Casey Gilfillan

I am at work, taking inventory before heading off to backstock. I am pawing around between the drawers and cabinets, occasionally stumbling upon cleverly stashed items that someone had the foresight to plant. I am side-stepping past the sink, grabbing a freshly-cleaned stainless steel bowl from the drying rack and placing it in the cupboard, when Julia and Cindy enter the room mid-conversation. They acknowledge my presence with the nods of their heads, and then continue on about how Julia recently took a three-hour car ride with her entire family; she was trapped in the backseat with her mother, who relentlessly interrogated her as to her life and family planning goals. Her mother had, evidently, pushed the issue of Julia’s solitude and questioned the prospect of the grandchildren she so keenly yearned for. 

I remain a silent occupant of the room, a non-contributor to a conversation I know is best to let finish out on its own. Finding myself around these topics at work and other common social settings, I feel as though I am my own island: isolated from the community of others, anti-socialized by my alienating aversions.

As there are many elements of parenting by which I am naturally repulsed, the task of teasing out the fundamental principles of my own aversion has been extremely difficult. My parents were not ready to have kids, and though I used to laugh as a child at the thought that I was an “accident,” I often find myself in moments of curiosity, honestly wondering why my parents did not abort me if they were not prepared to have a child.

Vengeful gods and rigid traditions have been used to cultivate the cultural mindset that pregnancy is something you should always accept, even when it occurs without intention and in the most inappropriate of circumstances. Pregnancy must be viewed as a blessing. When announcements of procreation come from the young or notoriously irresponsible, we are not invited to rationally discourage the injection of an innocent life into the existing disorder, but rather encouraged to support the pregnancy as a means of the couple’s (or individual’s) maturation and growth. Pregnancies and children are used as tools to fix problems and change people, as though it is not morally unsound to create people and subject them to a lifetime of existence for purposes that serve other beings, such as rekindling a marriage, inspiring personal growth within and giving meaning to caregivers, etc. Though it need not be true that all natalists are pro-life, we must note the hypocrisy in the discussion of consent for the unborn. Whereas there is an issue made over the lack of fetal consent for abortion, there lies a double standard in the deafening silence on fetal consent to be born in the first place.

For some time, I attributed my aversion to having children to the bad experiences I had during my own childhood. While many who experience trauma as children seek the opportunity to prove themselves in parenthood (I have always found this strange, though it is rather common), I have never desired parenthood. Like most, I was subjected to gender conditioning as a child and had baby dolls, but do not consider that or other social impositions of familial desires as authentic signifiers of a maternal desire. I have pets now that I regard as my children – I am generally opposed to breeding, only adoption – but I have never harbored a serious desire to be a parent to human children, and feel a mild level of contempt for the notion.

With the obvious negative associations I have with parenting, early development, and nuclear family structures, as well as my natural aversion to children , I felt that I understood my context well enough to firmly know why I did not desire children. However, it was not until recently that I noticed a different attitude regarding pregnancies and children – the attitude did not feel different as in changed, but un-explored. As women I went to high school with – women my age, in their early 20s – began intentionally having children, posting photos of little infant babies on their milestone month sheets, I felt this inward rage boiling deep down within me.  I felt dread for the babies – what jobs do the parents have that they are even able to comfortably support themselves, let alone a child? What kind of childhood will they experience – those of comfort and luxury, or of financial strain and parental tension? One woman’s boyfriend was a cop with a generic white-man-small-town name that their newborn son inherited, and you just have to wonder, how many more John-Tom-Joes do we need trudging their meaningless lives away? Even if the baby in question becomes the catalyst of maturity and love his parents so desperately need, the former dread will merely be replaced by the existential dread that indiscriminately colors all human existence – will this baby’s lifespan overlap the cusp of the planet’s climate and subsequent resource crisis? In a society divided by class stratification, the odds that the child will be a wage slave are high (unless it is born unto wealth, is born with or trains into a talent, or falls into monetary gain), in which case the odds that the child will suffer dissatisfaction, stress, and depression are almost guaranteed. There are many other terrible, winding paths of fate and occurrence to be explored, but the point stands that to be alive generally encompasses, or at the very least heavily risks, great suffering. Beyond any question of maternal instinct or familial value, it seems unduly reckless to bring life into the current state of the world and human condition.

For example, consider the state of global affairs. The current political climate is what many would consider polarized beyond repair; billionaires exsanguinating our economic systemics, genocide abroad, and the increasing threat of nuclear armament all compound this. If I were a mother, I might wonder, what will the world look like for my baby in 20 years? Would I ever give birth to something that I felt like I couldn’t protect? There are terrorists and rapists running amuck on a melting water rock that is one fragile male ego away from being nuclearly pulverized, but I really think it’s important that we have enough laborers for the workforce, so I’ll subject another miserable soul to the unrewarding existence that I myself do not enjoy. I know my take is pessimistic, but I truly do not agree with the logic behind any child-birthing justification in 2024.

Aside from the greater worldly implications on the life you are creating, one must also consider how easy it is to psychologically damage another person, especially during the early stages of development. In watching my parents self-destruct – and, thus, destroy me too, as a young child is as much of a dependency of the parent as the parent’s arm or leg – I was ingrained with the understanding that I was not worth choosing, not worth loving, as even those who brought me onto this very planet did not love me enough to protect and provide for me over their better impulses. I do not share this for the purpose of harping on experiences lost, but rather to illuminate the severity of producing life that you are not prepared to grasp. If children are to be born, they must have stable figures of unwavering support and confidence, for it is true that to be alive is a struggle and a fight to the end. The production of and subsequent subjection to life is the most significant power one yields, and it is not to be utilized on unintentional whim.

The thought I always circle back to on this topic is one regarding self-awareness and thoroughness of purpose. With the latter phrase, I am referring specifically to the degree of thought that has been applied to the plans for children. I find that it is often the case that people just assume they will have children, as though it is another natural course of events for them; it is spoken of as something that would happen with or without their willful participance, not a matter of if, but when. The creation of life should not be a default act, lest it be a crime of the mundanity of the human experience. Instead of merely assuming we will, we must ask ourselves why we are procreating, and then if we should.