Whether To Have Kids Or Not

I’m at this point in my life where making decisions, no matter how big or small, seems to be incredibly challenging. Especially in the wake of the pandemic I found myself contemplating what the deeper purpose of my life actually was. My friends all started having children and getting married and at first I was happy for them, but then around 27 I started to wonder, Am I behind in life because I don’t have my own family yet? I realized that I can’t be happy for my friends if I’m stuck in a place of deep unhappiness, always questioning and second-guessing my choices. But not comparing myself to others is a lot easier said than done.

Of course, a lot of us know that it’s okay to not know if you want kids or not, and that regardless of whether you have kids or not you’ll be ok. But of course, people’s attitudes about whether to have children or not depends on culture and historical social norms. Comedian Chelsea Handler, in a segment on The Daily Show, talks about her decision to not have kids. She also talks about the societal pressure for women to have children, including clips from interviews by successful women who talk about how they are often questioned and criticized for not wanting to have kids.

In a parody of one of those videos on Instagram that show the daily lives of busy moms (to be fair, I don’t have Instagram anymore, so I haven’t watched these videos before), Chelsea talks about what her daily schedule looks like as a childless woman. Some of the activities include going to Paris and meditating on the airplane, eating edibles, wearing heels, and going back in time to kill Adolf Hitler. It was pure genius, and the end of the segment was also genius. In the sketch, she is at an appointment with her gynecologist (played by Julianna Margulies) and the gynecologist tells her that her life is going to be majorly affected by her decision to not have children, and gives her a pamphlet. She tells her that she won’t have to deal with the trauma of childbirth and explains other benefits about not having kids. She ends by telling Chelsea it is a lot to think about, and that because it’s an overwhelming decision she gives her a bag of recreational drugs and offers her tickets to Ultrasound, a concert where Lizzo is performing, and smiles, telling her that she can go because she doesn’t have kids to take care of. Of course, the subject matter about having kids is serious, but this is what I love about the sketches on The Daily Show because they bring humor to these serious and sometimes taboo subjects. The subject of whether to have kids or not is serious, but I love how Chelsea poked fun at all the criticism she is getting. The first thing I saw when I looked up Chelsea’s sketch is all the criticism she got for it, and people genuinely thought she was being selfish or was actually deeply miserable inside. That’s why I had to stop reading the YouTube comments at the bottom of the video, because at the end of the day they are all just people’s opinions.

Honestly, even though it was meant to be humorous watching this Daily Show segment was really encouraging for me because I was so ambivalent about wanting kids, and even though none of my friends pressured me to have kids, I was at a time in my life when I was deeply lonely and depressed and wondered whether I was doing this adulting thing correctly. But honestly, I am more confident that I will make the best decision for me. I understand that the sketch was supposed to be satirical because The Daily Show is a satirical show, but also it was validating in some sense for me because I am still unsure of what I want in life, but I do know that having kids isn’t really a priority for me right now. It’s also how I feel about being on the asexual spectrum. Of course, there are plenty of asexual people who have kids, but at the same time there are also a lot of asexual people who don’t have kids. I didn’t really find out about asexuality until after high school when I met this student at a college preparatory program who told me they identified as asexual and faced a lot of teasing for their sexuality. I didn’t have a label for who I was at the same, I mean, maybe straight, but it wasn’t something I really thought about. I would meet these guys and think it was romantic to have kids with them, but then these crushes always faded with time. When I finally came across the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network in my sophomore year of college, I felt validated. It was definitely challenging grappling with being asexual, and I often thought, Well what if this is all a phase? But years have passed and I am gradually becoming more accepting of my identity. I think just feeling confident in it is a challenge because it’s easy to compare yourself with others, especially with social media. Of course, I understand that I control how much I use social media, and that before getting Facebook I didn’t really care about getting one but sometimes it has been tempting to look at other people’s feeds and buy into this false narrative that everyone’s lives are perfect. I also had to seriously unpack a lot of what I watch in the media. It was easy for me to look at movies and TV shows of romance and think, Gee it’s as easy as being swept off your feet. But as I listen to my friends talk about their romantic lives, I realize that regardless of whether you are in a romantic relationship or not, relationships, whether romantic or platonic, are challenging because you may not always get along with the person or agree with them on everything, and it takes work and commitment to actually have a healthy relationship.

