1
About ten months ago, I was on a call with my brother. We talked for maybe 15 minutes, and towards the end of it, I asked –
“So how’s your wife doing?” I didn’t say ‘your wife,’ obviously, I said her name.
“She’s doing very well,” he replied. “She’s due in about a month.”
“Due for what?” I asked.
Turns out, my sister-in-law was, at the time, 8 months pregnant, and my brother – someone I speak to at least once every 2 weeks – didn’t think it was important enough to mention.
Immediately after the call, I called my sister, who’d just gotten married three months before.
“Do not do what our brother did,” I said to her. “Tell me as soon as you know!”
And sure enough, two months later, she called to tell me that she’s pregnant.
I’m writing this from the boarding gate at Cairo International Airport, on my way back home. Yesterday was my sister’s due date, so she could go into labor any minute now.
2
“I see you’re one of those men who just wants to have a kid for ego reasons,” my friend Jo texted.
Earlier, I’d texted her how I met someone I’m crazy about, but I’m unsure about pursuing it because this person is unsure about whether or not she wants to have kids in the future.
I’d told this person – this person that I’m crazy about – that I want to have kids because I like my family, and I want to bring someone into that family. I want to grow us.
This is also what I told Jo.
“Let me send you a video,” she said.
On Instagram, she sent me a video of a man talking about how he had a horrible childhood, and how he wanted to have kids because he wanted to right the wrongs of his parents. But then he later realized that he wanted kids for ego reasons, and now he’s just focused on meeting a woman he can love.
“But that’s literally the opposite of what I’m saying,” I texted Jo.
“Wanting kids because you had a bad childhood or because you had a good one is all ego,” she replied, “because it’s about you and not the woman you’re with.”
3
The psychologist Allison Gopnik wrote about two different parenting philosophies in her book The Gardener and the Carpenter.
A carpenter shapes something to be what they want it to be, while a gardener creates a nurturing environment where the thing can develop in the best way it can.
A carpenter cuts, nails, and spray paints the furniture, whereas a gardener fertilizes the soil, removes weeds, and makes sure the plant gets enough sunlight and water.
One exerts influence on the object, the other on the environment.
The environment a child grows up in isn’t just their house or their parents. It also includes every person and relationship they come in contact with.
Humans have the longest childhood of any animal, and because of that, children aren’t meant to be raised by just the two people. There used to be space for grandparents and older people to be around and help raise the children, but the more we travel farther out for opportunities to be economically better off, the more that economic betterment takes us out of our community, and thus leaves us with fewer hands to help out.
4
“So what’s a non-ego reason to have kids?” I asked Jo.
“I think kids should be the expression of the love between two people,” she replied.
“And that’s not ego?”
“No, because it’s not about you. It’s about the love that you have for your partner. And I’d want to be with someone who cares more about lifelong partnership than reproducing his genes,” she said. “Plus, having kids is just terrible for romantic love. All the research points to that.”
“And that’s not ego?”
“No. Romantic love, by definition, transcends ego because it puts someone else above yourself. And unlike love for kids, it’s consensually chosen by both sides, which makes it superior. It’s a mutual pact to abandon your ego and love the other more than yourself.”
5
All research points to the fact that having kids is detrimental to the happiness of parents across the board. Yes, both mothers and fathers. And this holds across countries. Or at least across the Western/Industrialized countries where studies like these take place.
But is happiness the right metric to decide whether or not to have kids?
I would concede that happiness should be the main determining factor for some things – choosing a holiday destination, for example, if money weren’t an issue – but should it also determine what you eat? Who you befriend? Where you live?
Should the purpose of your life be the pursuit of happiness?
6
A definition of culture that I like is “people like us, do things like these.”
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that more than 90% of the people I went to secondary school with (and who stayed back in Nigeria or came back shortly after university) all have kids now.
Is it all cultural pressure? How does one know what is culture, and what is what one truly wants, especially when the things that one wants are also shaped by culture?
