Depression and what it's really like

sorry crüt
on the upside, i was thinking about you today!

xps

I think there's just a bit of slipshod semantics at work here. A kid is not a project, but raising a kid is a project. It is possible to devolve the project of raising a child almost entirely to chance, to whomever happens to be available, and a deeply depressed parent may not be available to participate in raising their own child. Nothing is automatic as ENBB points out.

exactly

Raising myself is a project. I'd hate to think that would still be the case on the offchance that I had children (which looks like a ship that has sailed at this point).

My whole kids not being a "project" was that they're so much more and the responsibility of having them is pretty much the most serious and heavy thing. Just to clarify. These fucked up people thinking that having a child will fix things in any way whatsoever seem to be missing the weight of that decision somehow.

yeah, by "project" I mean "this will be a time and emotional investment, every day, probably for the rest of your life" style of thing. something that you are investing yourself in.

not quite like knitting a hat

No I realize that - I just wanted to clarify even tho it probably wasn't necessary.

:)

As a product of my mother's attempt to keep hold of a failing relationship, I feel pretty qualified in saying that it doesn't work and either one or both parents end up resenting the kid.

j I get your line but another way to see it, in jamesian terms, is that the possible good of the kid's life can't be realized unless you give her that chance.

it's true that we would be makint this decision, rather than the kid, but that's also the case on your line! I don't see how to adjudicate this without a leap of faith, either way

well, not having the kid seems importantly different from having it (in either the case of its life being good or the case of its being bad).

there's no kid without a kid being born - there's no person who wouldn't have suffered being dragged into suffering - there's just a human life, whatever the hell that is. and a human life is made up of a billion facets, some of which might be considered wonderful and some of which might be considered horrible, but to judge the creation of human life wholly on the possibilities of experiencing the horrible feels like a very one-sided way of judging?

and other people's judgements are gonna vary wildly on whether life is worth having, of course, especially on this thread, and so they should. but anybody who co-creates another human being cannot be making a clear-sighted decision to add to the sum of misery or happiness in the world because the outcomes are more or less unknowable

depressives are p. good at that xp

god yeah absolutely. i just think that broadly speaking the having of children is not a decision grounded in consequentialism

there are always too many children as it is

to be clear, i am not saying it is bad to have a kid because the kid might (i.e. there is some probability of it) have a bad life.

i am saying that every person who turns out to have had a bad life ~in that way~, especially, that nobody-else-can-do-anything-for-you-it's-ultimately-up-to-you-or-nobody way, which of course is not one in principle which can have been foreseen or anticipated (it's just a possibility that comes with having a life of your own), has their life because their parents brought them into existence. i am also saying that what the parents CAN foresee, do something about, is the having or the not having of the kid. if they have the kid, they also make that kind of unhappy life a possibility for the kid. the salient point about their doing so is not the likelihood of its happening, it's that, should it happen, the burden will ultimately fall on the kid who has to live that unhappy life, rather than on the parent who chose to give it to them with no way of securing that it be happy. and whether it does is not something the parent can know in advance. it's like pascal's flip of the coin. but in view of the parents' prospective responsibility, and their presumed concern for the happiness of the life of their prospective kid, the matter of fact at stake with the flip of the coin is not, does god exist or not, but, will my kid have a non-miserable or a miserable life despite my best efforts. i am suggesting that the prospect of the latter possibility should dominate a prospective parent's considerations about whether or not to have a kid, just because to have been the cause of another's unhappy life (just where you would have wished the opposite for them) would be so profoundly bad that the prospect of a happier life for the other, however much more likely it is than the bare possibility of the other's being stuck with a miserable life, could not weigh more heavily.

i don't think that's a consequentialist argument, except in the broadest sense that it does involve considering the value of possible results of one's action. i would not be surprised if a more deontological-sounding version could be given.

btw are we ok to continue to debate this here? cos i don't want to bull-headedly keep arguing on this thread if it's upsetting people who use it to address aspects of their own depression, but i think it's an interesting subject and wd happily move it to another thread if that seems more apt

all i see is a wall of text with CAN in the top-middle so do whatever you please afaic

hey some of us are using this discussion to address aspects of their own depression

i'm sorry, i just feel like i'm arguing something that might be indefensible or arguing from a position of bias or privilege and i really don't want to bum people out on the depression thread so

i mean i personally prefer not-arguing to arguing but i'm not in the business of telling people to shut up
imo if you are a man and you are arguing about reproduction (at all), it's safe to figure you may be arguing from a position of privilege

i take your point and sorry.

