Fatherhood

[liv]

In my 20s, I had a series of break-ups of quite serious relationships, because my partner wanted kids and I don't. By the third time I pretty much assumed that sooner or later all my peers would pair off in co-parenting arrangements, leaving me as the childfree odd one out. I never predicted I would find a life partner who was willing to make a commitment without the prospect of becoming a parent, and I certainly didn't predict that I would end up in a serious relationship with people who already had children when we got together.

One of my exes tried to convince me that we should stay together and have children together. She offered "You could be the father!" She meant that she was willing to carry any pregnancies; nowadays with more awareness of gender stuff we might say 'the fetching parent' rather than 'the father'. Certainly I don't find the idea of pregnancy particularly appealing, but it's the 20 years after that I don't want, if I positively wanted kids I would put up with a year or so of physical misery. My immediate thought was, I can't be a father because I want to be an academic, and a father doesn't get to prioritize an interesting and fulfilling career over financial security for his family. I was being sexist, of course; it's not true that a father has to be a breadwinner, and even if he is, it's perfectly valid to agree a compromise with his partner. (And having actually worked in academia I know any number of fathers who entirely expect their partners and children to put up with low wages, serial short-term contracts, and having to move countries repeatedly to climb the career ladder. If their partners are female, even if they are academics too, many successful male academics simply expect their wives to pick up the slack when they work unreasonable hours. But that's another topic.)

But even if my reasoning was flawed, I was right to conclude that I don't want to be a father any more than I want to be a mother. I was right not to bring any actual human beings into the world just to keep a relationship with someone I was in love with.

Except, well. I can't entirely suppress the thought that maybe if I were actually male I'd feel differently. There are really quite a lot of perfectly decent men who go along with having children because their partner wants them, and are broadly supportive but never end up devoting their whole lives to parenting in the way women are expected to. It's probably less the case now, but when I was a kid lots of my friends' fathers were not that much more involved in their children's lives than I am now in the lives of my partners' children. Yet I emphatically insist that I'm not a parent. I don't quite meet the bar of being considered a "good" stepfather, but I'm maybe not that far off. A big difference is that a stepfather is assumed to be partnering a single mother who already has kids, whereas I am in a relationship with two fully involved parents.

The other day we were doing fortune cookies, and mine said something like, the best time of your life is still ahead of you. One of the kids suggested it might mean that the best time would be when I was a grandma. I pointed out that it's quite tricky to become a grandma without being a mother first, which is something I don't intend to do. I mentioned that I used to have a daydream that when I retired I'd marry a widow who already had grandchildren, in order to get round that very restriction. And we agreed that my existing relationship with the children is somewhat like a granny relationship: I have wonderful children in my life and I get to have a really close, loving relationship with them and have fun with them, but I'm not ultimately responsible for them. I "get to give them back", as the saying goes (not my language, but yeah, it applies). And OK, I happen to be the same age as their actual parents, but there are grandparents with no more than the thirty-year age difference I have with partners' kids. I can think of grandmothers who do more active childcare than I do, but I can really easily think of lots of non live-in (step)fathers who do less.

Maybe if I were male I wouldn't feel like the luckiest person in the world to be in this unusual family set-up, where I get all the fun of having children and basically none of the hard work. Maybe I would just expect that's what parenting is like by default. I wouldn't be saying, I'm not a real parent because I get to take breaks and I don't have to make any decisions or do any planning. Another of my exes, also trying to persuade me to change my mind and stay with him and have children with him, made the argument that he didn't expect our lives would change very much once kids came along. That did not give me any pause at all; I had to stop and think about whether being a "father" seemed more appealing than being a mother, but the idea that you could pretty much carry on like a childfree person seemed completely implausible. Nevertheless, even in the 21^st century, even in our general enlightened circles, it's not the default for men to give up or even severely limit their careers and their hobbies and their regular social life and their religious life and their alone time once they become fathers.

I expect if I were male I would feel qualified to have lots of opinions about parenting based on my limited experience of being adjacent to parents. As it is I'm just kind of tentatively setting out some thoughts that have been swirling in my mind since I started dating parents.

Comments

[sfred]

Thanks for writing about this. I have never wanted to produce children of my own; I have absolutely loved stepparenting children and am working out with them what that means when they're adults. It feels similar in some ways to being a very involved auncle. I have said sometimes that if I had a primary partner who really wanted kids, I could think about being a dad. It's complicated.

