I think it's selfish to bring children into this cruel world knowing that they will or could endure hardships, pain and bad experiences in their life.
I once knew someone who believed the world would end in the year 2000. It occurred to me to rewind for a moment and ask her an obvious question:
If you believed the world was ending, why did you have a baby? "Because," she explained, matter of factly, "I loved him that much."
That is to say, expecting the world to end in six years, she got married and began intentionally attempting to have a child because she loved her unborn, unconceived, allegedly doomed son
that much.
There is always the possibility she meant that was why she didn't abort, but that was never the question, and this was allegedly a planned pregnancy.
And speaking of selfish, I don't think I can begin to explain a melodrama in one corner of the extended family by which two psychiatrically incompetent parents might be planning to reproduce again as a political argument.
Selfish parenting is at the heart of the American family experience during my lifetime. I don't think that's extraordinary in itself, but it's also true I've witnessed in my life and family two occasions when we might suggest the women have finally caught up to the men for selfishness and irresponsibility. It is easy enough to hedge, for the sake of general decency, against the casual indictment of a friend who seems to have treated pregnancy and motherhood as a social status; and, yes, there are questions of postpartum depression, but neither was her deliberate choice to carry a child especially influential over her behavior. One of the chief differences in her consumption behavior, for instance, was that she spent more time explaining why it was okay for her to have this drink in her hand. And, hey, at least she could hold up the cigarette in her other hand and acknowledge she was cheating.
To the other, there is a cousin of some degree that makes this friend look like a model pregnancy. While the one didn't confirm her pregnancy medically until drinking too much alcohol on Saturday landed her in the emergency room on Monday after collapsing at work, at least she enrolled in a prenatal program and attended her appointments. Not listening to one's doctor is an American rite (and right) of some sort; skipping prenatal care entirely because it's inconvenient is the sort of thing that makes other people think twice, especially when there are learning disabilities. Typically, when I mention the bright-line of a dryfoot standard, people freak out about distractions intended to freak people out; my cousin's son's wife, whatever that makes her relation to me, is the living test. It's the old Poundstone joke come to life: Under law, anyone can have a kid, but you need a license to have a dog.
The thing about not listening to one's doctor—my friend was more attentive to another doctor, and what was said about another patient—is that at least one is engaging with the doctor and choosing to ignore the advice. This, generally speaking, is considered somewhat normal, but only if we compare it to skipping care altogether. My cousin of some degree couldn't be bothered to ignore the advice; she preferred to never hear it in the first place.
Yet, here we are today, with the public trust trying to figure out what to do with a blank-page ward quite apparently operating with multiple cognitive disruptions who happens to have survived falling off a building because his parents really are
incompetent in multiple relevant forms of the word.
And when it comes to societal policy, we do have an American joke, that Republicans are
pro-life until you're born; and we can see the results of that American tendency in what happens next.
Remember, best practices are too expensive.
There is a reason Child Protective Services are generally loathed, but like many government agencies viewed as perpetual failures, they fail because we, the People, intend that they should.
That is to say, given a choice between Sparta and something less morbid, we would seem to prefer to absolve our consciences than anything else. It's true, doing the "right" thing is expensive, but compared to just leaving children like my cousin's grandson to flail and suffer and eventually die, "Won't someone please think of the children?" sounds great. Except, you know, like so many other things, it's really expensive, and we don't really want it
that badly, so we'll shortchange ourselves—tank our own endeavor—and complain about the results.
Everything about this aspect of the discourse, at least in my society, is selfish. Indeed, that's part of why it's significant that the question of punishing a woman can generate all manner of chatter, but consideration of practical solutions, such as
how to help reduce unwanted, unexpected, and unplanned pregnancies↗, finds silence quieter than the stones themselves.
Think of it this way: Discussions pertaining to reproduction, rights, and politics, tend to foster stronger participation when the purpose is to insult women or consider how to punish them; when question is reducing the number of pregnancies leading to abortion demand, well, that means men need to be more useful than knocking women up, complaining about them, or telling them their place.
Which in turn is why societies struggling with the anti-abortion proposition tend to focus on punishing and dehumanizing women. Which is also great right-wing fundraising and, for the politicking sector, job security. In the end, the anti-abortion question orbits whether or not the lobby can convince people to recognize in a
zygote a human rights status they refuse to recognize in women.
And there is a reason they find such considerable success as they do. Denigrating women is an historical custom of my society; and just like other irrational, flexible definitions perceived to lend to our empowerment, people aren't giving that up without a convincing logical reason. It's a convenient circle, kind of like nice work if you can get it, you know?