People with kids are crazy. Sometimes even bat-shit, stark, raving mad-hatter kind of crazy; and those are the ordinary ones. And our society prefers us this way. That's because of a perfectly academic, intelligent, psychologically meaningful term I just made up off the top of my head: Parentism. Parentism is an irrational social bias in favor of parenthood, but the real focus of the bias is the children, aka mini-consumers [but that's a whole different blog].
Over my lifetime I've paid attention to the kinds of discussions people have when embarking on the road to crazytown *ahem* parenthood. They consider all kinds of logistics like executing the Better Homes & Gardens nursery, which hospital or doctor to grace with their offspring, when to the start the Harvard fund, etc. But the one question I almost never hear posed anymore is, should we do this right now/should we do this at all. I've known people with zero spare time [and I do mean the mathematical integer of 0], and/or in deep debt, discussing the logistics of child-bearing, but never ask themselves if it's something they need to be doing right then. That's because our society says: whatever you want to do, just start doing it; even if you aren't carefully considering the full scope of what you're pursuing [go back and look at the emphasis on full]. And it isn't about being young or stupid. It's often intelligent, responsible people engaging in this. I've begun to wonder if they really want to do this, or is it just some sort of "next step" that they have to take for some un-iterated reason.
So, I started looking around at American culture to try to find an explanation for the insanity. I didn't have to look far. How many movies or tv shows can you think of that show how heart-warmingly funny it is to be a clueless and totally unprepared new parent? These movies/shows neatly forgo the whole messy question of "should we do this" by having many of these characters be totally ignorant of modern contraception so that they can be pleasantly surprised by an accidental pregnancy that they can totally afford. And all they need to succeed as a new parent is for us the audience to just watch long enough [for the syndication contract to be inked]. Our pop culture so thoroughly trivializes the difficulties of being a parent--either in pursuit of cheap entertainment or to further pro-natalism--that parenthood is myopically and detrimentally defined as quirky, goofy, and the only fulfilling thing you can do with your life. [If that isn't propaganda....] Parenthood is depicted as whimsical instead of terrifying and inherently uplifting rather than potentially soul-crushing (yours, the kid's). The image we're sold is one of a quirky theme-park ride filled with amusing gaffs from which everyone has valuable life-epiphanies, mild disappointments that never require professional psychiatric help/medication, and the (incredibly insulting) ubiquitous reconciliation and happily ever after ending that assumes nothing negative ever happens again...and the kid goes to Harvard.
But there's another, subtler (and quite insidious, in my opinion) theme to these retarded [term used knowingly, so don't start THAT discussion] films and shows: the theme that having children fixes all the things that you didn't even know were wrong in your life. It's the "I didn't have any values until I had a baby" message. How many times have you heard: "Until little Timmy/Susie came along, I never knew what was really important."--As though non-parents are destructive, selfish anarchists roaming around and randomly destroying stuff while abusing drugs, eating fattening food, having indiscriminate sex all the time while running over endangered animals. I mean, Come On! Us childless people don't run over endangered animals, we know to swerve around them!
And that brings me to the term "childless". In Victorian times, that was used as a social insult. Even today it's at least mildly prejudicial--it suggests, flagrantly, that the person is missing something fundamental, like a nose; as if we're working with negative numbers, our books are in the red. But its use does, helpfully, signal the presence of a member of the Parent Cult to those of us who have yet to lose our grip on reality [I'm joking! *not really*].
Members of the Parent Cult--these are the bat-shit, stark, raving, mad-hatter crazy folk who are so common today. It's a type of insanity that's considered normal now. These are people who are so obsessed with their children that they quite disturbingly resemble the citizens of Jonestown: they drank the kool-aid and lost their minds and any sense of perspective or propriety. It's the person who puts her infant on t-shirts and gives them as Christmas gifts, to her mailman. It's the one who tells his co-workers every week a different potty training anecdote, complete with graphic details and sound effects. It's the people who are totally incapable of conversing about anything other than their offspring and what they're doing with him/her.
