How do I know if I want to have children? I can't decide whether to become a parent!

Your Mileage May Vary is an advice column that provides a new framework for thinking about ethical dilemmas and philosophical questions. This unconventional column is based on value pluralism, the idea that each of us has multiple values ​​that are equally valid but often conflict with each other. This question was submitted by a Vox reader and has been condensed and edited for clarity.

I'm at the age where I feel like I need to decide if I want kids, but I'm very ambivalent about it and don't know how to decide if I want kids. I never dream of becoming a parent or spending my days caring for young children. But who would? I don't think that's a good way to decide if I really want to be a parent. But then what? The main place my mind goes is that if my partner and I are 70 years old and childless, my life will be sad and depressing. I like the idea of ​​having well-adjusted adult children to spend time with when I get older. That seems like a misguided and selfish reason to have a child.

A better reason might be because I think my partner and I have good values. I would like to send more people into the world with such values, but that seems selfish. Because there is no guarantee that your child will accept your values, and your duty as a parent is to help your child grow up to be the person you want to be. I'm worried that if my child rebels against everything I believe, I'll be the kind of parent who struggles to support my child. However, I feel like you can't know what you'll do if you find yourself in that situation until you actually experience it. . How do you know that such a life-altering decision is right for you, not to mention the ethical implications for people who don't yet exist?

Ah, the ambivalence between parent and child. Many of us can relate. And, just like you, many of us are trying to answer the question “Do you want children?” By looking within for the answers. We introspect, we ruminate, we dig up our childhood traumas. We think about what makes us happy now in order to predict whether our child will make us happier or less happy in the future. We believe that the answers are within us, that there are buried treasures waiting to be unearthed.

That's natural. Most of the advice given to people considering parenthood recommends doing just that. Countless articles, books, and advice columns are premised on the idea that the answers reside within us as stable facts. Ambivalent parenting coach Anne Davidman's online class, the Motherhood Clarity™ Course, is no different, beginning with the mantra, “The answers will come, because they never left…it's all within me.”

However, this approach has some problems. First, if you keep auditing your mind and searching for answers all your adult life, you might end up looking like a shrug emoji. That's because introspection is an open-ended search process. There's no way to know if you've searched enough.

Another problem is that this approach is too centered around you and your desires. As you pointed out, bringing a child into the world doesn't just mean costs and benefits to you.

Finally, it is not for you to predict whether your child will make you happier or more unhappy. As the philosopher L.A. Paul points out, you won't know what it's like to have a child until you actually give birth, and in the process “you'' will change. There is a possibility that the things that make you happy will not materialize as a result. Now, that's not the same as what makes you happy as a parent.

So what I propose is a fundamentally different approach. If you want to make decisions, you have to go beyond yourself. We need to look outward and ask ourselves: What is wonderful, thrilling, and inherently valuable about being in this world?

I'm not asking the question. Because I think the important thing is to decide what values ​​you want to pass on to your children. As you said, there is no guarantee that your child will accept your values. Instead, I'm asking because this is the basis for making a choice about whether or not to have children. Instead of “finding the answer,” you can make a choice.

So far you've thought of children's questions as epistemological, saying, “I don't know how to know,” but I'd like to think of them as existential instead. Existentialist philosophers argued that life does not have predefined meanings or fixed answers. Instead, each human being must choose how to create their own meaning. As the Spanish existentialist José Ortega y Gasset said, the central task of being human is “auto-manufacturing,” which literally means self-making. You come up with your own answers and in doing so you make yourself.

Ten years ago, just for fun, my friend Emily sat me down in a park and gave me a really impactful workout. Believe it or not, it was an online quiz. It listed dozens of different values, including friendship, creativity, and growth, and asked them to choose their top 10. It was then narrowed down to the top five. I thought that was very difficult, but it was obvious. In a quiz, I discovered that my number one value is something called “the joy of being,'' which is somewhat unique.

When I have to make a difficult decision, I return to it again and again (because my mind keeps punctuation marks, I regularly tell people about “The joy of being, the joy of commas!”) ). It captures a core fact about me: I love being alive in this world! Every time I snorkel with incredibly colorful fish, experience deep connections with other humans, or look up at galaxies we are only just beginning to understand, I am reminded of the grandeur of existence. I am very grateful to be able to be a part of the mystery.

And that's what made me decide that I wanted to be a mother someday. At a time when many people are questioning whether human life is worth perpetuating on this planet, choosing to have children feels like one of the biggest ways I can say “yes” to life. Masu. It is an affirmation that living in this world is a gift, and something that we want to convey to others.

So let me be your Emily. Present your Inventory of Values ​​(one of similar inventories available online) and select your top five. Next, ask yourself: Is having children a good way to establish my values? Or is there another way to establish my values ​​that is more compelling to me? Considering your needs, which path is most suitable for you personally?

This highly depends on the individual. Imagine three women who all cite “personal growth” as their greatest value. They may still come to very different conclusions about the child. For some women, that value may feel like a great reason to have children. Because she believes that parenting helps you grow as a person and can guide the growth of new people. The second woman might say that the main way she grows is by making art. So I want to focus on that, while still being an active aunt to my friends' kids. A third woman may feel that the most promising path for her is to become a nun. All three are perfectly valid.

Many people who suffer from parental ambivalence worry that without children, they will miss out on something common: an experience that is completely unique, a kind of love that cannot be matched by anything else. says. It sounds like this FOMO is playing a role for you too. You mentioned that if you and your partner are 70 years old and don't have children, you're worried that your life will be sad and depressing.

However, there are many parents who say that while they love their children, their relationship with their child doesn't magically become more meaningful than other relationships in their lives. in a great new book What are children for? By Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman, the former writes:

There's no doubt that the parent-child relationship is unique, but what if I told you that, phenomenologically speaking, it's actually not grand or extraordinary? That it's not particularly special either. Is it? …Loving your child is not something you have never experienced before. It's not inconceivable. If you know love, you also know it, or something like it… What makes this love special is not how exotic, mysterious, and amazing it is. , how simple and approachable it is.

So, if you just like the idea of ​​having children because you want to spend time with nice people in your later years, try other ways to meet the same needs first. You may find that it's not just something that children can provide. Author (and friend of mine) Raina Cohen beautifully documents: Other significant othersSome people feel that a deep friendship fully satisfies their need for connection and leaves no child-shaped or partner-shaped hole.

But even if you believe that having children is a special experience, my point is, so is everything else! Artists may say that nothing compares to the creative thrill of painting. Those who are politically active may say that there is nothing like the feeling of fighting for justice and winning. There are so many unique and immeasurably wonderful things in the world.

So don't be swayed by society's narratives of what the ultimate good looks like. Make your choices based on your own sense of what is most valuable in human life. What makes you feel happy or miserable can change significantly over time, but your core values ​​are relatively stable, giving you a more permanent basis for making big decisions. It becomes. It's true that even those values ​​may change a little over the decades, but making choices based on your values ​​means that at least what you do It means you can be confident that you had a good reason for it – you'll feel better about it in the future, no matter how it ends.

And what about the future? You really can't control it. Therefore, your goal is not to control every possible outcome. Your goal is to live according to your values.

Bonus: What I'm Reading