Why do people have children?

[ZSorenson]

Earlier I was referring to how parenting should be viewed primarily.

Children can be raised for many of the same purposes as those shared when the parents are in love as otherwise.

But the primary purposes arise when the two parents are in love.

I like the comment about life surplus. When two partners are in love, there would be a lot of surplus because of the principle of division of labor. I speak abstractly of course.

When you love someone, particularly when they bring additional or diversified value into your life, having children is a good place to 'spend' the surplus created by the romantic union. By union, I mean when two people not only combine households and economic gains, but also when they unite their spiritual gains. If one person has an excess of courage, and the other an excess of creativity, having children would be a great way to 'spend' these virtues together.

It's a difficult analogy. But I am still of the opinion that while having children can occur outside of this context (legitimately), that the main reason for having children - as humans - is derived from the nature of the romantic relationship - in its abstract and spiritual implications as they apply to what humans are physically/biologically.

In order to address a stand out point - I think homosexual partners can emulate this exact process. While there's an ultimate biological barrier, the emotional and natural desires leading up to and following it are exactly the same as those for heterosexual human beings.

[Mindy]

It's a difficult analogy. But I am still of the opinion that while having children can occur outside of this context (legitimately), that the main reason for having children - as humans - is derived from the nature of the romantic relationship - in its abstract and spiritual implications as they apply to what humans are physically/biologically.

It isn't a theory, just personal experience, but I never thought of having a child as an expression of my relationship.

Mindy

[Imogen]

If you mean more abstract values like virtue or reason, then that would be a good way to look at what sort of goal you could accomplish by having a kid.

This is the way that I understood ZSorenson's point, and the only way it really makes sense. Assuming I'll make five in toto doppelgangers is highly irrational. I do expect that my children will embrace reason and virtue because I do, and I actively and deliberately guide and challenge them, in addition to their passive observation of my manner of living.

Edited August 30, 2010 by Imogen

[Imogen]

That said, there is another, critically important consideration at this point in history, and that is the degenerate state of the public schools. Actually, that includes most private schools.

The schools are not just politically active where they shouldn't be, they actively undercut the individual student's intellectual confidence. They more or less decerebrate the students by giving lessons that defy understanding and integration. Many lessons contain errors and inaccuracies, which the teachers fail to notice. Kids automatically think that it is their fault that they don't "get it."

As far as school experience, they are prevented from discovering the efficacy and reliability of their own minds. Memorization is the only option, and that is a turn-off to any intelligent kid, of course, besides which, it fails to create hierarchical understanding, it fails to build a body of knowledge. Also, of course, the social milieu of the classroom ranges from awful to abusive.

How, subject daily to this environment, can a child learn that his mind is his most important tool? How can he take pride in his growing intellectual powers? Learn to think for himself? Build the ego-strength to stand up for his opinions?

The adolescent drive for self-esteem is especially consuming. Having their proper self-concept as a thinking being stunted, or even refuted, what pseudo-self-esteem icons will they adopt? What relief from the constant, inevitable sense of inadequacy will they seek?

(FYI: My daughter attended two Montessori schools and two public schools, and I investigated many other private schools.)

Before having children (and my first was a surprise, followed by another when I should have been clinically infertile, followed by the others that I anticipated regardless of the supposed unlikelihood of their conception), I had exactly zero seconds spent considering whether I would like to have children, followed by the same amount of consideration for why I might. That said, I had a lot of catching up to do, and my child's education was among the first things that raced through my mind in the minutes that passed following the shocking call from the doctor explaining the reason for my worsening fatigue for the previous three months.

I did already have many years of experience and thoughtful consideration about mass schooling, and with the new information- that I was responsible for the education of another person- I applied in principle what I had already reasoned. So saying, my partner and I educate our children rather than employ the government and its agents to do so.

Our children are yet very young, and their needs will change, so to that end, we plan to involve/employ purposefully selected, skilled people to work directly with them individually when their interests and pursuits exceed our scope. I am intensely interested in learning, so educating our children is a great adventure for me as well, and I am looking forward to the opportunity to work with and learn from the people who will assist us in our journey of childhood education. Presently, our children are learning alongside my partner and I in our lay-apprenticeships with two sustenance and small business farmers.

My partner and I take care of the academics and visual arts/crafts, music, and physical and life skills guidance and teaching of our children. If they want to learn aeronautics or acrobatics, we will employ skilled professionals to teach them.