[wychwood]

Another of my exes, also trying to persuade me to change my mind and stay with him and have children with him, made the argument that he didn't expect our lives would change very much once kids came along

I feel like that's a pretty serious warning sign in a potential co-parent, actually!

I'm glad you're enjoying the children in your immediate family.

There are so many different reasons for wanting or not-wanting children - it's interesting the different things your previous partners thought might be stopping you!

[rosefox]

If having kids doesn't change your life, you only "have" kids in the sense that they live with you, and someone else is doing all the work of raising them.

[wychwood]

Exactly! My life has changed just from people I'm close to having children, never mind what's involved in actually parenting.

[halojedha]

I feel this. I wanted a pregnancy but emphatically didn't want to be a 'mother', with the primary responsibility implications that carries. With my ex the idea was that we'd raise kids as a polycule and share the load that way, but over time I realised my satisfaction requirements weren't being met. With Leo the deal was explicitly that we'd share the load as a team as much as possible. We have a shared commitment that both our careers and work and creativity are important and both of us have a right to focus on them. In the end what that's looked like is paying an amazing queer nanny two days a week. Without the financial resources to afford that, unfortunately I think I'd be picking up the slack, just because of where Leo is in their career - they're much less able to take time off than I am.

[rosefox]

Growing up with a physically absent father and an emotionally unavailable stepfather, I called them both by their first names, because neither one merited being called "Dad". You could have been a "father" on the terms you mention, but you wouldn't have been a "Dad", and it sounds like you care deeply about parents being loving and engaged to that degree. I think you've made extremely responsible choices given that, not only to yourself but to the real or hypothetical children you've spared from having a distant or conflicted parent. And I'm so glad you've found a way to have relationships with children that are right for you and for them, that bring joy and benefits on both sides with little to no cost or lack—what a wonderful thing.

I was childfree into my mid-20s, and then childless, the distinction being that J and I weren't precisely opposed to having kids but didn't feel strongly enough about it to give up travel, disposable income, and solitude whenever we wanted it; not to mention that I was absolutely unwilling to be pregnant, so acquiring a child would have meant a great deal of cost and hassle. And then X said they really wanted a baby, so we said they should move to New York and live next door to us and we would support them in being a single parent, having basically the relationship to their kid that you have to your partners' kids. They moved to New York and crashed on our couch and it rapidly became clear that we all wanted to keep living together rather than doing the next-door thing. But if we lived with a child, we would be parents to that child, so the three of us invested years in making sure we could be a family together and that we really wanted to do this in this way before we took the plunge. The thought process you describe sounds very much like the thought process I had around it all, because it hinges on the notion that if you're going to be a parent you're going to parent, all in. There is no other ethical option.

I think about becoming a parent as forking the timeline. I knew what I was giving up, is the thing, just like you knew what you would have been giving up, because I was in my mid-30s and already living that double-income-no-kids life. It wasn't that there were two possibilities ahead of me, but that I left one reality and went into another. So I'm waving hello from the other timeline branch. Looks like nice weather over there. :)

[naath]

I just... don't like interacting with children much, I finrd it stressful, and I'm not even in charge of them. I'm bad at pets too, like, they need stuff and... I'd rather not. I'm sure this is a failing in me, but I'd rather not work on it kthxdby and in any case it'd be rather cruel to have children that I probably won't like.


These days- it's extremely medically inadvisable for me to have kids; so it's all a moot point anyway. I could be the aunt who gives the kids a bugle and an espresso I guess...

[mrissa]

I am aghast at your ex's notion that your lives would not change very much once kids came along. I have not gotten to have a child (that phrasing is deliberate, I wanted one, the universe has not made that possible), but my life is utterly transformed by my godchildren, with whom I do not live and have never lived.

This is a silly detail, but: my godaughter was born at the end of January (13 years ago). And that October we were walking through a shop that sold Halloween costumes, and I said absently, "What was Moo for Halloween last year?" Because I couldn't remember--and I could no longer imagine the world without her. I knew, rationally, that the previous year for Halloween what she had been was a bump. But even ten months in, "there was no Moo, no Moozer AT ALL, none whatsoever" made so little sense that my brain had to stop completely and think very hard about it to accept it as the right answer. Of course there had to be Moo, Moo is central!

And if it was like that ten months in, think what it's like now thirteen years in, no, no, what a ludicrous thing, your lives wouldn't have changed very much, not even worth contemplating, that.