i suppose i have thought of this line of argument before, but a lot of it really occurred to me all at once this past year when i was extremely depressed (haha like totally not like now), literally could get no help from my parents while in miserable financial/work circumstances, and---suddenly getting into a facebook argument with a very pious and self-righteous friendly acquaintance from college who as a liberal lutheran-anglican was trying to be permissive-but-profound about abortion being acceptable but some cases of abortion being evil (he was referring to selective abortion of fetuses known to have genetic disorders, and expected to have profound disabilities, presumably where parents decided on the basis of, say, 'welp that's too much of a hassle'). (i was trying to take issue with the polarization of some abortions as 'just evil', since this guy was such a constant advocate for finding the middle ground in morality, politics, etc., and not being divisive.) it was a touchy argument because the friendquaintance has family with a child with a similar problem, and he read all kinds of unintended implications off my side in it, which i was not sensitive enough to take precautions about.

but while i was having that argument, and having people say 'of course every life is valuable', and having to deny that i was saying anything like 'some people's lives are not valuable', i was really profoundly angered by what seemed like this unbridgeable disparity between being a parent of a child, and being the child. you can care as much as you want, show as much belief as you can in the value of the life of your child regardless of its quality, but it's still their life that they're living, and if you think that it is not desirable to live some lives (they're not lives anyone would choose, if they had a choice), i think you have to admit that you as a parent may come to be responsible for—cause to exist—a life that it is not desirable to live (from the inside, as it were). and that this possibility gave a reason not just for abortion, but for not having kids at all.

to me, (others') refusing even to hear that seemed like it was also just an outright denial of the loneliness of depression, which i think you could think of as just a particularly unhappy side of our each being separate people with individual lives.

I was thinking about this thread last night and remembered something my dad said which made me laugh considering the context of the discussion that happened here last week. Surprisingly and to their credit, my parents have always been very good about not asking me about kids because I think they know that things have been complicated for me. Occasionally though they will say something. The last time I visited my dad and I were talking and he point blank said, "Don't you want kids?". I answered that I did but that it wasn't the right time and that I thought that if for some reason it never happened for me I'd be pretty happy traveling and doing a lot of things I might have to sacrifice if I do have kids to which he responded, "Don't you think that's a little selfish?". The weird thing is that I don't even think he meant it in terms of selfish that i'd be depriving him of grandchildren (i don't think he particularly likes kids) but more so in terms of depriving the world of my offspring? Idk. It was weird.

When you have one or more kids your life is dragged helter-skelter toward being other-oriented to a degree that is extremely difficult to replicate through alternate means. You become their servant, teacher, nurse and protector rolled into one. Older parents have been doing this for so long that they often come to view it as the one ordained path of responsible adulthood and anything less than this total devotion to your kids is selfish. They are wrong, but it is hard to penetrate all that habitual self-abnegation to convince them they are wrong.

Very interesting and quite possible otm in terms of where he was coming from.

*possibly*

in view of what people without kids seem to be free to do—travel, enjoy themselves, pursue fulfilling projects, etc.—and in view of that amount of (like aimless says) habitual self-abnegation, which is after all a major contribution to the maintenance/propagation of the social good, people who opt out of having children probably strike other parents as kind of like cheats - not pulling throwing in their fair share in the system that the others thought everyone was required to sign up for. it's only natural that this would lead them to sanctify the sacrifice of the parent, the special knowledge about life from which the childless are excluded, the special privileges that accrue to the deserving self-sacrificers.

Yeah, I mean, my parents traveled all over the place and did a ton of awesome stuff after having me but they only had one child and a job where they only worked 7 out of 12 months so they had a lot of free time. I don't really think that having a kid did changed their life all that much in terms of those things ("travel, enjoy themselves, pursue fulfilling projects") and yet I still think he thinks that.

It's interesting that the tread has swung round to this topic. It's been on my mind quite a bit recently, and my feeling is that I can't imagine ever having children, basically because maintaining my own mental well-being is such a tricky ongoing task that I don't see myself being able to cope with providing for the entire well-being of another person as a priority above that. To some extent I worry that learning to 'cope with' my depression has come hand in hand with having to live quite a self-centred and limited kind of life.

i was struck by an anecdote, in andrew solomon's book maybe, about a woman who had been depressed for years, couldn't find any equilibrium, couldn't decisively improve things, and when she determined how much of it was connected to her romantic relationships, job aspirations, etc., she just started removing those things from her life, and found that the resulting life was much more manageable, even if more limited.

after having a kid, i had to remove myself from the rat race because of a combination of factors while my wife has worked the day jobs and traveled occasionally for business. and while i sometimes feel a bit of existential malaise at watching other people i know move up in their careers, it's mostly been invigorating to not feel that particular bit of pressure subconsciously. which i don't actually think is specific to having kids but more specific to the choice (at this moment) of not "living in competition", like brad delp said.