I will not be 'taking advantage of' government funded/regulated mass schooling, or any mass schooling at all. Had I thought about the future of my family before I knew I was going to have one, I would agree that considering the level of responsibility and my personal qualifications for my facilitation of my children's education would be essential to the decision about whether or not to have children.

My process was a little backwards, but that has just meant that I have had a very intense experience as I have worked to stay several steps ahead of the emerging needs of my children (granting that their immediate needs have been met since they were conceived, by me, deliberately- once I knew anyway).

This is another way in which the wide-spread assumption of 'auto-raising' of children really irks me. Thank you for raising the issue, Mindy. I also highly encourage others to consider this aspect of child-rearing very carefully, before having any children if possible, and if not, then now would be the best time to start doing so, if you already have children.

For interest, the Canadian school board curricula or at least ministry 'objectives' are all online and I have many times had to take breaks from reading them because they are utterly disgusting. Even worse than when I was in public schooling.

[Mindy]

For interest, the Canadian school board curricula or at least ministry 'objectives' are all online and I have many times had to take breaks from reading them because they are utterly disgusting. Even worse than when I was in public schooling.

I salute you, fellow soldier at arms.

Mindy

[natdavi]

What does raising kids offer a selfish person? Even if you really don't give a damn about what happens to the world after you're gone?

The best way to learn is to teach. Teaching another person how to live is the best way to learn, or relearn, or to stay in touch with what's most important in life. If you get nothing else from having kids you will get a living demonstration on what it really means to be human expressed in the simplest terms possible. BTW it's unending. I just heard my baby crying & I put him to bed not 2 hrs ago. brb...

b... so at the worst of times think of it as tough love, like a math teacher who makes you repeat a course b/c you haven't learned it yet. Babies aren't trophies, babies aren't pets, babies aren't friends, babies are human beings w/their own minds and they might get interested in Buddhism and start voting for democrats like so many other people.

You might not like them. They might not like you. Babies don't care about you, you care for them. They won't remember the $7000 delivery bill you paid for their first day of existence, they'll remember when you didn't explain orbital dynamics properly and they realized you're not infallible. They won't appreciate how much productive effort you gave them until they've had their own kids. When you die they might have a funeral, say a few words, but they'll be more worried about how to explain your death to their own kids than about carrying your torch.

But when you come home late from work or succumbing to the latest government regulation & it seems like nothing will ever change... you'll see a little man w/a giant head that you've carried every step he's ever taken for over a year (+9 months if you're female), who's standing on his own two feet for the first time, just so he can catch a glimpse of what's outside of a window... it's more than inspiration. It's irrefutable proof that you will learn, grow, and overcome anything if you can just figure out how.

So you shouldn't have kids b/c it's not necessary & it's a huge expense in time and effort. There is no logical chain of thought I can think of which ends with "therefore I must have children". Ever hear people say they wish they had 2 bodies so they could get more done? yeah Having kids is the opposite of that. If you don't have a dedicated partner willing to raise the thing or support you while you raise it then you will have to hire one (ie daycare). However, given the value potential which all human beings possess I'll say that if you don't find the idea of having children positively revolting then it's probably worth it.

[Kane]

What does raising kids offer a selfish person?

I suppose that depends on the kind of selfishness you're talking about, doesn't it? Here at my home, we distinguish between rational selfishness (à la Ayn Rand), and irrational selfishness (i.e., the synonym contemporary culture uses to state something is 'evil').

To the rationally selfish person, having kids is simply part of doing what makes one happy in this life. That is, if two loving and rationally self-interested people decide to reproduce together, then they do so because it is what augments their enjoyment of the life they value.

Even if you really don't give a damn about what happens to the world after you're gone?

This would seem to me to be irrationally selfish. To hold to values that you truly understand are correct would necessarily include that you hope those values are continued in some fashion or another even after death. This is easily provable by the extroverted nature of values on the whole: all people, if they are not wholly insane, live their values. And by doing so, those vaules are observed and incorporated into the lives of others around them. More, some people set those values out on a formal level (e.g., ethical philosophers) with the express purpose that others can learn about them and incorporate them.

In short, values are meant to be passed on, and to not be interested in their transmission because you will one day die is not rational at all. It is entirely irrational.

The best way to learn is to teach. Teaching another person how to live is the best way to learn, or relearn, or to stay in touch with what's most important in life.

Then you agree that it is irrational to "not give a damn" about the transmission of values beyond your death?

You might not like them. They might not like you. Babies don't care about you, you care for them. They won't remember the $7000 delivery bill you paid for their first day of existence, they'll remember when you didn't explain orbital dynamics properly and they realized you're not infallible. They won't appreciate how much productive effort you gave them until they've had their own kids. When you die they might have a funeral, say a few words, but they'll be more worried about how to explain your death to their own kids than about carrying your torch.

