Kids

People sometimes ask me why I never had children.

Early on in my marriage, I would reply "No child deserves me as a parent." Later, my response became, "Because I am too selfish." Both comments are equally true.

I never felt that I would make a good parent. Just as I did not acquire a driver's licence until I was 20, because I did not feel that I was capable of assuming control over something as potentially deadly as a car, I did not feel that what I believed about child-rearing would produce a good child/adult.

Our resonsibility to our children is also our responsibility to society as a whole. We owe our children the duty to teach them to easily and properly function in society. We owe society children who will function properly within society.

I honestly did not feel capable of fulfilling those goals.

At one point in our marriage, I offered my husband (who I feel would have made and EXCELLENT father) a divorce so that he could find someone who would give him children.

And I was selfish. I did not want to share my husband with other beings who had equal claim on his time, his attention, his love. Heck, there were times I was jealous of the cat!! If I could not accept his telling the cat "I love you.", how was I ever going to accept a child?? I was selfish. I am selfish.

So, no kids, no carrying on of the family name. This branch on the family tree dies.

Oh, wow. And that is one p*ss poor reason for having kids. "Don't let the family name die." WHY NOT?? My husband's family has plenty of descendents to honor the name (Thanks to great-grandpa and his six or seven wives) And frankly, why honor the past? In China, there was a cult of ancestry. And what of the current generations?

There is nothing wrong with geneology. What is wrong is defining yourself solely by what your ancestors accomplished.

I would rather be known for who I am today than for who I am descended from. My ancestory may matter to me, but it does not define me. I am defined by who I am, what I have done, and what I leave behind me.

And since I have no children, if I want to be remembered, it will be my reputation, for good or for ill that defines me after death.