My sister is having a baby, a little baby boy, and it isn't that I don't like children,
I just personally don't want one.
People tell me that having a child is great, but I'm afraid I'll drop him or damage him
in some other way.
My dad's girlfriend is an artist, and she constructed this fully articulated, analogous
baby made out of a thousand feet of wire.
She let me hold it so I could simulate holding a child.
Because it is a piece of art, I feel more compelled to hold it carefully as though it
were a child.
Still makes me feel uncomfortable.
I went back home to visit my parents and tell them that I didn't want to pass my genetics
on to another generation.
My dad took us to one of our favorite hiking spots.
As you look out over the water, you see the source of smoke coming out on the other side
of the lake.
That, up until a few years ago, after there was some action by the EPA, was the single
largest sole source of pollution in North America, maybe even on the western hemisphere.
That's called MagCorp, and it extracts magnesium from the lake, and it's a big pollution source.
This seemed as good a place as any to err my concerns about bringing a new life into this
dangerous and dirty world.
I don't know how I feel about kids.
You don't know?
You don't really know?
Whether you want to have a kid or not?
You're shaking your head no, like you don't want to have a kid, but I'm curious about
why you feel like you don't want to have kids.
Is it the responsibility, is it you don't want to add a new person on the planet?
I mean, I'd be honest, when I was 25, that was really far from my mind.
My dad didn't seem to react as strongly as I imagined.
He seemed almost amused.
I suppose that's one of the benefits of life experience.
So mom, I don't know if you know what the premise of this little project you're working
on is about Jamie and Paul's child and my fear of children and my total lack of desire
to have them.
I see.
I didn't understand that.
Well, I wasn't sure if that had changed or not, so that's interesting.
I do hope you'll change your mind.
So I think there are people who are, I don't want to say cut out for this and people who
are not, but I think that there are people who are more inclined to it than others.
And there's a trap that we fall into when we start to follow a given path and go into
what some spiritual teacher called a borrowed desire, where you have the degree, now you
have the girlfriend, now you have the car, so you get married and then you have the child.
That's like the next natural consequence.
And the world is completely overpopulated.
There's too much suffering, there's too much going on.
We have to be extremely conscious about bringing someone into this world.
I had great hopes for a young buddy that would hike with me, my little boy.
When I was, you were happy that you were having a child when I was born?
Absolutely, I was ecstatic.
The whole time?
The whole time.
Whoa!
What's that?
Whoa!
Whoa!
The baby!
Will I transform?
One day will I awake to find my desire to have a child as outweighed by the reasons to not
have one?
Yay!
Big explore!
Will the impending birth of my nephew change my attitude or merely reinforce my decision?
What are some of your fears?
Are you afraid about the state of the world or are you afraid about being the kind of
father that you'd like to be, children give us hope for the future and I think that's
why people keep having them, is that we think that they'll make some nice changes.
That's certainly what I felt.
You guys are amazing, you're absolutely amazing, you're changing the world.
I do wonder, I'm really curious about your experience as an uncle, I really wonder what
you'll like, what you'll like about it or what you won't like about it or what you'll
think about it.
Like I just wonder, you know, I hope you'll keep me posted on or be very candid about
that.
Really good.
Would you describe us as a legacy?
More like a redemption.
So, us?
Mm-hmm.
Interesting.
You know, what you gotta say about redemption?
So it's interesting that the mom phrased it that way, I wouldn't have necessarily phrased
it that way myself and haven't heard her put it in those words, but certainly that was
really clear and she was always very candid with us, even though she didn't tell a lot
of stories about her youth and growing up, it was clear that she was righting her wrong
somehow by being the best possible mother that she could be.
Okay, my family was pretty dysfunctional.
My mother was an alcoholic, my father was chronically unemployed, and I was not parented
well, shall we say, and so I spent a lot of time dealing with a lot of anxiety and a lot
of social issues and not understanding, and finally one time I read an article about people
who grew up in alcoholic families and I gained a lot of understanding from that, but I wanted
to have two children, so by the time I understood this, I had this understanding of my family's
history and how it affected me as a person, I already had the two of you, but I realized
that by being the best possible parent that I could be to the two of you, I redeemed not
only my parents for not being that, but I also sort of, it was sort of redemption for
myself, it was like, okay, so this kind of, I had a terrible childhood, that's too bad.
Next.
You think in terms of your having children as influenced by the experience of growing
up in a household where your parents divorced?
Probably, and I wouldn't, I mean, I wouldn't want to do that to a kid.
Oh, so why?
What was, yeah.
Because it feels disjointed, you know, like you feel more like a parent to me now than
you did when I was a teenager, but maybe I was just rebelling.
Well, that's often the case.
I don't particularly feel I had a great experience with my parents when I was a teenager either.
I think that there are elements when your parents are struggling and fighting that that's
part of your world and that's kind of frightening.
But you know, you have Jamie, who has gone through this twice and has, you know, now
made a choice with her husband to have a child, and maybe too.
The fact that to give birth takes nine months is a very interesting thing.
I think if it was taking five months, it would be too short, and if it was taking twelve
months, it would be too long.
Nine months is just the right amount.
So you get to a point where you had enjoyed the pregnancy, but you just want to get rid
of it now.
That's okay.
You can go out of the body.
It doesn't need to sustain a belly.
Can you tell you about me?
Like, I'm done.
I think it's all the question of timing, so everything grows and everything is at the
right place.
So in the same way, for us, when we were 25, they didn't feel right.
Then we are 30 or something, and now I feel right.
It's like everything has its gestational.
Everything else is gestational, yes.
It's just a gestational period.
It's just a gestational period.
Well, we have one beautiful baby, which will keep me busy for a while, so I guess the pressure
is off you for a little while, but not forever.
Thank you.