I’m also glad I have Buddhism as well because as I was chanting, I realized that my happiness isn’t dependent on my circumstances, whether I get married, have kids or even have a partner at all. It was easy for me to look at everyone else’s lives and think they were perfect, but chanting gave me the space to look at my life just as it is and appreciate it regardless of my environment. Since it’s a daily practice it is still something I need to remind myself of each day, but it has been helpful to have some affirmation that helps me awaken to a deeper self-worth that doesn’t come from my achievements or even my failures.

In the sketch, Chelsea shows some clips from successful women in the media who are criticized for living a child-free life, and one of the women in the clips is The Financial Diet’s Chelsea Fagan. I love Chelsea Fagan and The Financial Diet, so of course I had to look up the full video, and I came across a video titled “What You Should Never Say to Childfree Women.” In this video, Chelsea unpacks a lot of the stigma that women (and men) face for not wanting children. These criticisms range from “You’re selfish,” “You’re missing out” and “Who will look after you when you get older?” However, this stigma is also connected with a lot of established structures in society about what constitutes a family, and more and more people are moving away from the nuclear family model.

Chelsea touches on one objection to remaining child-free, which is the anxiety that if you don’t have kids, you won’t have anyone to look after you when you are in old age. However, Chelsea reveals statistics that show that many older people with kids don’t get to see their kids or be taken care of by them even in old age, so it totally debunks this idea that older people with kids don’t have to worry about loneliness and isolation. A couple of weeks ago I finished a book that my mom got from the library for me to read called Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, published in 2014 by American surgeon Atul Gawande. Gawande talks about how American society is reluctant to confront the realities of aging and death, and how a lot of aging people in American society are often left to feel isolated and lonely because they are often forced to face these realities alone in nursing homes and hospitals. American medicine hasn’t been too kind to the elderly, and in some cultures children stay with their parents well into old age, but particularly in American society children move out to live by themselves and this can be particularly challenging when their parents get older and they have to take care of them. He meets many aging people in nursing homes and in hospice care and explores how these people grapple with dying and getting older. He also shows how their families navigate the stressful process of grief and taking care of the elderly. As a young person this book was deeply terrifying at first because I’m young and I don’t want to think of dying, but that’s why reading Daisaku Ikeda’s writings on Buddhist philosophy have helped me navigate the challenges of facing these realities of birth, aging, sickness and death. From a Buddhist perspective, these four sufferings of birth, aging, sickness and death are inherent aspects of life rather than something removed from our daily lives. Even while growing up as a Buddhist, I still had this idea that you had one lifetime and that was it. Hearing about celebrities dying made me anxious about my own death, but as I continued to study Buddhism it reminded me that death is not this transcendent state removed from my daily human life. In fact, Ikeda Sensei says in one of his writings that birth and death are even inherent when we fall asleep at night and when we wake up in the morning. Seeing life and death from this perspective has helped me appreciate my life so much more, because at 27 I felt that life would be easier if I just joined the 27 Club and ended my life, but as I studied Buddhism I realized that I didn’t have to feel ashamed for having problems because problems are part of daily life, and that I can chant to have the life condition to face reality head-on. It wasn’t easy getting through that year but I learned a lot about myself in the process, and that even as I am striving towards success and big dreams I also need to stop and appreciate the little things about life. Being Mortal forced me to look at the reality of American medicine and the realities of aging and death. It was written in 2014 but I think it is especially timely because during the COVID-19 pandemic, many elderly people not only died of COVID-19 but also were isolated in nursing homes during quarantine. Many families in all parts of the world had to watch their elderly relatives on ventilators struggling to breathe as they battled against COVID-19, and not being able to touch them or hold their hand or provide much comfort because they could only do it outside the hospital room to not risk the family member contracting the virus.

But that was a tangent and this blog post is getting rather lengthy so I will continue this discussion in another post.