Don't you think that's a little selfish?

you owe it to yourself to live your best life and to others to treat them well

you don't owe humanity any offspring (or your parents any grandchildren). it's an extremely recent and rare development that you as a woman even have a choice about it; calling your decisions about your life selfish is pretty fucked up tbh

people who opt out of having children probably strike other parents as kind of like cheats - not pulling throwing in their fair share in the system that the others thought everyone was required to sign up for.

I've thought about this mindset for decades. Some former classmates and co-workers have been very put off by others' choosing to be child-free* to the point some seemed personally offended. One general position that baffled and frustrated me: But YOUR parents did so much for YOU! (But your parents change your shitty diapers, But everybody's parents put up with a lot to raise their families -- You don't have kids because they're FUN!) That kind of thinking fits with the "cheats" idea, like raising your own kids compensates one's parents for their sacrifices.

*trying to get "childless" out of my lexicon while also not feeling bad about "child-free"

One mid-40s woman I used to work with sometimes got pity or disdain or just inappropriate questions about her not having kids. Her response to those nosy people was perfect: "Oh...I can't have kids...." (this face and a healthy pause) "...because I hate them."

My experience with kids (they're now both teenagers) has been that, despite some of the misgivings I had about the idea of having them to begin with, once they came into the world their very existence -their personhood- rendered all considerations moot. Once they were born, they themselves, each in their own unique way, became an essential part of the universe. I don't know if I'd be happier or more accomplished without them, but now that they're here, I can't imagine them not existing.

That's not an argument for having kids. It's just a tribute to how very special a person is.

And that's a very personal, contingent experience I realize. I don't know what I would think if it turned out one of them became a serial killer or genocidal tyrant...

One general position that baffled and frustrated me: But YOUR parents did so much for YOU! (But your parents change your shitty diapers, But everybody's parents put up with a lot to raise their families -- You don't have kids because they're FUN!) That kind of thinking fits with the "cheats" idea, like raising your own kids compensates one's parents for their sacrifices.

It's as if choosing not to have kids implies that one is condemning one's own parents' performance of the parental role. My parents were my model for parenthood, so if I don't want to be a parent, I must be rejecting the model of parenthood that they represented for me. It's only by stepping into their shoes that I'm able to validate the job they did and thus compensate them in this ongoing intergenerational transaction.

Along similar lines, I wonder if people read a kind of suicide wish into the decision not to have kids: by rejecting parenthood you must wish you hadn't been parented yourself.

I prefer being alive to not existing, but I can't say I'm totally positive I'm glad to have been born in the first place. Parenting aside.

Being alive is really hard and weird and I would feel guilty imposing it on a being without their prior consent.

this isn't like a categorical imperative, it's just how I feel, I think it's totally fine to not feel that way

Along similar lines, I wonder if people read a kind of suicide wish into the decision not to have kids: by rejecting parenthood you must wish you hadn't been parented yourself.

with respect for you and your right to say whatever you want, this is a pretty messed up thing to post to a thread about depression, imo
people who have made this choice hardly need a compendium of the deeply inaccurate things people are thinking about them

Point taken. Sorry for that.

once you have one, ppl will just get on you to have more because only children are so creepy

there's just no pleasing some folks

I guess there's a difference between speculating on what people are thinking and pondering motivations behind inappropriate, judgmental questioning of people who choose not to have kids? I'm interested in what is behind the judgment, but its unexaminedness means you can't just ask the judgers. Certainly a big factor is sexism and seeing women as incubators, but some of those "but what about your parents" statements were toward me or other men.

It's as if choosing not to have kids implies that one is condemning one's own parents' performance of the parental role.

This is a pretty OTM

not one's parents, at worst, the human-species-in-one's-parents (if you wanna get all schopenhauerish/ev-psychy)

respectfully disagree
i was starting to think that i didn't feel esp freakish about not reproducing but now that i know people think i am a suicidal parent-rejecter all i can think is what the hell

Sorry again. It was a half-baked and unsupported thought, also needlessly dark.