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It’s a provocative question, and one I’ve had directed at me for much of my adult life. And you know what? I’m not going to answer it for you today (mainly because the answer is both yes and no and because it doesn’t really matter). What I am going to do is talk about the paths that we all choose to take and why it is so important to appreciate personal choice.
First, let me direct you to the interview I did for Delicious Day about the subject. The interviewer makes it a policy to use only first names or pseudonyms because she often tackles provocative or taboo subjects.  This assures anonymity for her subjects and honesty for the interview (you should definitely check out the archives – fascinating!). She was kind enough to offer this to me, and after a bit of reflection I decided to publicly comment and out myself.
Whether you are talking about the whether or not to have children, where to live, how to live, what religion (if any) to follow, or how to educate yourself and your children, you will find a difference of opinion among even the people close to you. Sometimes good friends can’t even decide what movie to see together.
What I find so invigorating about the relationships in my life are the differences, not the similarities. Sure, I like knowing that most of my friends are fairly liberal granola eaters like me who have passports and travel, but two of my best friends happen to be Republicans (who also eat granola and have passports and travel – hey, this is Seattle we’re talking about!).
How boring would it be if we were all exactly the same!
“There are so many people that say their way is the way. You get that from people who have kids, from people who don’t, people who are religious, people who are not, Republicans, Democrats. I think the important thing to recognize is we are all on a path. We are not on the path. We should be respectful of other people’s decisions. We should understand why they are where they are and hopefully get the same respect back. I think it is the key to all of us getting along better and living happier lives. I certainly do not hate children. I love that other people are having kids and enjoying their families and obviously, [laughing] that there will be people to take care of me in my old age.” ~ Betsy Talbot on the decision to not have children at Delicious Day
Choosing to not have children does and does not prove that we are selfish. Choosing to have children does and does not prove that you are selfish. You could easily look at this from both viewpoints, and I think this holds true for most of lifestyle decisions. Holding other people accountable to your lifestyle decisions means you believe there is only a single way of living, and any kid with a crayon box knows that choice is the key to a beautiful picture.
When we judge others, we are only limiting ourselves.
So, it is probably selfish for us to not have kids. Or not. And it might be selfish of you to have them. Or not.
Whether you are talking about children, religion, money, politics, or even hairstyles, I challenge you to focus less on the judgment and more on the “or not.” Because we are all the opposite of someone’s version of ideal. And that is a very good thing.
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Betsy Talbot writes about carving the lifestyle you want out of the life you already have. When she’s not writing, she’s paring down, saving up, and getting ready for a year of travel with her husband Warren.
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About Betsy
Betsy… I think everyone should be selfish and proud of it. If YOU don’t look out for #1, you’ll never be of any benefit to your friends and those who you love. Your choice should be respected just as you respect the free choice of others.
Having children is a personal preference that nobody has any right to pass judgment on. And, I respect your choice for whatever reasons. You do not have to justify choosing your own happiness in whatever form it takes.
Different views and tolerance is what makes our inter-relationships interesting. If anyone ever gives you a hassle about having no kids, just tell them to hassle me instead because we had a few extra (7 to be exact).
You’d be surprised how many people pass judgment on our choice to have a large family. A frequent comment is “Don’t you feel selfish taking up more resources in this over-populated planet than you should?” But, the most common comment is “Don’t you know what causes that?”
To which I can reply “Yes I do. And, do you enjoy it too?”
I applaud your personal choice Betsy, and don’t ever let anyone cause you any grief for their judgmental attitudes. They have a problem, not you. Live your life for YOUR happiness, with whatever choices you make. Love your blog. Keep it up. …Howard
Hey, Howard. Combine our statistics things start evening out! Thanks for your vote of support. This post isn’t really about the decision to not have kids – it is about personal lifestyle choices, period. And yours is just as valid as mine and everyone else’s.
And I like your comment to the naysayers – of COURSE you know what causes that! Thanks for sharing your story.
What a great interview! As someone who almost go married in my 20′s and couldn’t imagine not having kids to someone who ended up getting married in my 30′s and now is not sure I want them, I enjoyed your point of view. I tend to always take the “other side” in debates – if I’m talking to someone who wants me to have 5 kis like they did, I talk about freedom, my lack of patience and financial sacrifice. If someone wants to convince me why I shouldn’t have kids, I talk about raising a productive member of society to counteract the Jerry Springer/Reality TV generation. The most complimentary argument I’ve heard for having kids has been, “You are both two smart, generous people with resources. More people like you should be raising the future of our society!”
