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21st Century Parenting and the Facts of Life
Imagine that you live in California, Minnesota, or Massachusetts and your precocious 8-year-old comes home with some probing questions.
“Mommy, where do babies come from?”
You’ve already thought this through — you’re going to answer honestly but not tell her more than she asked to know.
“Well, they come from Mommies and Daddies. Mommies have what is called an egg, but a little tiny one, and Daddies have what is called sperm. The egg and the sperm get together and a baby starts to grow. Mommies have something called a uterus where the tiny growing baby goes to live and get bigger until it is big enough to be born.”
“But my teacher says that some kids have two mommies or two daddies instead of a mommy and a daddy. How can they have a baby?”
“They can’t have one together. They have to borrow an egg or a sperm from a different mommy or daddy.”
“But doesn’t that mommy or daddy want their baby?”
“I guess not.”
“But if it’s two daddies, nobody has a u-u-“
“Uterus.”
“Yes — that. Where is the baby going to grow?”
“They have to find a mommy who will grow the baby.”
“Then the baby grows in the mommy’s tummy but she doesn’t want the baby?”
“Well, she might want the baby, but she’s helping out the daddies because they want a baby.”
“But then the baby won’t have a mommy and the mommy won’t have her baby!”
“No. The mommy and baby won’t have each other”
“But I like having a mommy. And mommies do lots of things that daddies don’t do — like my hair.”
“That’s true. I guess the daddies have to learn to do what the mommies usually do and the mommies have to learn to do what the daddies usually do.”
“I don’t like that.”
She thinks for a minute.
“My teacher says that boys are sometimes really girls and girls are sometimes really boys.”
“What do you think she means when she says that?”
“I don’t know, but sometimes I like to kick the ball with the boys. Does that mean I’m really a boy?”
“No. Sometimes girls like to do things with boys or boys like to do things with girls, but they are still boys and girls.”
“But then how can a boy be a girl or a girl be a boy?”
“Well, I guess she means that some boys feel like girls and some girls feel like boys.”
“Does that mean when I feel like kicking a ball I feel like a boy so I’m really a boy?”
“No. Girls who like to do boy things are sometimes called tomboys, but they are still girls.”
“But if I felt like I was a boy, could I become a boy and grow up to be a daddy?”
“No, you can never be a daddy, only a mommy.”
“But if I felt like a boy, wouldn’t I want to be a daddy? Why can I only be a mommy?”
“Because you were born with eggs and uterus, which is what you need to be a mommy.”
“Because I’m a girl.”
“Yes — because you’re a girl.”
“Then why does my teacher tell me I might be a boy and tell the boys they might be girls if boys can never be mommies and girls can never be daddies?”
You are stumped. This is a level of confusion you will never be able to explain.
Published in General
That’s pretty much my take, too. I can’t agree with intentionally conceiving a child you have no plans to be a parent for. If an embryo already exists, it seems like it would be a noble act for a woman to take that embryo into her womb. I agree with the Catholic Church’s position that technology can assist natural procreation, but shouldn’t fundamentally alter it.
I understand, and obviously people’s reasons for wanting a child can be extremely sympathetic. But I still think that gestating for money is wrong, and dehumanizing both for parents and for children. Volunteer surrogacy is slightly less offensive, but still I think unethical.
Perhaps you have not met the right Alaskans.
Well, Gary, if parents and teachers are telling children different things, especially about where babies come from, that is very confusing. I’m hoping that by the time she has offspring this experiment in gender bending will be over and good sense will have returned.
In CA, MA, or MN, it might just as easily be said: Go Ask Your Other Mother.
Perhaps not, but Texas and Texans have the reputation. Alaska, not so much. Texans brag about Texas all the time, and let’s face it, most of Texas is either a hot, humid, steam oven or a hot dry bake oven. Most of the area of Alaska that is populated is gorgeous with pleasant weather, and Alaskans aren’t bragging about it, because they don’t want all the Californians to move up there and take it over. It provides for a different mode of expression.
Adoption seems to be perceived so differently now in our society. That “sticks & stones” statement, “You’re Adopted” said to HURT another, seems rarely to be heard. But at one time, such a statement was likely to be hurtful, because being adopted was not such an “accepted” practice.
I wonder if the “trauma” of being adopted was more a response to the secrecy of it, that feeling of betrayal, by learning the truth unexpectedly, than actually being unhappy about being adopted and loved by a family other than the birth parent(s).
That’s one of the big problems today. Many children are being raised to be anti-tough. “Guns” is a great example. Children are being taught to desperately fear guns, finger guns, stick pictures of guns, Pop-Tarts bitten into the shape of a gun, saying the word “gun,” saying “BANG!”
But there is hope. I was selling ammunition to a customer, and his four-or-five-year-old daughter said “Daddy, when can I have my own .22?”
I’ve wondered that too. Adding to it was the sense that one was unusual and different than others; I would imagine as adoption because more openly known/obvious, the trauma decreases.
Bless that kid and her dad.
I was 11.
Doubly so. He’s ex-military and they came in one day after returning from an honor-the-troops rally, joyfully singing together the second and third verses of the Star Spangled Banner.
I wasn’t clear either. I would prefer these people would adopt.
Eyeore, they’re little children. Even if they’re little children who are being raised to be the kind of tough you approve of — who play with toy guns and who know their parents have guns — they need the basic security of a stable family and of trusting the adults in their life.
The cognitive dissonance of conflict between parent and teacher is difficult for them. Merina is right. You may have to tell the child their teacher is mistaken — but you handle it carefully. You never just tell an eight-year-old their teacher is an idiot. Anymore than you would tell them their mother is one.
