On Breeding

While Michelle Goldberg's Salon article on: "to breed or not to breed," article is a little over three years old now, its increasingly becoming more and more relevant in the lives of women around me as we move towards our forties and leave those youthful thirties behind. (not yet baby :-)

Oddly enough, it has come up in discussion a few times in the past few months and then I found a link I had been saving, so decided to give it a re-read.

I find her views more common in my west coast world than with my east coast pals. She references an essay called No Baby On Board, where the female writer asks: "What would the return be on the investment?" "Are there any laws that would require my children to pay for my nursing home when I am old? Are they going to be a sufficient hedge against poverty and loneliness?"

It created a lot of controversy at the time since people commented that 'anyone who would think about childbearing in stark financial terms shouldn't be a parent in the first place.' I don't think anything in life is that black and white and certainly a lot of men I know have thought about their financial stability before getting married or raising a family. How can you not at least consider it?

According to a clinical psychologist interviewed for the article, "most parents, men and women, say they dramatically underestimated how intensely demanding, stressful and depleting parenthood would be."

She asks the question, partly wondering to herself (only 27 at the time she wrote the piece), "So will women who choose not to have children regret their effrontery in defying the whole history of the human race? Are they -- or we -- setting ourselves up for a lifetime of barren desolation?"

While people I've talked to with children (which is consistent with the writer's interviews and research) don't 'regret it,' many are often quick to add the stress that goes with it, the financial burden, impact on their careers, sleep, health, marriages, etc.

She also references a 1975 Ann Landers column, where Landers asked her readers: "Were the rewards enough to make up for the grief? If you had it to do over again, would you have children?" Apparently 70 percent of those who responded said no. Yikes. I find that astonishing, especially in the mid-seventies. I wonder what that number would be today.

I thought it was worth revisiting her article since I have so many friends going through the "should we or not?" question, and many of these couples are in their late thirties and early forties. There are some interesting pros, cons and points to consider, especially later in life. Both articles are interesting reads.