Having a mit-full of kids myself, I can't say I've ever experienced any one of them not caring for me. This is where transmission of values comes in: I value them as dearly as I do my own life because they are an inextricable part of my life. All of my wee 'uns have received that care and reflect it back to me. Even if in the beginning days of their lives their reactions to me are immitative, they are immitating the care that I am showing them and thereby learning to care for me.

[Eiuol]

This would seem to me to be irrationally selfish. To hold to values that you truly understand are correct would necessarily include that you hope those values are continued in some fashion or another even after death. This is easily provable by the extroverted nature of values on the whole: all people, if they are not wholly insane, live their values. And by doing so, those vaules are observed and incorporated into the lives of others around them. More, some people set those values out on a formal level (e.g., ethical philosophers) with the express purpose that others can learn about them and incorporate them.

I think the point is once you are dead, valuing is not possible. The whole point of values is that they enhance your life and enable you to live. You couldn't possibly pass on a value, since values are chosen. You couldn't transmit your values to anyone even if you wanted, especially not your kids. What you should ask is what good it would do for your life. So what if people may even incorporate values completely by their own choice, how would that come into play when you are dead? Relating to that, the only reason I'd write a will is to let the people I value know that I do value them, and I'd want them to be happy while I am alive. They'll know that they have some amount of value to acquire from me in the future, while I get the benefit while I am alive to know that they are indeed happy right now. I thought that much of this was sufficiently addressed amongst all the posts on the first page. While it does make sense in some situations to think about what you *would* do if you were alive, to pursue a value explicitly to make your existence metaphorically eternal isn't really life enhancing at all. This also applies to fame, fortune, being remembered for your good deeds, etc.

Edited August 31, 2010 by Eiuol

[Kane]

I think the point is once you are dead, valuing is not possible. The whole point of values is that they enhance your life and enable you to live. You couldn't possibly pass on a value, since values are chosen. You couldn't transmit your values to anyone even if you wanted, especially not your kids.

Well, of course one cannot value anything when one is dead. But that gives impetus to pass on your values to those you love so that while they are still alive they might benefit from them. That is, if they choose the same values, as you've pointed out.

Nevertheless, the transmission of values is not suggestive of a viral effect. Values are not transmitted like contagions from one host to another. But in valuing life, reason and virtue, I think that as a parent, I would be doing my children a disservice -- it would be immoral of me, in other words -- if I didn't present the context for values and expect that even after I am dead they would continue to operate with the values I have taught them. In that sense, the option to uphold the values I teach them is transmissible, even though they can choose otherwise.

[Eiuol]

In short, values are meant to be passed on, and to not be interested in their transmission because you will one day die is not rational at all. It is entirely irrational.

All I'm really getting at is that values only serve a purpose in furthering your life. There certainly nothing wrong with trying to share values and a sense of life, which would in your case certainly require teaching about reason and virtue for example. The purpose in doing all that really would not to make sure your values are passed on, but to make your life better and possible. It would be purely incidental that any values you teach someone will "live" on. Nothing about that benefits you while you are alive, though it is true that by teaching about virtue those people will continue to flourish. Maybe that's not too far off from what you're saying, but it's important to explicitly focus on how values are for pursuing life. Having kids in order to pass on values comes across as needing prove your life means/meant something, instead of acknowledging life is already meaningful and you just need values to keep your life going.

Edited September 8, 2010 by Eiuol

[ZSorenson]

From Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory:

"Willy Wonka: [to Charlie] I can't go on forever, and I really don't want to try. So who can I trust to run the factory when I leave and take care of the Oompa Loopa's for me? Not a grown up. A grown up would want to do everything his own way, not mine. So that's why I decided a long time ago that I had to find a child. A very honest, loving child, to whom I could tell all my most precious candy making secrets."

Why does the brute take from the producer - because the producer isn't a merely a value sought, but a source of value. Dominate him, and you'll have access to a source of continuous value.

But that is irrational, because he cannot rationally produce and be dominated. Something will give.

Children can derive their entire sense of life from the example and efforts of their parents. And they become a source of value, they produce the values that are valuable to their parents, in the manner discussed at length in this topic.

What would be an immoral and improper relationship between adults is both proper if not necessary between parent and child.

