I'd only want Victorian children...

When people ask me why I don't want kids, I tell them I just don't have "it" - the drive, the thing that makes people want them. That's the most fundamental thing I can say about it, but of course it's always easy to come up with lots of supplemental reasons to support something you want anyway.

One of them which occurred to me tonight is that in today's culture, childhood and adulthood are not very compatible. There are elements of life that I enjoy, as an adult, that I feel don't "go well" with childhood. For instance, I don't like the idea of having children who want the latest fashions (the neons of the late 80's are something I could have done without, in retrospect), which they inevitably would if they mingled in society at all, but I also wouldn't want to keep children from mingling in society - it's unnatural.

People say I was a sheltered kid, but if I could change anything about my childhood, I'd make it more sheltered, more conservative. I guess I have this Victorian ideal of childhood in mind - or like in Farmer Boy - where the entertainments of adults, their thoughts and their habits, were all suitable for children. Hard work, reading aloud to the family by the fire on winter evenings, creative play... but I certainly wouldn't want to give up the things that I enjoy as an adult now just because they weren't suitable for children. Even the mere existence of TV, I think, makes a childhood such as I envision impossible, for even if you don't have one in the house, that just makes your kids more interested and curious about it, and if you have one, limitations on what they can watch have the same effect. If they're anything like me, at least. And that's ME and my life... even worse is the idea of "normal" people having children... people who work long hours, stay out late hanging out with other adults, swear, drink...

So often today, it seems, people try to preserve some of the ideal of childhood despite the fact that their own habits are inconsistent with it. They swear, but don't want their children to - though they'll probably be fine with their kids swearing when they get older. Or are they trying to bring them up to be better than themselves? In the Little House books, there was no need for that distinction. The adults behaved in the ways they asked their children to behave. They wanted them to grow up to embody the same virtues they themselves possessed. Childhood was about learning to become an adult, and the parents, in examining their own lives, could have had few qualms about wanting their children to become like them. How many people today can say the same? And even for those who can, how few outside role models there are to reinforce the ideas.

This brings a point up that I've often said: pessimists are really idealists. I'm pessimistic about the possibilities for childhood in today's society because I have high ideals of what I would like childhood to be. Optimists, I think, think things will be ok because, perhaps, they are more flexible in their definition of what is "ok". I'm pessimistic about life because I think it ought to be perfect and I know it won't be, it can't possibly be. Optimists must (I presume) accept the world more easily for what it is... either that or they're simply deluded.

It will be interesting to see how these thoughts play out over the coming years with my imminent nephew.