I should begin with a declaration of disinterest: I’ve never had children and never wanted them. Although I’ve begun in the last few years to like and even love some individual children, I still find them less than pleasant en masse.
Today I read two news articles that made me wonder about people’s motivation for having families.
The first was the current journey of St Therese of Lisieux’s relics through the UK. St Therese is my patron saint, the one I was named after. If I hadn’t been born near her feast day I would have been Clare (of Assisi) instead, which I’d much have preferred, so I’ve always resented Therese a bit. And what a goody-two-shoes she always seemed to me.
It’s her family history I was thinking of today, though. Her parents, Azelie and Louis, had each separately tried to become monastics, but had been rejected for various reasons. So Azelie prayed for a large family she could consecrate to God and upon meeting and marrying Louis, set about it, having nine children, five of whom survived to adulthood. All of these surviving daughters, including Therese, eventually became nuns. Hardly surprising given the parental pressure.
Now let’s turn to the second news item, about an American Christian movement called the Quiverfulls. They take their inspiration from Psalm 126 (127):
Truly sons are a gift from the Lord
a blessing the fruit of the womb
Indeed the sons of youth
are like arrows in the hand of a warrior.
So these traditionalist Christian couples are also in favour of large families, for similar reasons to Azelie and Louis, if slightly more martial in flavour: they see their children as future leaders and spreaders of their very literal Bible beliefs. They tend to “believe in male headship – the principle, also derived from the Bible, that men should lead households”.
Isn’t this interesting? On the face of it, how could one disparage devout Christians for wanting to honour God with their families? And is there actually any non-selfish reason for having children? Apart from the biological imperative to continue the race, perhaps most parents want children as companions, for mutual love and so on.
But this feels to me different. It feels utilitarian. It feels as if these children are being born and raised not as loved individuals, but as a means to an end. What do you think?
I’ll tell you one thing though: I often long for the kind of certainty in faith families like these seem to have, even though I disagree so strongly with many aspects of their interpretations of Christianity.
Image by Trenton Schulz
Elsewhere:
If you’re interesting in finding out more about Therese of Lisieux, I recommend Monica Furlong’s biography.
I’ve only just discovered that one of my favourite spiritual writers, Macrina Wiedekehr, has a blog called Under the Sycamore Tree. I’ve included it in my links. I love this quote in one of her posts.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
oh i am biting back cynical words right now. my husband and i continue to be astounded at how totally different our children are than how we might have imagined. perhaps had we had a specific “purpose” for them they might not be so independent-minded??? all i can say to the Quiverfulls is good luck with that (btw–that is cynical lucy!)
why did i have children? it was time. everyone else was doing it. oh my… glad i didn’t have lots of expectations ‘ cuz even the ones i didn’t have have been blown out of the water!!
I used to be addicted to Star Trek:The Next Generation, and Jon Luc Picard, and friends. But Spock was missing, the best of all Star Trek characters and for me still somehow a soul mate. But back to Jon Luc Picard, he was a gentlemen and a scholar, a fair-minded, sensitive and sensible man in every aspect except one, he had none and was impatient with children. Of course that meant he was fated to all kinds of embarrassments with toddlers, which made for many a humorous scene and most importantly gave him a true vulnerability and humanness. I love your blog’s iconoclasm, Tess, it is always refreshing! ((-:
Hmmmm How unfortunate to feel as if you were born and raised as a means to an end and not because someone hoped and prayed for you to arrive and then to be you.
I guess I had reasons selfish and maybe otherwise when it came to deciding to have children. I quickly let go of as many expectations as I could, preferring to observe who my kids really are. Not possible to let go entirely though. I’m glad you posted this, it gives me something new to consider.
I am immediately caught by your question, are there actually any non-selfish reason for having children? I started trying to think of what they may be. I do remember thinking that having children was another way for me to give love in this world. Generally, however, are right, most of my reasoning was selfish. But what is amazing to me is how self-less I was forced to become when those children actually arrived. It was a hard time for me. There is no transition. One moment you are living your life mostly on your own terms and the next moment you are completely available and attuned to another. I was an emerging contemplative at the time my children arrived and had no clue how much I needed silence and solitude. If I had truly understood myself I might have made different choices. I am glad that I didn’t. My children are without a doubt, my GREATEST spiritual teachers. Love….
Tess, for a few complex reasons, I have not had children either
We have however invested time, money and love into friend’s kids, school kids my husband teaches, and orphans in Cambodia
From where I sit, the choice to have children is often selfish, but I have also observed that quite often it is not actually a mindful choice, it’s simply what results from sex and works for the adult ego within societal norms
but for saying such things i have been ‘burned at the stake’ many a time
I don’t have children of my own, but, as Rebecca so well stated above, I consider that a large hole in my life. I try to fill it by “adopting” other people’s children for a time. While the original reasons may be selfish — ego plays a role in much of what we decide, I suppose — it is perhaps the best school for learning unselfishness ever devised.
Well, I visited the Quiverfull site – but just for a second – that was enough for me. The brandishing of the KJV of the Bible by any organization usually puts me on guard. It seems a loss to me when the KJV, a lovely poetic form of scripture, is given a bad name by those who would use the scripture as a weapon against others rather than as a support for their own spiritual lives……anyway, that’s another subject. Their homepage and their selected name, QF’s, made me very nervous, I say all of this after just responding to another blogger about why or why not we are resistant to coexisting religions in our daily lives and how I think we SHOULD be unafraid of coexistence. Well, so much for my big words. I don’t know if the QF’s are a religious denomination or just a group that likes to have babies. EIther way, having babies or continuing their line of religious belief seem poor reasons to bring children into the world. I do have children, I had them because everyone else did, it seemed like the right thing to do and I never contemplated NOT having children. My children are wonderful adults whom I adore. They were not perfect children, neither are they perfect adults. Neither was I or am I a perfect Mother. But the putting myself aside for the care and nurture of the children that I did have made for me, a tremendous difference or even all the difference in the way my life was led as a maturing adult and parent. I’m not saying that my life is better or worse for having children but a life altering or life’s directional guiding event was for me to raise my children and to be a part of my stepchildrens’ formative years as well. On the surface the QF group sounds a bit too exclusive a group for me to have ever considered joining and I seriously doubt that they would have any desire to welcome me with open arms:)
Thanks to all of you for such interesting answers. And kigen I’m a fellow Spock devotee.
The question about whether motives for having children are always selfish was an interesting one to me, too, and it only popped into my head as a “by the way” when I was writing this post.
But giving love is not selfish, I realise now, whether by natural birth or adoption. Expecting it back is natural and there are different degrees of expectation. That’s fine unless it’s overbearing. (That’s true of any close relationship, I guess.)
I smiled when I read what some of you have said about your expectations being scotched when those individual little rascals popped into your lives! I remember when my nephew – now 19 – was born. I was utterly taken by surprise at how much I loved him, which hadn’t happened with any of my other siblings’ children. I would have died for him, I knew that quite clearly. But what a strongly individual mini-human he was, right from the start. And definitely a good teacher!
And the point about rational choice in childbirth is a good one. Mine is the first generation to have that choice (barring abstinence…) and perhaps “society” still isn’t used to it. I’m reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray Love at the moment, in which she leaves a marriage partly because she realises she had always assumed she wanted children and then when the time came, she just didn’t. Very interesting.