The doctor quotes appear in "Why You Want to Eat This Baby Up: It’s Science/Researchers are beginning to ask why some people want to squeeze puppies and others want to sniff babies" (NYT). Kennedy herself "never experienced so much as a pang of baby hunger" and "believed this emotion was just an invention — some myth that the patriarchy created to keep women down."
For the most part, people like me are invisible. We’re rarely studied or quantified. There is a medical term, tokophobia, for women who are terrified by pregnancy.... Few women are willing to declare, “Yeah, put me down as someone who definitely will never have kids.”... It's so much easier to describe yourself as undecided....Let me add: Human beings evolved under conditions in which sexual desire and rape would produce pregnancy and childbirth, so the element of wanting to bear children was unnecessary in the female. Human beings did, however, need to want to take care of the babies who did enter their lives, and that, it seems to me, explains the phenomenon the headline aggressively forefronts. We've emerged from the conditions under which we evolved, and it does expose the problem of a lack of an urge on the part of women to undergo the difficult process of pregnancy and childbirth, even if we have a great inborn potential to love and care for any baby that would exist if we did go through that process.
When scholars discuss [declining fertility rates around the world], they usually observe the link between the birthrate and female empowerment: Women who have access to birth control, education and self-determination tend to have fewer children. But we rarely talk about the women who — once they’re free to decide — decide to have no children at all.
Is this an expression of practical concerns or inborn wiring? The truth is, we just don’t know....
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Human beings evolved under conditions in which sexual desire and rape would produce pregnancy and childbirth, so the element of wanting to bear children was unnecessary in the female. Human beings did, however, need to want to take care of the babies who did enter their lives, and that, it seems to me, explains the phenomenon the headline aggressively forefronts.
Rosemary: Are you trying to get me to be his mother?
Roman: Aren't You His Mother?
A society that loses the desire to propagate is a society that will not last.
I kind of like my society, and resent those (just a smidgen) who would just as soon let it be replaced.
Few women are willing to declare, “Yeah, put me down as someone who definitely will never have kids.”... It's so much easier to describe yourself as undecided....
I think this is another case of a made up problem. I've known plenty of women who were perfectly open about never wanting to have kids, my sister among them.
For the most part, people like me are invisible. We’re rarely studied or quantified.
Recall yesterday's post: "By the time the angst-ridden turn to [the parenthood-indecision therapist], they have typically exhausted other potential sources of insight."
The top two highest-rated comments at the Washington Post were people taking a stance against having children. It is a very popular response in the NY Times as well, on most any topic that brushes up against issue of families or children.
I attributed it to the fact that the readers of those publications are more likely to be feminists (female and male), eager to spin any topic into a talking point. I knew that throughout modern time there were people who simply didn't want kids, or couldn't have them, or couldn't find a mate - but they never thought to turn it into a righteous political stance.
I don't know why "women who — once they’re free to decide — decide to have no children at all." I do know that such women make up a disproportionate number of the folks who decide what we talk about, so it's surprising to read that it hasn't gotten much attention.
Name your kid Pagan and what did you expect would happen?!?
Much that is fruitful in our lives comes from experiences undergone involuntarily. I never would have chosen to get a DUI (though obviously I chose to drink) because the consequences are just plain hell. BUT, the consequences were also life changing in the best possible way.
I wouldn't blame a woman for not wanting to undergo pregnancy and labor. From what I can tell, they can be hellish. But I feel bad for them that they might thereby miss out on having their lives changed in ways that they couldn't envision.
Some people desire to control their lives as much as possible (people with low deductible insurance, people who don't travel.)
Others want to experience something new and different (drug users, extreme sport enthusiasts, pregnant women).
Should society make a moral judgment about which kind of person is better? What if the behaviors that arise out of these basic life orientations damage society?
Pretty sure removal of an ovarian cyst and ovary is what contributed to my subsequent weight gain....or it could be the lack of time to exercise. Certainly didn't lose any weight. But I also had kids...so who knows. Maybe I'm not the target audience.