How this appears to outsiders, us lowly childless folk--your cult won't allow you to talk about anything other than your child because it supposedly paints you as a bad parent or you're so brainwashed that you literally can't. [there's a reason why kool-aid is marketed to parents as well as kids] I've noticed that when people I know become new parents, our association/friendship just dissolves. It confused me for years, but then I became aware of the cult-veil that I can't seem to penetrate without an OBGYN. When I meet parents (particularly new parents) socially and they learn that I'm *gasp* childless, the polite interest vanishes from their faces. They don't even try to hide it. I'm summarily dismissed to the peripheries of the conversation or group like some kind of social interloper. It's reminiscent of being a plumber at a high-society cocktail party: "What is it that you do? ...oh." "Do you have kids? ...oh." It happens so often that I don't even try anymore. This is the full extent of my conversations with (new) parents now: "Hi, I'm G. I don't have kids. It was nice meeting you, have a good evening."
I lose more friends to parenthood than I do to anything else, and that includes the fattening food and random destruction. There is a similar though less prolonged version of this that happens with newlyweds. But at least that only lasts until the new couple gets sick of each other, remember that there's an outside world, and resurface from their love-nest, having only temporarily lost their minds. The time lapse with that gets shorter every year, and in some cases takes only weeks; while the parenting version can last well past kindergarten. When someone excitedly tells me they're pregnant, I say "Oh that's so wonderful!" and we go through the social niceties. At the end of the conversation, I say "Ok, I can't wait to talk to you again!...in like 5 or 10 years!"
Don't get me wrong, I'm not 100% down on parenthood...maybe just 99% [yes, that was an OWS plug]. I think a lot of the obsessive behavior that has become normal parenting is in fact socially imposed. [So when I said you were brainwashed....] Parenting is difficult and important, but we need to stop thinking and speaking of it in hyperbole--i.e., "the most important", etc. I think young parents today act like deranged cultists [it's descriptive imagery, not derogatory; chill out!] because they are being influenced by a society that has blown parenthood way out of any proportion.
The Parent Cult is a direct result, in my humble and historically well-informed opinion, of conscious social action arising out of WWI and WWII in order to encourage the replenishment of depleted populations and to artificially create the nuclear family as a social stabilizer. [I did warn you that I was an academic, right? Take a deep breath.] For much of western civilization prior to the 20th century, the parent and child were more signifiers of two social roles within the larger family and community. It wasn't until after the World Wars that parent and child became the most/only important social roles. Prior to this epoch, parenthood fit into a much larger community and social dynamic, which gave it a perspective in the midst of many. [Hang on, I'm almost done lecturing.] Today the pedagogy is that parenthood is or should be the dominant perspective. This displaces the larger family and community and emphasizes the private/nuclear household at a period when people have significantly less time than ever before to even be parents. [Whew.]
Ok, do you get it? That means that parents are subconsciously encouraged to obsess over their children, when they don't really have time to, and are supposed to do it without any real help. This has inconceivably [yes, it does mean what I think it means] been deemed "traditional." Traditional child-rearing [if you really want to open that can of historical worms with me] involved a large and extended network of family and community that would have Rush Limbaugh reaching for his Oxy-C while screaming, "COMMIES!" The post-World Wars pro-natalist...wait, I keep using that word and I haven't defined it yet. Ok, hang on....
Pro-natalist policies: policies that favor human reproduction by discouraging abortion and contraception while providing financial incentive to reproduce. Ok, now that that's out of the way finally....
The post-World Wars pro-natalist policies and propaganda didn't get phased out like they should have. Instead, they grew and became subsumed into their own commercial industry. [Which is perhaps why we're now squeezing 7 BILLION people on this ball of rock] But, who wouldn't love to have an entire society propagandize you as the most vital part of it (second only to the kid, of course)? Unfortunately, the results haven't been uniformly positive, *she sarcastically equivocates* [now, that word may not mean what I think it does].
My point in all of this is...that I don't think I had one to begin with. I've hammered home that I think parents are nuts. I've made my arguement that I think society is to blame. I gave Occupy Wall Street a gratuitous shout-out. What else can I say, other than, some s**t gotta change.