But that is a lot of pressure. And then I see old acquaintances on Facebook who ONLY talk abot their kids,and I think, “What happened to you? What is going on with YOUR life, YOUR goals, YOUR potential?” I admire that their life is devoted to their kids well-being, but….I don’t know, that just doesn’t seem appealing to me. And I love kids like you – I adore my nieces and nephews. I used to be the most sought after babysitter in town when I was a teen!
I tried to get a mom friend of mine to tell me, really tell me,what she enjoyed about motherhood. She couldn’t really point to one concrete thing, which scard me a little bit. The fantasy of the loving, adorable,attentive child to whom you spend time teaching valuable life lessons just is not the everyday reality when they are glued to the TV or throwing a tantrum.
There is a book called Stumbling Onto Happiness which has a chapter devoted to the perpetuating myth of parenting satisfaction. His theory is we as humans need this myth to keep the species going. Yet many studies show that many people are less happy with their life overall with kids (just citing the book,not saying I agree) but continue to convince others that it’s a beautiful, wonderful thing. It’s an interesting theory, you should check it out.
I’m still not sure what I want to do. I think I’ve gotten too set in my ways and life to do the unselfish things required to be fair to your kids. But some days, I think I want it. Or maybe I just want the idea of it that others have tried to “sell” me????
Bottom line: everyone has to make their own choice and thank God there are many good, smart, responsible souls out there who are having kids and raising healthy adults. Thank you to them!
Do I think it’s selfish? No (said the woman who decided not to have children).
“Selfish” implies that everyone “should” have children and we all know that’s not true. I think most people don’t even think about it; they live that part of their life on auto-pilot. Get married=have children. For me, those things are NOT a given.
I think there’s also a greater stigma for a women who chooses not to have children than there is for a man. Our society is suspicious of women who make this choice.
At first, my husband and I were not planning on having children. Then, mid-30′s we changed our minds and spent a long time discussing if we should do it or not. Then we discovered we couldn’t anyway. At that point, the only decision was to adopt or not and after a lot of soul searching we decided to keep our lives as they are, without childen.
Fortunately, no one has ever called me selfish. I think if anything, I get more pity from people, which I don’t want either.
I’m VERY happy with my life as it is now and I have no regrets. I just tell people I’m looking forward to an early retirement with lots of travel which is not something we’d be able to do with a kid in college.
Maria and Kristina, thank you for sharing your stories. Seems like nothing gets people stirred up more than family choices. Stay-at-home moms vs. working moms vs. childless women. Can’t we all just get along? Live and let live?
Amen, sister. I suppose if we were all meant to be the same, to want the same things, and to follow one path, there would only be one of us that reproduced asexually like an ameoba. And what fun would that be?
Nice post!
And since its nature is open-ended, let me toss this in sideways.
Re: having kids vs. not having kids. What most people don’t think about is that assuming we could achieve a 50% reduction in all causes of climate change over the next generation – which is virtually impossible – we will have enough new people on the planet to totally nullify those efforts and utterly destroy what we have left.
It’s pure math. The biggest threat to our future existance is people having more children.
Tell me again, what’s selfish?
Paula, you have a way with words!
Dan, what a timely comment. I just watched No Impact Man at the movies last night and stayed for the Q&A with Colin Beavan. Living in fairly progressive Seattle, I thought we were on the right track, but Colin challenged us all to think about the bigger impact than just replacing a few lightbulbs or recycling. I hadn’t made the leap to being childless yet, but you make a good point. Next time someone calls me selfish I’ll just let them know I’m evening things out!
I’ve always thought of it more like Dan, that it’s more “selfish” although entirely natural, to have children, because of all the overpopulation/environmental issues. But I guess you could look at it the other way- not having children allows you to do what you want instead of being always focused on the child.
Betsy, I like your view that you can look at almost anything both ways. Aside from some serious issues, I think that’s usually the truth in most cases.
Thanks for making me think, Betsy.
Aside from the environmental issues, as the mom in Little Miss Sunshine said to her daughter Olive:
“It’s okay to be skinny. And it’s okay to be fat, if that’s what you want to be.”
It’s okay to have kids. And it’s okay to not have kids. If that’s what you want.