Women who don't want to have children tend to direct their maternal instinct into trying to mother the world and control others.
End Social Security and Medicare.
You want someone to take care of you in your old age, make someone to take care of you in your old age.
Socialism ruins everything.
Evolutionary psychology tells some great just so stories about how people come to think and act in certain ways; but don’t fall into the trap of treating conjecture as truth — leave that to Bob Wright.
The support system in a family and the community is all important to any woman having a baby. And #1 support comes from a husband that is loyal to his commitments. But that is so traditionally human.
Put me down as someone who never said Never. But I wanted to be married at the time and that seemed to be a deal breaker in my circle.
Just a piece of paper, you know.
We've emerged from the conditions under which we evolved
An oft-repeated conceit, but perhaps this time it’s true. On the “practical concerns” side, children were once viewed as net practical assets, and now they are viewed as net practical liabilities (I’m leaving aside the practical benefits of emotional well-being). I think the current view will be exposed as incorrect when promises of nationally-organized old-age security that depend of high levels of reproduction are broken, but of course by then it will be too late to revisit the decisions not to reproduce that were influenced by those promises.
"We've emerged from the conditions under which we evolved"
Not really. The conditions that gave rise to a particular mechanism for propagation of the species may have changed, but there's still a mechanism there and a means to ensure it is used. We may not see it. We're fooling ourselves if we think it was ever as simple as "women had no choice, evolution saw to it." Evolution works in ways and through mechanisms that are still not entirely clear.
Think of it this way: if women increasingly opt out of childbirth, over the long-term (let's say on an evolutionary time scale) wouldn't you expect rape to become an overwhelming drive in almost all men, all other things being equal? I would, assuming there are no other major factors. But I strongly suspect there are other major factors, some of which we have not yet recognized.
"Human beings evolved under conditions in which sexual desire and rape would produce pregnancy and childbirth, so the element of wanting to bear children was unnecessary in the female."
Well, contraceptives and abortion have fixed all that, haven't they. Which raises an interesting point. Assuming the desire to have children is heritable, the fact that women exist who don't want children indicates that the feminist charge -- that a male-dominated "patriarchy" has used female bodies to suit male purposes -- is to some extent proven. They must themselves be descended from women who did not want children, but had them anyway. At the same time, the chain stops here, right? In the future, all women will want children.
"Much that is fruitful in our lives comes from experiences undergone involuntarily. I never would have chosen to get a DUI (though obviously I chose to drink) because the consequences are just plain hell. BUT, the consequences were also life changing in the best possible way. I wouldn't blame a woman for not wanting to undergo pregnancy and labor. From what I can tell, they can be hellish. But I feel bad for them that they might thereby miss out on having their lives changed in ways that they couldn't envision."
I understand this argument, and I understand the spiritual insight that sex should always be open to the creation of new life, but it is also an argument against freedom. Is it better not to be free, because you have opportunities that you would not have chosen? However much freedom we have, there will still be some chance occurrences. Isn't that enough?
Without choice about getting pregnant, so many more babies would be born as a result of rape, domination, and impetuous sex, and women's reproductive efforts would be used at times in their life when they might be getting an education and establishing economic and emotional security and finding a good, responsible partner.
It’s the oxytocin. There has to be some serious help from Mother Nature to get a mother who just delivered a child after all that pain and trauma to bond with her offspring in some cases. Not all babies are cute enough to “eat” right after birth and look like little aliens for a while until they get some more subcutaneous fat. What’s surprising to me is that father’s actually have a rise in oxytocin too.