There is a missing component here. Each adult was once a child, and though reason provides access to obtaining a proper sense of life, the basics are meant - by nature of the human species - to be obtained from parents. Things like basic self worth, integrity, even psycho-epistemological factors like how value is obtained in the world. Again, all this is accessible to any adult through reason, but I think that children are meant to learn the basics from their parents.

What this implies is a generational chain of virtue. Not to mistake this for ancestor worship or collectivism, but the nuance here is that a functional rational generation progression can multiple the value in a man's life. With parents and children sharing his essential values, the man can see them multiplied in his life. This is also the genesis of culture and the basis for the sort of non-familial relationships he might seek.

Where the nuance comes in is that what I refer to is a process or framework, and the role of family in a man's life depends primarily of the content of their values.

Thus, generationalism is only proper when the values it sustains are objectively proper. You know, individual rights and responsibilities within the family. No mooching.

But if a family has the right values, it can serve as a powerful multiplier of these intergenerational values for it's individual members. This is because we are human (ergo, birth, infancy, maternal instinct, etc. all of which is a content independent framework for how humanity reaches maturity).

[natdavi]

With parents and children sharing his essential values, the man can see them multiplied in his life. This is also the genesis of culture and the basis for the sort of non-familial relationships he might seek.

This is what I'm talking about. This is the value to be had from having children. It's the same value you get from having friends only more so. Of course that's only true if your kids grow into the kind of people you can be friends with.

I think of children the same way I think of other people: as people. Children have their own minds and will come to their own conclusions. My ideas won't be passed on to him genetically or even verbally. I lay everything on the table and let him put it together. But there are no guarantees, he might not pick up everything, or he might put it together wrong. I used the metaphor of passing on a torch earlier & I stand by that. I'm keeping my torch and when I die it'll go out. If my kids see the benefit of torch-carrying and I've taught them how to make one they'll light their own torch. I stress that it's not my torch they'll be carrying, not my values they'll have. My kids will have their own values: their own torch in whose light I can bask.

I suppose someone who's really good at raising kids would think it odd that a person wouldn't assume his children would grow up thinking the same way he does. Good parenting in no substitute for a child's mind, so it's conceivable that even good parents can have kids that turn out bad. Even if that were the case a grown child's failings won't take away what the parent got by going through the process of laying out in detail how to live a good life. So my point is that even w/o the joy of great kids, w/o any benefit to society or cultural genesis, and even if your most cherished principles die with you there is still a good reason for having children. Those other things are also good reasons, I just wanted to give the most selfish reason possible.

[Imogen]

Since this thread began, and I have been reading it, I have done some serious introspection to answer the question honestly, even if I would end up finding my own answer repulsive (then I'd have to work on the underlying issues to fix it).

It turns out that I actually really enjoy my reasons for having children. The greatest reason I have is that I truly enjoy putting my work and effort into their process and seeing its fruition, sort of like Dr. Frankenstein in a sense. That so-called 'god complex' may be the closest thing to describe my intentions and feelings about and toward the 'products' of my continual labour. This is a glorious occupation, I think, specifically because my efforts are honest and authentic, my intentions and the actions that fulfil them are wholesome, deliberate and loving, benevolent, sincere, and joyful.

I put my creative energy into tweaking and perfecting (as well as I am able) my children through my mothering. Had I no children, there is no doubt that this creative love and concern would go into my artwork. I am, in a way, a sculptor of my children, but the medium is unpredictable in some ways and each one different than the others, requiring different techniques, but the same deliberate assessment and care.

I hope this is taken with an assumption that I am not a control-freak, because I am very much not, and also that given in my mothering is my recognition of the necessity for an enormous amount of latitude and patience for my children and myself, within reason.

Given this, I have children because I enjoy making beautiful things, and my children are those. It's an interactive "making", for sure. Also, the same intense internal drive to create permeates my mothering the way it permeates my artwork (though with far less frequency and intensity since it is mostly- though not completely- satisfied in the raising of my children).

I indeed have children for entirely selfish reasons, and we're obviously all the better for it.

p.s. Natdavi, I have enjoyed your perspective very much. Thank you for sharing it. I think there is a definite necessity for recognition of a dichotomy in the choice regarding raising children. Either you do it because it is entirely enjoyable to you, or it repulses you (so you shouldn't do it). Anything in between seems too easily subject to a bad outcome, given that children require so much of their parents, because to raise them unhappily/grudgingly would no doubt end up being a sacrificial act. So saying, it's probably best to make efforts to know what you are getting into before choosing either way.

I also know many people who now agonize over having made the (flippant and/or uninformed)choice to not have children when they were younger, so figuring it out in either direction seems prudent.