland: Well then you explained yourself in simultaneously contradictory and condescending terms? Care to restate?" Larry

No, I don't want to restate. You are asking me to prove a negative.

Moreover, the burden is on the accuser. So prove to me that I said "only people with diagnosed mental illnesses can be pro-choice."

You won't be able to because you can't prove a negative, either.

You also accuse me of condescension: voluntary descent from one's rank or dignity in relations with an inferior.

Larry, you certainly are not lower in rank or dignity; nor are you my inferior just because you are a religious and political liberal. If that were my arrogant opinion, why would I bother to debate you? It is, however, understandable that you confuse my sometimes barbed, bluntly and confidently stated remarks in defense of Catholicism and its natural ally, American Conservatism, with condescension. That's how we met here, remember?

Mrs. Pringle, But do you think it's so implausible that women would start marrying each other? If so, why?

Certain chimps (Bonobos) do exactly what you are proposing. The females all gang together to protect the young from the males (while the regular, non-Bonobo chimp alpha male simply kill any young he thinks aren't his).

But the reason it won't happen with humans: our large brained infants take a long time to grow up, and this requires a massive male investment in children that he's not willing to provide unless he's got a steady spouse (interesting point: children from racial stock with larger craniums and thus higher IQs take longer to crawl, walk, etc. - there is a price to pay for big brains in that the babies are helpless longer and need more care). So male supported families will always crank out both more (and better) product and quickly overwhelm all the spawners. This is why harems are so rare. Heck, it was millions of years ago that humans began to become less dimorphic (males got smaller) and harems became less common, and male/females generally partnered up. It's superior.

But you don't need theory to know why women aren't going to marry each other in the future. Tomorrow's families are being created today; just look at the reality on the ground. Everyone in this culture rejecting traditional family bonds is not doing well genetically. All sorts of interesting living arrangements are indeed popping up as the old culture dies (and they sure look real fun!) but they are vanishing as we speak. Remember, Jose is the #1 kid name in Texas...

Heh heh heh, you are brilliant. :)

Perhaps the female homo sapien has evolved to perish without the patriarchy nearby

Heh heh heh. M_David's statement is an interesting one, as it appears to be a textbook case of what Mary Daly would call a "patriarchal reversal"--that is, an attempt to turn facts on their heads to better support a shaky mythology.

In fact, women don't need no steenkin' patriarchy. All we really need is a little of your genetic material from time to time, and we can reproduce and survive quite nicely on our own--especially in this era of frozen sperm banks and incipient cloning technology. It is, in fact, men who cannot reproduce without women. This is why some men are panicking and trying to convince women that we cannot get along without them. They fear being made obsolete.

Most women, of course--myself included--would prefer to enjoy the company of men. But if the price is to be ruled over by them and watch them trading off my 13-year old daughters for breeding purposes, I just might find I could get along without that pleasure. Rather than posture and threaten, men would do better to seek our favor by demonstrating their reliability in contributing to a peaceful, happy family life.

Perhaps the male homo sapien has evolved to perish without the matriarchy nearby . . . .

Posted by: sigaliris | January 15, 2008 6:27 PM