“Fathers change too
Oxytocin, commonly heralded as the bonding hormone, is known to be released in large amounts during birth and breastfeeding to help regulate maternal bonding in mammals. However, less well known is that fathers experience rises in oxytocin equal to mothers as a result of interacting with their infants. There are, however, differences between mothers and fathers in the types of interaction that seems to produce these rises in oxytocin. For mothers, it is behaviours such as baby-talk, staring into the baby’s eyes and affectionate touch. For fathers, playful touch and behaviour – such as moving their baby around or presenting objects – seem to produce the rise in oxytocin levels.”
http://theconversation.com/do-mothers-really-have-stronger-bonds-with-their-children-than-fathers-do-57590
This is where we find the limits of a culture that prioritizes individual autonomy and freedom above all or most else. This culture will perpetuate itself or it will not. We may have moved beyond many constraints of the evolutionary processes that shaped us, but we haven’t yet moved beyond all constraints of sexual reproduction (even though the tech is there to do so). Interesting that we’ve not prioritized reproductive tech that would allow people to have babies still less naturally.
Your insight about the lack of evolutionary necessity for the desire to have children, is interesting, but must hold at least as strong for men.
However, it makes me think that we must be currently selecting for the genetic personalities and preferences that makes one have this desire more strongly. Problems like in Japan or Europe should work themselves out. Eventually every child comes from families that were more likely to want children and bigger families. After a few generations the average should have moved.
"It’s the oxytocin."
Correct. Although post partum depression can kick in after, too.
People can get that same feel good oxy release from interacting with their dog or cat.
"Think of it this way: if women increasingly opt out of childbirth, over the long-term (let's say on an evolutionary time scale) wouldn't you expect rape to become an overwhelming drive in almost all men, all other things being equal?"
You've got it backwards. If some women opt out of reproduction, their DNA will cease to exist. In the absence of coerced reproduction, the desire to have children becomes a highly adaptive trait. When only women who want children have children, all women will want to have children.
Just not necessarily with you.
Ann Althouse said...
"Is it better not to be free, because you have opportunities that you would not have chosen?"
I will say, that the necessity of earning a living has made me develop abilities that I would never have developed otherwise. And I am proud of those abilities, and I take deep satisfaction in their exercise. And now I have to get back to work.
I think there's one fact that thoroughly confounds this idea: There are plenty of women who don't want to spend time around children or hold babies unless those children or babies belong to them. With their own, they are adoring.
As a teen and young adult, at least with the girls I hung out with the baby head smell thing worked every time...
There's a word salad of ideas being tossed about there and some equivalence toward different ideas. People who don't want kids aren't 'invisible' but aren't necessarily celebrated, either. Are you in the minority? I suspect so, so don't expect celebration, either from society or the surgeon answering FAQ, even if the questions aren't yours...
On the all-important weight loss issue (who's got time to worry about propagating the species?), a few years ago I was slated to have a kidney removed, and after joking about how it would contribute to my weight-loss goals, I was dismayed to learn that an adult male kidney weights about five ounces, less than a Chipotle burrito.
No doubt there has always been a fraction of woman who don't want kids and now can chose to be child free just as there has always been gays but now they are free to be gay. But these are fractions, not majorities. Most people still want to have children although they may want to postpone being parents until a later age. Human nature isn't binary.
Kennedy herself "never experienced so much as a pang of baby hunger" and "believed this emotion was just an invention — some myth that the patriarchy created to keep women down."
She should talk to my wife, who sat me down one day and said, "we're having a child." I doubt it was the old debble patriarchy that made her do it.
In a better-behaved world, it would be possible to respect everyone's opinion about their decision to have children (or not). But while women who says no are praised for their brave decision, a woman who says she loves her children and wants to have more is publicly abused.
"We've emerged from the conditions under which we evolved"
Emerged is not the same as evolved. The body still wants to reproduce. We're evolved to have families. We're social creatures, and families still provide the best support network, next to the tribe, compared to what we have now, which is a capitalist tribe linked by money, not emotional ties.
The issue is that selective-child can be processed with two choices: abstinence and prevention, and a third choice: Pro-Choice, which is two choices too late, where a human life is summarily judged and subject to cruel and unusual punishment. Then there is the issue that Pro-Choice creates a means and opportunity for cannibalized-child. That said, Pro-Choice is a wicked solution, to an albeit hard problem: wealth, pleasure, leisure, sex without responsibility, democratic leverage, and taxable commodities.
