The general attitude towards children in our society is that they are burdens, drains, and leaches who end our lives as we know them. The Washington Post almost gleefully reported this year that: “In fact, on average, the effect of a new baby on a person’s life in the first year is devastatingly bad — worse than divorce, worse than unemployment and worse even than the death of a partner.” This angle has some major flaws, which I’ll discuss a little later. Regardless of how parents feel, I would like to posit that children are great goods completely unto themselves regardless of whether or not that is recognized by others.
Children certainly do change things and they are an enormous, life-long responsibility, but they are also good, simply good, in the metaphysical sense. Their existence has value completely independent of the feelings of the parents (or anyone else) towards the child.
Too often we think children have value based on how the parents feel about them. Melissa Harris-Perry, host on MSNBC said in 2013, “When does life begin? I submit the answer depends an awful lot on the feeling of the parents. A powerful feeling – but not science.” That answer is trouble because it ignores actual reality in favor of feelings, granting to some humans’ feelings the status of ontological truth while simultaneously and incoherently denying value to other humans and their feelings. Feelings do matter, but they do not determine reality.
Harris-Perry added that “An unwanted pregnancy can be biologically the same as a wanted one. But the experience can be entirely different.” This statement is true in itself. However, the reality of the child’s life and goodness is determined by the biology, not the experience of the parents. Granted, we ought to be very sensitive to the feelings of such women and seek to provide as much non-judgmental support as possible. However, the requirement of support stems precisely from the reality and goodness of the child who is already in existence and growing to maturity.
I take this view from the classical metaphysics. Metaphysically speaking, everything that exists is good in the sense that it is willed and loved by God and expresses a perfection of being. Martin Vaske, S.J. explains in his Introduction to Metaphysics, “Unity, truth, and goodness are called transcendental properties because they are true of every being as being” (179). That means that everything that exists is good in so far as it exists, and this goodness, this desirability or lovableness is intrinsic to the being itself and not dependent on the perceptions of humans. He continues, “Beings have metaphysical, or ontological, truth independently of human knowledge; so also beings have metaphysical goodness independently of our willing them” (192).
In apples, the goodness of their being is obvious: an apple is a sweet fruit for nourishing the body. In a tsunami, it is less obvious: water swells and currents moved by natural forces; it may be highly destructive in effects, but considered in its existence, it exists as a natural form of water, which is essential to life. In its existence alone, it is a constituent part of the material reality that we depend on.
Now, humans are much higher beings than water or apples; we have more capacities and so are infinitely more loveable, even if some of us are not loved much by other humans. Our lovability or goodness remains intact regardless of how others see us. In the Catholic Faith, we call this the imago Dei, Latin for the image of God that is inscribed into each human person. Even the worst criminals do not lose their humanness, which is why we can always hope for their repentance and personal growth into a healthier member of the human family.
What I believe underlies the common rejection of children is a disordered selfishness, to put it colloqually, an “I gotta get mine,” attitude that ignores all reality except for how it contributes to my own personal pleasure.
Dr. Christopher Kaczor of Loyola University described this in his reaction to an unplanned pregnancy during his undergraduate years: “I pouted.” He viewed the event as tremendously unfair. He said his attitude did not change until a point during the birth when the child’s heart rate flat-lined:
the tiny little family that I had resented was in mortal danger….Until that moment I had bought into the myth that children are nothing more than a drain: a financial drain, an emotional drain, a dream-killing drain. I viewed children as little more than vampires, sucking the lifeblood of their parents (17, First Things, Feb. 2015).
After that moment, however, he says that he came to cherish both his child, Elizabeth, and his wife, Jennifer, much more. “Children are not vampires. They are lovable, exasperating, insanely cute gifts. They don’t drain parents of their life force–they enhance it” (18). How could he say this, which runs so contrary to the modern narrative:
Before Elizabeth, I loved to travel. After Elizabeth, I still love to travel and have gotten to live with Elizabeth for two years in Europe. In other words, having a child isn’t an ‘end’ to the good things of life; it is an ‘and’ to the good things in life (18).
This is a powerful conclusion. So often, we see children as an “end” because they change our experience of reality. Things in his life did change when his baby was born, just as the lives of all parents change when children are born. The difference is that he came to welcome the child and learned to incorporate the child’s being into his life in a positive way.
It is, of course, true that there are real difficulties of raising children, such as sleep deprivation and potential financial strain. But these are simply part of the reality of life. If we can accept that, instead of viewing this as a massive injustice, we can start to enjoy the goodness that is before our eyes instead of looking around it to view only our inconvenience. Our happiness is served when we embrace reality and work with it, instead of trying to fight against it.
As for that Washington Post study mentioned earlier, it only measures parents’ happiness during the first year after a child’s birth, so it does not measure what happens as parents adjust to life with children, which can be very satisfying. Secondly, the myth becomes self-reinforcing: we hear that childrearing is difficult, so when it comes to us, we see only the hardships and none of the joys.
Consider arguments in favor of aborting handicapped children: often times the parent or advocate says that he or she will not live a good life or because caring for such a child will be difficult. This is a distortion of “goodness.” No matter how weak a member of our human family, they are still valuable members. To refuse to care is to set oneself over and above all other human persons as somehow more important or more valuable such that our convenience ought not be bothered.
This is a temptation I think any reasonable person would face, myself included, but it is wrong. The growing embryo who tests positive for Down Syndrome is already an existing being who is part of the fabric of reality, who therefore has his or her own independent goodness. The action required to get rid of such a person, abortion, is certainly death-dealing: it destroys a growing being in order to stop the being from potentially changing the parents’ experience of reality. It is just as much a murder as Hitler’s extinction several-year-old versions of such children.
Only when we learn to accept children as part of reality, can we truly appreciate them and come to love their independent goodness.
Stephanie Pacheco is a freelance writer and convert from Northern Virginia. She earned a M.A. in Theological Studies, summa cum laude, from Christendom College and holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia in Religious Studies with a minor in Government and Political Theory. Her work has been featured in America Magazine, Crisis Magazine, Soul Gardening Journal and syndicated by EWTN and Zenit. She blogs about making sense of the Catholic Faith in modern life at theoress.wordpress.com and lives with her husband and two young children.
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