they want you, or they don't (say yes)

One of my friends is deciding whether he wants to say yes to a baby.

For women – some women – the desire to have children is palpable. It is irresistible. For some women – especially women of a certain age – this desire is something that will be pursued at all and any cost.

And they will roam, discontent, only resting once they have received what they are after.

Some women.

For some women, the whole idea of being in a relationship, the entire concept of pairbonding is inextricably linked to breeding. These women are, to my mind, like missionaries; zealous and unyielding, with one goal in mind: a child, or children. It is their conversion.

I think it’s a bad idea. But no one asked my opinion.

There is a separate, but often related, task at hand for many of these women. That task is marriage.

I go back and forth on marriage. I am pretty anti-, actually, for personal reasons, the entire institution is pretty questionable to me. And there are political reasons I am against it, and of course I am cursed to rail and rage against the vestiges of the patriarchy, am I not?

But. I protested Proposition Eight yesterday afternoon, in my little city, far from California. And why? As much as I criticize marriage, it is a civil rights issue. But that's all rhetoric.

There is something very appealing about it, conceptually, and in spite of everything, for its social meaning. There is something strangely beautiful, mystical, even – and I am no believer – in entering into what is admittedly on one level an economic contract – but what is also something else entirely – and standing before one another, and perhaps before some number of other loved ones, and uttering words of commitment, for one another and all who witness to hear. I see the appeal in that. I think that everyone should have the right to choose that, under the Constitution. I do. And frankly I am more irritated by the anti-adoption statutes than the anti-marriage ones, although both are reprehensible, because the very people who argue that every fetus (baby, they would say) has a right to live, then sentence those most precious children to the most miserable of lives? It's the same with marriage, too , I suppose: gay people should live, but they should live in silence, ashamed, without access to the rights other Americans enjoy? What is that?

And I am not convinced that I want it, marriage, not convinced it’s not total bullshit. But I see the beauty in the idea of such a union, the capacity for something real, the promise inherent in the concept, of truth, and growth and commitment, of a true encounter. I see it, and I understand why people might want that. People of all backgrounds and beliefs. People of all sexual orientations.

And I feel similarly about babymaking schemes.

I know plenty of people who have children. People who really wanted kids, who love their children deeply. And I know others -- people don't love one another or their children very much at all, people who did not ever really want children, people who gave it all very little thought, but let their bodies act on their behalves. People who dabbled in self-awareness and decided This shit is not for me.

And that's their choice, I suppose.

But to bring a child into existence lightly? It is too monumental an undertaking, too weighty a prospect, too loaded, too important, too consequential to do with anyone you can’t work with. It matters too much. To do it without a full desire to do it. Or with someone who is ambivalent about the prospect. Or with someone you are ambivalent about. Or with someone you can’t bring a simple project to completion with, because the raising of a baby to functional adulthood is a complex, exhausting, time- and labor-intensive proposition.

And even if you do have the aforementioned desires, capabilities, and wishes, it can still all go to shit. A million things can go wrong. There are no guarantees that any of it will work. So you need the strongest possible framework in place at the outset, because it is entirely possible that everything else will go wrong. You owe it to the propositional child to at least have given the prospect of his existence forethought, and to desire that existence. To really want it, although it will be uncomfortable and exhausting, although it will tire you completely, stretch thin your patience and your bond with your coparent, be expensive, be inordinately messy, full of literal and figurative shit and vomit, to know that yes, it may increase your capacity for love, shift your perspective on life and human relationships, shine a different light on everything, alter your sense of self, but it will also fill you with fear and rage and confusion, at times you will look at your child and want to hire a hitman, you will never sleep again, your sex life will suffer, your precious baby could turn out to be a unmitigated asshole, you may at times want very deeply to kill it. To know all of these things, to have your eyes wide open and do it anyway. Out of desire, not duty.

I think that every parent owes that to their child, if nothing else.

I think that it is the responsible thing to do –to afford the decision as much care and weight and love as possible, and to only move forward if you are sure, in your mind and heart and body that this is what you want.

For many -- but by no means all – women, that desire is already there. It is deep-seated, perhaps inherited, enculturated, biological.

For others, it is not. But either way, you have to know.

For some women the desire to breed is indiscriminate, and takes precedence over everything else. There are women who will have a baby with any man who comes along, and there are women who, understandably, and for a complex admixture of reasons, want the men they love to want a child as much as they do, with them.

And when that desire is reciprocated – even when the hope that that desire is reciprocated exists, the joy such a woman appears to experience – is beyond words.

Myself, I have never wanted that from anyone.

And I would never have a baby with someone unless – at minimum – all of the foundational ducks were in a row. And that would require, for me, that the dude and I were able to work together, in concert, in times of great stress and strife, that we could cope with one another well at our worst, in our ugliest and most heinous moments, that we shared a desire to have and love and nurture a child, with one another, and that doing so felt not merely possible or biologically timely or socially sanctioned, but absolutely, unequivocally, right, in our minds, and hearts, and bodies. Of course, I am not sure that I want a screaming rugrat tethered to me.

And, of course, those are my guidelines, not anyone else’s.

But there are women – men too, I suppose – who want a child like nothing else, no matter the cost, no matter the circumstances, no matter the risks or losses. And I have great sympathy for that desire; it must be exceptionally difficult. And I believe that for these people, the forfeiture of what may be a good relationship sans les enfants in exchange for a potentially crappy one avec les enfants is an easy concession. If you are singleminded enough in your desire for something, you will do whatever you must to get it. And then it is yours. And then you must deal with the consequences. Having opened the can, you must contend with the worms.