Some thoughts:
1) "women always want to know"- I realize that the subject is ovarian cysts, and that limits the conversation to those of the female persuasion; but shouldn't there be an offsetting sentence about why that's a positive thing?
2) Really fascinated by the given name "Pagan". Ever since attending Catholic grade school with a girl named Pagan and then proceeding to have to raise money for "pagan babies"! Talk about cognitive dissonance!
@Jupiter -- very interesting point. A (by hypothesis) heritable trait that formerly was selected against only mildly if at all, and therefore persisted, is now selected against with more extreme prejudice. A technology-aided evolutionary inflection point.
"We've emerged from the conditions under which we evolved"
Not really. We are still designed, body and mind, for the conditions in which we evolved.
We have not adapted to conditions we have created since, and we won't, as these are changing too fast for natural evolution to work.
" but it is also an argument against freedom."
Correct. A great deal of what we consider "freedom" is an illusion, or an unexamined article of faith, an artifact of group dynamics that illustrates how not-free we are. How much freedom have we really got? It takes one who is especially free to question that, no? The classic -
You are all individuals
Is this an expression of practical concerns or inborn wiring? The truth is, we just don’t know.....
Actually, we have a pretty good idea. The purpose of people is to create more people. From an evolutionary psychology perspective, a person who does not want to have babies is defective. Fortunately this person has a higher likelihood of removing themselves from the gene pool by not reproducing so that the genetic defect leads them to not want to reproduce is less likely to be perpetuated in the species. They are a self-correcting error.
Kennedy herself "never experienced so much as a pang of baby hunger" and "believed this emotion was just an invention — some myth that the patriarchy created to keep women down."
From Onion Field Movie:
Det. Sgt. Pierce R. Brooks:
Has your conscience ever bothered you? Like feeling - guilty?
Jimmy Smith:
Mr. Brooks... I believe... I think that is something that rich white guys dreamed up to keep guys like me down. I honestly don't believe there is such a thing... such a feeling. Guilty? That's just something the Man says in court when your luck runs out.
The term "old maid", though disparaging, has been in common use for a very long time. Whether women who would have been termed "old maids" did so by their own choosing (not marrying, or choosing abstinence) or by virtue of biology, one can't know. I've known childless women who devoted their lives to others as teachers, school administrators, counselors, etc. (I'm Catholic; I'm not referring exclusively to nuns). My own sense is that a maternal instinct exists in many women whether or not they give birth. I would not be surprised that it does not exist in every woman.
1. "Is it better not to be free?" I think it's better to accept the consequences of our acts.
2. Is there any way to read the NY Times article without subscribing? I guess that's an act for which I don't want to accept the consequences.
From a recent WSJ review of "Empty Planet:
Is a dangerous population explosion imminent? For decades we’ve been told so by scientific elites, starting with the Club of Rome reports in the 1970s. But in their compelling book “Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline,” Canadian social scientist Darrell Bricker and journalist John Ibbitson lay out the opposite case: “The great defining event of the twenty-first century,” they say, “will occur in three decades, give or take, when the global population starts to decline. Once that decline begins, it will never end.”
For the first time in evolutionary history, the female of the species has the capacity to decide her fertility. The $64,000 question is: on average will women want 2.1 children in their lifetimes?
So far the answer is no.
A couple years ago, I went to Africa — had a Zimbabwean tour guide. He was in his mid-forties. In his lifetime, family sizes had halved.
Women who don't want to have children tend to direct their maternal instinct into trying to mother the world and control others.
Angela Merkel, Teresa May, for example. Though a lot of the male European leaders are childless too.
Without choice about getting pregnant, so many more babies would be born as a result of rape, domination, and impetuous sex, and women's reproductive efforts would be used at times in their life when they might be getting an education and establishing economic and emotional security and finding a good, responsible partner.