My daughter (my only child) chose not to have kids. I got really tired of people saying,
“Oh, but you’ll never be a grandma!”
As if the deciding doctor was whether her mom would have a grandchild. There are already so many unwanted children in this world. Many who need a safe and happy home and loving parents.
I don’t blame people who choose to have children (after all, I did!) but I see the choice not to as a selfless act. And yes, can’t we all just get along?
All of these great comments remind me that we are so fortunate to have smart, progressive, and compassionate readers of this blog (who are also very attractive and wear cool shoes). You guys are so much fun to talk to, and you always make me think. Thank you for sharing your stories on a pretty personal issue.
Bets – great post! Our decisions in life should be based on what is best for you and your family at that given moment. Unfortunately we oftentimes let others influence our decision and we are left with the consequences of those decisions. You are right – we are all on a path – the one just for us. If we can grasp that concept, life would be so much better! I love you!
Wow, folks. That was my mom chiming in. Isn’t she cool?
Mom has always been one of my biggest supporters in everything I’ve ever done. Even though I know she would have loved for me to have a child, she’s never made a big deal out of it (though I was instructed upon moving out of my hometown that I was no longer allowed to reproduce since I’d bee too far away for her to enjoy any grandkids!)
It’s an interesting discussion, both in terms of having children, and in terms of how our choices define us. We have largely gotten past judging people by the color of their skin, or the country that they were born in — not completely, but mostly. But now, I think we are in a period where we feel very free to judge people based on their choices, and we feel very free to tell them what we think of their choices.
We know that it is wrong to judge someone based on race, country or creed, but isn’t it also wrong to take one choice a person has made and use it to define them, to marginalize them? Often, these are not choices at all. If someone is straight or gay, that’s how they are. If someone cannot have children, then they aren’t really even making a choice. (Yes, they can always adopt, but that’s really a different choice, isn’t it?)
But even if these are legitimate choices, they are but one element in our lives. They shouldn’t become the primary thing that defines us. The notion that a couple who doesn’t want children is selfish is as ridiculous as the notion that because someone is a Moslem, they are a terrorist. But we are willing to make assumptions about a person, based on a single choice, that we may or may not fully understand.
My sister is married, with two children. She used to live in Seattle, but when she moved the family back to the Dallas area, they built an enormous house out in the distant suburbs. I mean this thing is a McMansion supersized — five bedrooms, four baths, and a kitchen the size of my first apartment. It seems to me like a ridiculous purchase, and I’ve said so to anyone who would listen. But I find myself thinking of her and her family in terms of that house. Here is a woman that I’ve known all my life, that I played with when I was three years old, and I see her only in terms of that house.
Now, the issue isn’t whether her house purchase was a good one or not. I think it wasn’t, and she likely thinks it was, although I’ve never asked. The issue is that this purchase is the overriding fact about my sister that I’ve chosen to judge her by. And sadly, that says more about me than it does her.
We all make choices in our lives, some we are happy with, and some we are not. But even for the ones that we are happy with, we certainly don’t want our individual choices to be the thing that defines us. I think we owe the same to each other.
Joe, thanks for sharing your story. It is true that we judge people every day in big and small ways based on the most basic things – the house they live in, the cars they drive, the jobs they have, and whether or not they go to church or keep their yard as nice as everyone else. We are a nation of busybodies!
Sometimes I think we are just fact-checking ourselves against everyone else to gauge our own well-being. We want to make sure the road we took was the right one, and instead of introspection we choose to lash out at “otherness.”
There are different ways to look at it. It is selfish to have too many children. It is pointless and it hurts society and the children. It is not selfish not to have them unless you are making that decison for another person. My ex husband did not want children and I did. What made him think he could map out my destiny? I left him and had one on my own. But he wasted my time. The choice not to have children should be mutual if one is in a relationship.
Dede, I think any major lifestyle decision should be mutual if you are in a relationship. Did you get married under the agreement that you would have kids and then he changed his mind, or did you change your mind, or did you not discuss it beforehand? You are right that other people should not be able to map out our destinies, but we don’t have the right to do that to other people, either.
The world is way overpopulated. You can find statistics and see that in about the last 200 years we’ve gone from 1 billion to almost 9 billion. http://www.geohive.com/earth/his_history1.aspx I’m totally in favor of population control! Okay, that sounded worse than how I meant.
Other than kids, doing what you want, “being selfish,” is not bad at all, so long as you don’t infringe on other people.