Letters to the Editor
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Don't.
Don't replicate.
Don't adopt.
Don't bother.
Anyone who's this hung up on whether or not an unborn person's opinion should matter in the equation of conception or not, should NOT parent.
Raise orchids.
Raise pot.
Don't raise a child--by birth or adoption--and save the rest of us from your ineptitude and neuroses for the next quarter-century.
Just, please, DON'T.
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Eyes rolling
All my life, I have been reading and hearing this same sentiment.
"Because I am young, wiser than my parents, and the first original thinker ever, I declare that this week is the worst time in the history of the world.
"Therefore, the sensitive-thoughtful-and-generous I am going to do humanity, my potential offspring, and the planet a huge favor by not bringing a fertilized egg to term."
Danged if the caring "couple" doesn't get pregnant within the year.
Then we have to spend years hearing about how they invented parenthood.
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Huh?
Subodim: "I have re-read the original letter several times to make sure I didn't miss anything. Nowhere in the letter did she say that non-existent "people" can be consulted about anything, or feel anything, or do anything at all. What she said was, "Making a life-altering decision without consulting the one most affected seems wrong." What that means is that when you conceive a child, you're doing it without his or her consent. It is impossible to obtain consent from "someone" who doesn't exist--that's the POINT. She thinks that makes it wrong to purposefully conceive a child."
That's weird. You have identified that it's impossible to obtain consent from someone who doesn't exist. However that's exactly, if you follow the logic of the excerpt you quoted, what she is saying. And THEREFORE she doesn't want to conceive. Yet you think she didn't say what you have just identified from her letter, and it's the rest who are muddled thinkers. Hmmm.
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So many questions, really.
I'd agree with the previous commenter. If this one has you so stymied, you're not going to get far as a parent, and in all likelihood you'll produce offspring that hate you.
Why? Because your purported concern is really another way of saying, "What will my child think of me?" And that's just a self-esteem issue of the LW's.
You can't be a parent because you want your kid to like you. If every decision you make as a parent is colored by this notion that of your offspring's feelings about their continued existence, you're just being ridiculous and melodramatic. Most people--the vast majority of reasonably well-adjusted ones, anyway--do not walk through their lives thinking of how much they hate their parents for bringing them into the world.
If they're optimistic at heart, they'll be thankful. But let's face it, we as humans are very aware that the parent's roles as protector, teacher, and reource-provider far far outweigh their role as creator. Why? We know any two people can hump each other and produce offspring.
You're mixing up your roles, LW. You're giving primacy to this whole "giver-of-life" bit, which of course affords you a sort of godhood. Then you're ignoring (at least from what I read in the letter) all the other things that make a good parent, and how many ways a good parent can influence a child to become a happy, intelligent, productive, and healthy adult. Those don't merit your attention or discussion.
You also sound like you belong to this weird new cult of Child Love I see all over America. It's this nutty fetishized form of hand-wringing concern for children, as if kids are only fragile little delicate butterfly-like creatures, and not also hardy, resilient, really-freakin' tough little boogers. They're not a separate species. They're just younger, less-experienced, immature people.
Which is why I'd tell you that you should not have children. You're right in a certain sense: you'd be doing your kid a disservice to bring them into the world, but not because they're coming into this terrible shitty world, which is no place for a kid. No, it's more to do with who's welcoming them into it...namely, you.
You'd do the same disservice to an adopted kid, too. You're more worried about you than them, no matter how you spin it.
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From someone else's kid
Subodim is on the money. You're basically making the biggest decision of someone's life FOR them, and there's no getting around that. Nothing wrong with being thoughtful -- look where we've gotten with most of the population on unconscious autopilot. We can't even give up our SUVs to rescue the future for the next generation.
The only reason I didn't off myself at the age of seventeen was because I feared, in some corner of my mind, that my parents' beliefs were true and that I'd wind up in hell! But it took me a long time to forgive them for bringing me into a world where:
- a human being could suffer to the point of madness or suicide
- by their own dogma, existence could lead to unending suffering if one made the "wrong" choices
- global disaster was imminent (pollution, food shortages, etc)
When I was an undergraduate philosophy student, this seemed the height of irresponsibility. I had my own little Karamazov-ian "rebellion" against existence from a strictly rational point of view.
Eventually, however, as a relative old fart, I've begun to quit taking life so personally (and seriously), at least on good days, and to believe that it has value simply by virtue of being life. (I have something in common with the trees, which don't obsess about things or worry about old age and death, and we'll all dissolve back into the same quantum morass anyhow.) But I never created a person, either. However I no longer hold it against those who do.
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Huh?
Jeebus, why not just kill yourself if you don't want to harm anyone? You can't do any good for the kid if you don't bring them into this world either.
However, if you actually think like this and are willing to write a letter in to Cary about it maybe you shouldn't have kids. It's be best for everyone.