Because while the desire to have kids is culture, the desire to not have kids is also culture. People like us, doing things like these, often want other people to do the same things like us so there will be more us. Because we feel safer in our identity when “us” is bigger.
Culture is not just the word we ascribe to the things that our parents or grandparents did. It is a living thing that is here with us in the present, shaping our lives.
7
A month or so before my niece was born, my sister-in-law’s sister came to stay with my brother and his wife. After my niece was born, my sister-in-law’s mother came to stay with them for a month, and then her aunt came after shortly after to swap.
My brother and his wife live on the same property as my parents. As long as my parents are alive and well, they’ll always have people around to babysit.
I even have friends who live outside of Nigeria who have had family travel over in those first few months after their baby was born to help out. It’s always mothers and sisters and aunts – granted – but it’s also never just the two parents doing it themselves.
The willingness of the people helping out with raising the child has almost nothing to do with the strength of the romantic love between the parents, and almost everything to do with the strength of the relationships the parents have with those people; the people in their lives helping out with raising the child.
8
A very common thing in a lot of African families – certainly my family – is the redistribution of small children after the death of the main breadwinner of the family — usually the father.
The relatives of the father (usually) will take guardianship over the children. Sometimes the children will still stay with the mother, and the relatives will support her financially and materially. But often – especially if the mother chooses to remarry – a relative might take in the children fully, and raise them in their households.
For years, I thought my mother’s elder sister was a full sister; it was only a couple of years ago that I found out they had different mothers. And there are uncles and aunts that I recently discovered were extended family. But it doesn’t really matter because they mostly all grew up in the same house. They are as uncle and aunt as any direct blood-related uncle and aunt.
Growing up, I’ve had cousins live with us for many years – in fact, there are several cousins under the guardianship of my parents in this exact moment.
And if anything were to happen to my brother – obviously, I hope nothing does for a very long time; but if something were to happen – there’s zero chance that I won’t become the main guardian of his children.
9
Compatibility, simply put, means –
“Capable of existing or performing in harmonious or agreeable combination with another or others.”
In other words, it exists outside of morality.
If, say, I’m looking for a ride to a seal-clubbing expedition, and you’re a seal-club aficionado with a car who doesn’t want to make the long drive by yourself, then we’re compatible.
But that compatibility says nothing about the goodness or badness of seal-clubbing, or even whether or not you and I feel the same way about it.
And yet, rejection based on a lack of compatibility feels like a moral judgment where we fall on the side of bad moral actors.
That makes some sense because while not every rejection is moral, every rejection is a judgment. And the right side of that judgment is the side where we both end up together.
Rejection, by definition, puts us on opposite sides, and the side the person being rejected is not on feels like the good side, and thus being on the “bad side” feels like a commentary on their moral character.
10
My brother-in-law calls my brother to tell him that our sister has gone into labor. My brother calls our mother, who then calls my brother-in-law’s mother to tell her not to tell my mother’s sisters who live in the same town as my sister.
“It would just stress them out,” my mom said on the phone. “Just tell them after she successfully delivers.”
“I’m in the hospital right now,” my brother-in-law’s mother said to my mother. “And your sisters are already here with me. They told me not to tell you until she’s delivered because you live so far away and it would just stress you out.”
My sister went into labor around 8 AM, and delivered her beautiful baby boy around 5 PM.
And the whole time, not only were her mother-in-law and two aunts there, but so were about 5 cousins and an uncle. A distant relative who was visiting someone else in the hospital heard about it and also came over to the ward.
At some point, the uncle who was there called my mom,
“I’m sitting right now in the same spot our dad sat in when he was waiting for his first grandchild to be born,” he told her.
They were not needed there because there was nothing they could do. And for most of it, they couldn’t even see my sister.
So why were they there? For their own individual desires and ego? For my sister, so she doesn’t feel all alone? Or perhaps for my mother, so she feels like someone is there for her daughter when she can’t be? Did being there bring them personal happiness? And was that even part of their decision process?
I don’t know.
But people like us do things like these, and we’ve always done things like these.