TRANSCRIPT
So often I see people’s reasons and motivations for having children as being extremely unhealthy. So I would like to list some of these unhealthy reasons and motivations.
The first one that I see so commonly is that people have children just because they like to have sex. They like to have unprotected sex with a partner who maybe they had no desire to have children with, but it just happened. So, oops, oh, we got pregnant, so let’s have a child. That’s one reason I think it’s very unhealthy.
Another one is that people are lacking in purpose in their life. They don’t really have a strong direction, and so when they have a child, suddenly they have a built-in direction. They have a built-in purpose in a way. They give themselves a job to do. They’re using that child as an object to guide their own life. They’re not having that child for the purpose deeply and inherently of loving that child and raising a healthy person. They might say it, but underneath it really what it is is they are creating that child from a lack of something in their life. And there’s lots of other things that people can lack inside that give them a reason to have children, a motivation.
Another one: some people desperately want to control other people. And if they cannot find other adults, especially to control in their lives, because a lot of times it’s harder to control an adult, and they have such a need to control some external being, they create a child. And what easier person to control than a child? And yet what’s so interesting is so often they don’t have to admit it because what they can say is, “Oh, I’m not controlling my child. My child is controlling me. I have to get up. I have to bring them to certain places. I have to feed them all the time. I have to change their diapers. I have to make sure they’re sleeping. Oh, it’s so difficult. I can’t do all the things I want.” They can paint themselves as the victim, whereas unconsciously they actually really are the ones who are playing out the control on the child.
Another unhealthy motivation for people to have children is they want someone onto whom they can act out their own unconscious childhood traumas. They want, in a way, an object, a sort of blank screen onto whom they can project their rage. They can act out their sadness. They can act out their feelings of abandonment even. They want someone they can abuse. And what better person to do that to than a child? Because society gives parents so much liberty, especially on an emotional level, to play out abusive dynamics with children. A lot of the things that parents do to children, especially young children, if they tried to do this with someone who is older, especially with another adult, it would be against the law. And they can, yet in our society and lots of societies in the world, they can play out these dynamics under the guise of education, under the guise of reformation, under the guise of discipline, molding, being a good parent. And yet really what they’re doing is they’re acting out all their unconscious unprocessed rage and sadness and hurt and grief and abandonment from their own relationship with their parents in childhood.
Another reason is financial advantage. Now, a lot of people say, “Oh, how can you say that? It costs so much to have a child.” And it does cost a lot to have a child if you’re doing a really good, healthy, independent job raising your child. But a lot of people have children to get money. And I’m not talking just from the government, though a lot of people do have children to get extra perks from the government. They can also have children to get money from their own parents because a lot of parents, they won’t give their adult children money, but when the children have children of their own, “Oh, we need to support our grandchildren.” Sometimes they’ll dole out a lot of money. Or people can have children to get money from their partners. This is another one. What if that person senses that their relationship with their partner is ending? Well, if they have a child with that partner and they break up, sometimes that partner is going to be required to give them a lot of money, and a lot more money than they would have otherwise been required to give.
This leads me into another motivation, and that is that people can have children to try to save a dying marriage, to save an unhealthy marriage. “Oh, let’s have children to bond us.” Our relationship is drifting apart. Perhaps we don’t love each other anymore. Perhaps we never did love each other. Perhaps we don’t like each other anymore. Perhaps the pink cloud of romance is gone. “Let’s try to recreate it by cementing it, by creating a child.” This can bring us together, they think. And sometimes it actually works for a while. Often it doesn’t work. Often it can make terrible problems, especially from the perspective of a child, to realize that they were created to cement their parents’ relationship, an unhappy, unloving relationship. That’s a big burden for the child.
Another reason that parents can have children is for status. In our world, it can give a parent a lot of status if they have a child or if they have one or two or three children. So many people, “Oh, it’s so wonderful. Congratulations for you having a child!” People sometimes who had no status in society, no status in their family system, no status in their friendship circle can sometimes get a lot of status from just being a parent. They can have such pride in it. It doesn’t mean that they’re good parents at all. It doesn’t mean that they love their children. Maybe they can take photos and make it look like they’re a wonderful, loving parent, but underneath it, they were just really in it for the external societal perks. I’ve seen that a lot, and these are things that people don’t admit often. They don’t even admit it to themselves in a conscious way, but they really can do it.
Another thing is I have seen not infrequently people having children as a distraction in their life. Something that will allow them to focus away from the problems they’re having, focus away from the pain that they’re experiencing, maybe even a distraction from their own growth or from their sense of emptiness inside themselves. Or maybe just as something kind of like a pet. “Oh, here’s something interesting that’s going to give me something to think about and do and work at during the day for many, many years, perhaps.” And this, in a way, is related to another reason, unconsciously or sometimes very even consciously, because I’ve heard them say, “Oh, I am going to have another child to give my first child a sibling. Oh, I feel so bad for my first child. He’s all alone. She’s all alone. He or she needs a sibling.” It’s like they’re not creating this new child as a being in its own right. They’re creating this new child as a sort of pet for the first child.
And what I’ve seen, interestingly, not infrequently, is it backfires on them. They end up with their first child having a lot of rage, feeling even more rejected and neglected. “Wait a second, you told me you were going to give me this sibling for me!” And the end result is you’re actually paying less attention to me now that there’s a baby. Mom is so distracted from paying attention to me. Dad is not paying so much attention to me. Or when I’m angry and I feel angry that you’re rejecting me, and I take out some of my anger on my little brother or my little sister because I’ve observed this many times in families. The parents punish the first child, are angry at him, even spank him sometimes. “Don’t bother your little sister. Don’t bother your little brother.”
So these are all things that I’ve seen in society. I’ve seen it in families all over the place—these strange and unfortunate and what I consider to be unhealthy and inappropriate motivations for having children. And part of why I bring it up is because I think in society we don’t talk about this enough.