Cogent Childfree Arguments

Posted on April 25, 2002    Posted by John Scalzi      1 Comment

Ahh. This time, I come not to troll alt.support.childfree members, but to praise them (one, at least). A certain J. Metz has posted a long, cogent and well-written piece on the complaints of the childfree, and I actively encourage everyone who has been enjoying the carnage of the last few days to head on over and read it (J. Metz prefaces by noting that the post does not speak for all childfree, although I find it hard to see why any of them might complain). Not surprisingly, many of the points of contention that he lists in the post are things I would agree with as well. Here are a few of them:

* Children who grow up thinking that they are entitled to special privileges because they are not educated otherwise — Having gone to an expensive private boarding school, I can wholeheartedly endorse this one. Kids need a sense of where their boundaries are, and what’s expected of them, and parents are the ones that are supposed to provide that.

* Parents who think that they are not responsible for their child’s actions — This is the “Sorry about that broken window but my kid’s just going through a phase” syndrome. Pay for the friggin’ window and drill some sense into the kid.

* Parents who hypocritically expect non-parents to forego legitimate behaviors and entertainment that they themselves engaged in before they were parents, simply for the sake of “for the children.” Examples include, but are not limited to, profanity, violence, and sex-laden movies that any adult should have the right to determine for him/herself whether they should attend — Testify and amen. Yes, some of you will point out that fairly recently I got paid to write reviews of video games for parents. But I’ll remind you that I always said that just because the games weren’t for children, didn’t mean they weren’t for adults (I enjoyed “Max Payne” too much to want it pushed off the shelves).

* Parents who get tax breaks for having children, then want the government to give them money from people who *don’t* have children to receive vouchers for private schools. — Personally, I’d include people who do have children, too, since I find the idea of private school vouchers odious. If I’m going to be taxed for the public schools, and I am (the town in which I live has one of the highest school taxes in Ohio), all that money damn well better be going to the local public schools.

* Parents who refuse to require their children to respect other adults (e.g., how many times have I heard a parent introduce me to their 5-year old child as “J” instead of Mr. Metz or Dr. Metz, as my parents taught me, and as I deserve? Teach your child some respect, dammit!) — Total agreement, and of course, I would expand that to making sure the child is polite in general. Athena knows (most of the time) to say “please” and “thank you” and the looks of amazement we get as parents for this fact is a little embarrassing. All children can be taught politeness (it’s a key factor in having them become polite adults), and all children should.

Of course, I don’t agree with everything he posts, although I find that most of the disagreements are philosophical and more a matter of degree and not kind. For example, I see it in society’s legitimate interest to make sure all children are adequately schooled and healthy; sure, sickly, ignorant children are cute when they’re small, but then they grow up, and you can’t do a damn thing with them.

I would suspect Mr. Metz would agree with me on that, although the question would then be what level of social responsibility is appropriate; one of his peeves is “Being financially and socially taxed for the benefit of parents who see it as an entitlement.” On my end, I do think there’s an entitlement, although I think it’s more accurately for the kids and not the parents. I don’t feel Mr. Metz should be socially taxed, of course. I think we should just use his money. A few decades from now those kids will be (hopefully) cutting him a check for Social Security (which is drawn from a pool of income generated by current workers), so the expenditure has some chance of coming back to him.

This pet peeve also caught my eye: “Parents who tolerate behavior from their children when they wouldn’t tolerate it before they had kids.” I totally get this, since before Athena, I would look at a kid engaging in bad behavior in public and I would turn to Krissy and say, “If our kid ever does that, we mulch it and start over.” And Krissy would nod and we’d move on, smug in our own imagined parental skills.

The big fly in this ointment, however, is that children have their own minds, and ones that unfortunately don’t have the best impulse control. No matter how good your kid is, or how good a parent you are, sooner or later the meltdown is coming, and you have to deal with it. To be clear, most (well, many) parents don’t tolerate the behavior, they endure it, and then if they’re smart, they try to work on the kid so it happens less. We’re pretty good parents and Athena’s a pretty good kid, but sometimes she’s really not, and then, of course, as parents we look like asses. Believe me when I say we try to minimize such events. And of course, we sympathize when we see it happening to other parents.

(Of course, Mr. Metz may not be talking about spot fits and tantrums, but a tolerance for obnoxious behavior over a long term. In that aspect, I’m in his camp. Mulch ’em, kids and parents both.)

From what I can see in a general sense, most of the complaints of the childfree break into two general camps: The first is perceived obnoxious social behavior on the part of children and parents; the second is a perceived social stigma for those without children, rooted in the culture as large, especially expressed in the cultural bias toward families, parents and children.

To be entirely honest, I don’t see the cultural bias toward families, parents and children going away, nor do I think it should — which is, I should note, something that I believed even while I had no child. Disregarding humanity’s overarching biological tendency for procreation, which reaches well into the childfree camp itself (I imagine the childfree like having sex, even if they prefer not to deal with the intended biological end result). I believe policies that encourage strong families and healthy, well-educated children have the end result of providing people with the social and physical skills they need to get through life (this is not to say I walk among the “family values” camp, unless the family values folks want to start admitting, say, that gays and lesbians can make dandy parents).

I understand the irritation that many childfree have in taking up the slack at work for a parent on family leave, but I don’t know that I would agree that the arrangement is inequitable in the larger sense; the problem is that the “larger sense” is by definition impersonal, but the childfree person personally has to shoulder the load. But it’s what you do living in a society: Not every aim of a society is going to be one that benefits you personally, even when it personally impacts you.

I could turn this around and note that 15.7% of my income goes to pay Social Security taxes (I’m self-employed, so I shell out more than most), and some of that goes to childfree retirees. By being childfree, they did not spawn the workers who would help pay for their Social Security as well — and those workers who don’t exist quite obviously won’t have children of their own to pay my Social Security when the time comes. Bearing in mind that Social Security is famously going to go broke right around the time I retire, these childfree retirees certainly did me no favors by not having kids. Nevertheless, I will continue to shell out 15.7%, some of which will continue to go to childfree retirees. It’s my responsibility as an American, and I don’t think it’s an unreasonable way to spend my taxes.

Leaving aside the issue of larger societal goals, there’s the other issue of the obnoxious social behavior. I really have no problems with the childfree bitching about this. I will admit to some mellowing as a parent, but let’s not mince words: Some kids are obnoxious, some parents are clueless, and the sooner they’re beaten with a stick, the happier we’ll all be. It should be obvious that I like being a parent, but I also know that that status comes with the responsibility of making sure that my kid is a decent human being and that I don’t view the world exclusively as a family fun park where everyone else exists to man the rides and sweep up after me and mine.

That’s a fair deal. I can handle that. And I try to make both those goals work. I think that’s likely to be acceptable to most of the childfree as well.