For one thing, chances are the teacher is going to hear about it. In some cases, you could put your child in a very difficult situation.
Children are not so frail (particularly at age 8) that the idea that a woman would try to help other people who can’t have kids on their own, have kids, is going to necessitate therapy.
Frank, I just have to disagree. If a child’s mother has a baby that is that child’s half-sibling and gives the child away, that could be very traumatic. I would have found that traumatic and so would my kids.
I found it traumatic as a small child when I witnessed Shawn Michaels throw Marty Janetty through the barber shop window, ending the Rockers tag team forever. I probably cried.
Well, Frank, different people find different things traumatic. I’ll tell you why that would have really bothered me. Because I understood (and still do) the importance of family and the sacredness of having a child and making that child part of the family. To have children and just give them away instead of integrating them into the family would have seemed really wrong–like a child was just a thing to buy or sell or give away instead of a highly valued (and kept) person. Is that really so hard to understand? As a child I wouldn’t have understood the whole science of the birth process, but I definitely understood about babies and families and how important they are.
BTW–my parents were always taking people in who needed help. I understood the idea of adoption perfectly, and that sometimes birth families couldn’t take care of kids. But the idea that a child born to a strong family like ours would not be kept? No. That was beyond the pale.
Homeschool.
It’s not complicated at all, tab. Bear with me while I stretch the CoC for purposes of pith and clarity. What we are witnessing in the schools is the psychological buggery of young children. Someone had to say it.
Merina,
Almost all children are forced to learn about death reasonably early in life. For most it comes in the form of a pet dying, or perhaps a relative who they are not particularly close to.
By the standards you lay out earlier, this experience must shatter the world of all children, as their sense of safety is destroyed. And yet, it doesn’t. I’ve witnessed many children go through that experience and they adapt quickly to it, no therapy needed.
Surely death has far more serious and profound effects on the human psyche then a theoretical brother or sister who you never knew, being given to be raised by people who will love them. Kids are smarter then most people give them credit for, at far younger ages than most will acknowledge.
I actually can’t think of an 8 year old who I’ve interacted with who wouldn’t understand the concept of surrogacy if you explained to them that some people can’t have babies, but really want to, and that some people do the incredibly generous thing of carrying the baby for them.
I doubt most would walk away from that conversation with their psyche damaged. I think trying to shield kids from things like this is a bit like draping them in bubble wrap before sending them out to play.
Frank, death is natural. Having a baby expressly for someone else is not. As a mother I could not do that. I could not carry a baby inside me and give that child away. That would be a trauma. It would offend my sense of family. I agree that it seems generous, but it is not that simple. Are you a parent? I’m not sure you know children as well as you think you do.
I very much fall in the “Tough Love” camp. Partially this is because kids can be hardy creatures. And partially because some amount of insecurity is a Good Thing. People who are secure aren’t hungry, and don’t feel the need to outperform.
Here’s what it comes down to: if they have an innate sense that what the parent did was wrong it will indeed shatter their world. Death is part of life, and they learn that it is so, that it comes to all. (And yet many people are traumatized by it, the more so if they lack a Christian frame of reference to understand it by.) It’s likely that a younger child would indeed simply accept the parent’s explanation. But if, as they grow into the teenage years and begin to think more independently, their own inner sense of what is right conflicts with what their mother did, it can indeed be incredibly disturbing.
I’m not sure the surrogate mom’s kids will need therapy. They may just grow up to believe that wombs are a thing that can be part of a business transaction, albeit, a transaction for a very noble – or not- purpose. I think that’s awful, but that’s the world we are in. Try explaining abortion to a kid. Years ago our pastor felt the need to expound in too much detail about the horrors of partial birth abortion. I wanted to stand up in the middle of the sermon and yell, “hang on a sec until I can leave with my kids.” My five year old tugged on my sleeve and whispered, “why do they want to kill the baby?”
Yep, it’s an ugly world.
Leigh and Kim–yes–that’s the thing. We have stumbled into this world without really thinking about the implications and the consequences. Or maybe not just stumbled, but we haven’t considered nearly enough the importance of life, parentage and, in the case of abortion, and euthanasia for that matter, death.
Has anybody read the book The Giver? That seems to me where we are heading. The society appeared rather kindly, if somewhat controlling. But people seemed to get along and were indulgent and loving toward children,so at first you think it sounds pretty good. Then you begin to see that they cavalierly kill children with any sort of defect and old people when they reach a certain age. No one thought at all about the implications of what they were doing. That’s what playing around with natural gender, parenthood and all the other life issues, with little thought for the larger consequences, reminds me of.
Dystopia–here we come. Or here we are.
Or maybe, we have turned away from our Creator and His created order of life, regardless of the consequences.
Have read the Giver. The other theme with 21st-century implications is the closing off of thought and the loss of memory when the avoidance of all conflict and discomfort reaches its extreme.
It’s interesting, isn’t it, that in Lowry’s world children were killed only after they were born?
Yes indeed, we have turned away from our creator in a serious way. I would say it is possible for some people to turn away and society to percolate along OK, but when people not only turn away but try to silence those anchored in tradition and God’s word, things go downhill very fast. That’s a real loss of memory. Interesting points about the discomfort with conflict while committing atrocities with a smile. But yes, I guess you’d have to say that at least children were allowed to be born before they were annihilated. It’s hard to say which approach is more barbaric. Today’s depressing question.
Future Tom: Your teacher’s an idiot, sweetie.
It wasn’t that important to us, and this was at a parochial school in the ’50s. Math, theology, grammar–we all went through school knowing that teachers could make mistakes, and that our parents would give us the correct information. I’ll never forget the time a teacher tried to tell one of us that the Earth was round . . .