At the same time, there might be less "impetuous sex," and maybe even less rape and domination, if there were no choice about getting pregnant. Sex without consequences has consequences after all. There would also be more people experiencing that pleasant surprise of unexpectedly enjoying parenthood. I'm not saying overall it would a better world, just that it's not unambiguous.
Suppose a non-organic cause was found for women who did not want to bear children. Something not originating in themselves. It could be the psychological or physical environment in which they were raised, say being the oldest in a large family, or exposure to some chemical. If this were the case, shouldn't they be cured? Shouldn't they want to be cured?
Why do we assume that a woman's choice to bear children or not is an expression of her identity, and not something that has an external cause?
“But while women who says no are praised for their brave decision, a woman who says she loves her children and wants to have more is publicly abused.”
I believe this is an overstatement or a misperception. Of all the women I know in my age group and political outlook, all have had children. In my daughters’ age groups I know of one that has chosen to not have children and most of us are surprised and ask “why”? The answer in her case is that she has a health condition that she takes some pretty toxic meds for and her former husband has serious issues. I don’t see the condemnation of women who chose to have children at all. Makes me wonder who these people are.
I have seen some condemnation or rejection for the Quiver Full tyoes and their lifestyle, who have up to 20 children and that comes from both political ideologies
Been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding
The cretins cloning and feeding
And I don't even own a TV
--Harvey Danger, "Flagpole Sitta"
Jane Todd had the first successful removal of an ovarian cyst. It was 1809 and she had thought she was pregnant. Ephraim McDowell was the surgeon and she rode a mule over the mountains to his house where the operation was performed. The mass weighed 22 pounds and was removed in a 25 minute operation. There was no anesthesia and she sang hymns to tolerate the pain.
She lived another 32 years, long enough to have her photograph made,
Nancy said...Is there any way to read the NY Times article without subscribing? I guess that's an act for which I don't want to accept the consequences.
You get something like 3 free clicks per month (it use do to be 10). The count of how many clicks you've used this month is stored in a cookie on your computer. (Oh my god! They are using our computers against us!!)
Here's the flaw in their system, should you want to exploit it: clear out your browsing history. That will delete the cookies that block you so the next time you visit, they will think you are there for the first time. The downside is that all the other sites you visit will think you are visiting them for the first time too so a lot of autocomplete information will be lost.
"even if we have a great inborn potential to love and care for any baby that would exist if we did go through that process." I never wanted kids, so I was shocked by my feelings when my boys arrived, which amounted to, Oh--this is why I exist. ...
" I don’t see the condemnation of women who chose to have children at all. Makes me wonder who these people are."
Young women who are in college or in professional employment in, say, San Francisco.
"I don’t see the condemnation of women who chose to have children at all. Makes me wonder who these people are."
Hardcore environmentalists.
The tendency of those in advanced societies to choose not to bear children hit me as a possible answer to the Fermi Paradox, but that assumes aliens are more like us than is reasonable to assume.
"so the element of wanting to bear children was unnecessary in the female."
This is some folks' POV re birth control and legal abortion. Except replace "unnecessary" w/ "irrelevant." And replace "was" with "is."
In the good old days, a woman stood a one in six chance of perishing and a one hundred per cent chance of undergoing hideous pain whilst carrying a baby to term. There must be all kinds of hidden nooks and crannies in a woman's psyche to make this possible. Perhaps women truly have a streak of madochism or a wish to subordinate themselves to men. At any rate, having babies is never a prudent decision and back in the old days it was a reckless decision. If women had thought out the decision to have a baby with proper care and caution and if men had respected their decision, the human race would have become extinct.......I'm pretty sure that within the near future they will develop artifial wombs. They will also be able to choose the right sperm and egg to mix in the Petrie dish and transfer to the artificial womb. Our problems regarding gestation and birth will be solved, and everyone on earth will be happy all their days......I suppose there will be some Birkenstocks and religious fanatics who will go the organic, free range route, but most women will opt out. This will have no effect on fertility rates but there will be a lot more oral sex in the coming years.
A more obvious conclusion - feminism, or women's emancipation in general, is incompatible with survival of our species
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