[hairyears]

It seems there is thing that my friends and acquaintances have in common: life happens, but not as we planned - and emphatically not at as as it might have been planned for us - and not always in ways that make sense, and most of it sort of works.

You have made the 'sort of works' work delightfully.

[warriorsavant]

Of course one's life changes drastically with kids. For me, that's the whole point.

I suppose I might have ended up as a step parent at some point (didn't, but was possible). Never interested me that much, any more than adoption does. For me, I need to have the whole thing or not bother.

[doseybat]

Hmm yes, father-type role had definitely had more appeal than mother-type, and still does.

[silveradept]

I enjoy the work I do with children, and at some point, I wonder if I would like to raise them, but I am also cognizant that the other people in this house have say on that, and I'm also the kind of person that would like to think I have the money for it. So the situation as you describe it sounds perfect.

[finding_helena]

Sounds to me like you're something along the lines of an auntie. Which is a nice thing for a kid to have. Similarly as it's fun to have kids you get to borrow and play with and give back, it's nice for the kids to have an adult who cares about them who's not their parent and not responsible for raising them to be a productive and happy adult and doesn't take all the day-to-day stress and doesn't feel all the ongoing responsibility, and can just have a good time with them and maybe spoil them a little.

Parenting is absolutely a huge commitment. I wish people wouldn't undertake it lightly.

The gender roles are all messed up in our family, but I think even if Alec did work he would still be very engaged with the kids. But he's not that typical dude by a long shot. He could have gone either way on kids, but is all in now that we have them. We have another friend who could have gone either way on kids, and ended up with a woman who doesn't want any. So he gets to be "uncle" to our kids and the kids of our other mutual friends. We get together on average once a week and the kids are always psyched to see "Uncle" Dave.

[switterbeet]

OH this is interesting! I'm very happy for you that you've wound up in a situation that is sort of the best of both worlds. (I'm also pretty disturbed about the whole "convincing" someone to have kids... :/)

I've always known I didn't want kids, but interestingly, when I was in my teens-20s and IDed as lesbian, I figured I might fall in love with someone who wanted kids, and then I /might/ be ok with being a "father". I think I rationalized this in kind of the same way, with thinking of fathers as having a different role than mothers, and that role was somewhat more tolerable to me.

Then I started dating cis-men and started those relationships with a loud emphatic "I DO NOT WANT KIDS. IF YOU DO, GET OUT NOW". Maybe because having a kid was a suddenly something that could biologically happen by accident. Interestingly, those men didn't really know what they wanted and didn't know what to do with that statement (probably because they hadn't been conditioned to think about it from a young age). My partner now expects he would've had kids if he'd partnered with someone who wanted them, largely because he would've just "gone with the flow". I'm pretty sure now that if I'd partnered with a woman who wanted kids, ultimately it wouldn't have worked.

Your situation is definitely an interesting one! Getting to hang out with kids/influence them etc without the actual responsibility, and the ability to "give them back" does sound ideal. :)

[hairyears]

Thanks for reminding me of this post in your end-of-2020 review!

I kept some things to myself in the rather shallow reply I gave, the first time I read it; mostly because I have much in common with naath's uneasy relationship with children.

But... Through friends in Cambridge, I have occasionally found myself aming children that I find genuinely engaging and fun to be with.

For a while, anyway.

Perhaps I'm mellowing in middle age.

My point, though, is that the suburban 'nuclear family' household of two parents and two-point-whatever kids is actually very unusual; humans just don't organise their family lives that way in other societies, and children in those societies interact *every day* with adults who have some degree of parent-like responsibility in their lives.

Both the responsibilities, and the pleasure.

You and Jack are not *at all* unusual in anthropological terms, you're just living in an aberrant society where children live somewhat impoverished lives in terms of the number and depth of interactions they have with adults who aren't their parents.

So, a thought: you *might* be finding that you have paternal or even maternal feelings, as part of some suppressed desire to be a parent. These are well-studied and well-characterised emotional 'drives' - but they are not the only ones, nor should the pursuit of avuncular or 'grand-parental' roles be seen as sublimated parental urges.

The desire to play a part in a child's life, without being the parent, isn't well-developed and well-socialised in our suburban society; but it is probably a very deep-seated one - it's observable in other primates, not just in other societies! - and you should consider accepting it in its own right, and not internalise it the way that impoverished outsiders insist it should be labelled.