Why Ask Why?

When the New York Times’ “Motherlode” blog asks a question like “Why Does Anyone Have Children?,” it’s very tempting to snark the fuck out of it, especially when the questioner, a reader named Baily, is so earnest:

I understand the evolutionary pull (and necessity) of procreation, I get that some-to-most women have ‘the urge,’ but the logical side of my brain can’t grasp why.

But instead of making broken-condom or Brangelina jokes, I have to check myself (before, of course, I wreck myself). Because frankly, I’m just as confused as Bailey is.

Now, I can’t speak to why women have children. That’s their business, and you won’t find us giving two shits about women’s issues here on this blog. (Except for your issues, Jean, don’t worry. I’m just talking about those other women. No, not “other women” like that. Look, can we discuss this later? Okay, fine. Hmph.)

But I also can’t really explain why I wanted children. Because for a very long time, I didn’t. I figured Jean and I would just be the cool, wealthy, cosmopolitan aunt and uncle to our friends’ kids, and live the kind of lives everyone would be jealous of. But around the time I turned 29, or maybe 31, I just all of a sudden one day wanted kids. Call it a biological clock, call it a preprogrammed instinct for survival of the genetic line, call it sheer whim, but it happened, and now, several years later, we have Sasha.

I mean, I think there might be other things at play here. Some desire to see a part of me survive after my own death (which won’t occur, I’m calculating, for a few hundred more years, if ever). A need to create something more lasting than a bunch of silly newspaper articles. An allergy to cats and other amusing pets. But I remember how it came to me with the force of prophecy, an unavoidable feeling not so much that I wanted to have a child but that I would have a child. And now I have one. And, you know, it’s pretty great and all.

But how the fuck I got here I have no idea.