from The New York Times Magazine
"Hers" column, November 3, 1991

By Robin Marantz Henig

Our kids were away last summer, and it was heavenly. For the whole blissful month of August, my husband, Jeff, and I had only each other to worry about. We never fought – except about how to respond when we got our first "I hate camp" letter from our older daughter – and we never disagreed about what play to see or what restaurant to try. We slipped back, effortlessly, into our pre-children pattern of figuring out what we each wanted, and trying to provide it. It was a little like being back in graduate school, steeped only in each other and our work.

We didn’t do much that month. We still woke up at 6 A.M., still went to bed early, still worked frantically at our word processors all day (we’re both writing books) and spent most of our evenings at home. But we cooked more adventurously – and always together – and ate at odder hours; we lingered at the table talking about ourselves or the world at large and not about our girls; we swore as much as we wanted to, as we did before our children started mimicking our speech, and our sex life was great. For those four weeks, we were ourselves only, not anyone’s parents.

The experience, lovely as it was, was enough to shake my confidence in the family-centered life that we and people like us have chosen. How devious a force is Mother Nature to drive so many of us to the very behaviors that are good for the species – procreating and nurturing and sacrificing for a new generation – but run quite counter to the selfish best interests of the individual. This same force accounts for our lack of empathy for a community activist or a brilliant novelist if he leaves his wife and children, no matter how altruistic or creative the non-family parts of his life might be. We admire instead the Girl Scout leader and the soccer coach, who rush home from self-serving jobs to be involved in their kids’ activities; they have their priorities in order.

"Why does anyone have children at all?" I ventured to ask our friends in August, when we occasionally sought out the company of other people. One couple, whose two sons had been at camp in July, knew just what we meant, but our other friends were shocked by the implication that we thought having children was a mistake. "The time I spend with my kids is absolutely the most wonderful part of my life," gushed the father of a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old, a man not usually given to heartfelt explosions. "I can’t imagine not having had them."

But I didn’t mean that I was sorry we had children. I adore our daughters, and I love being their mother. I wouldn’t want my life any other way, any more than my friend would. But if Jeff and I are successful as parents, our goal will be to have the girls grow away from us more and more, until finally – and this is the ultimate success – they’re gone for good. All this adoration, all this emotional investment, all this intensity, for 18 years or so, and that’s it?

It’s heretical to ask, among other parents, what the point is of having children. "I guess you could say, from a biological point of view, that it’s the only point," says my rational husband, talking about the perpetuation of the species and all that. But I’m not wondering only about why everyone is having kids; what I’m wondering about is why we all insist on a morality that places children and families at its heart, as though nothing else matters. "No one, on his deathbed, ever said, `I should have spent more time at the office,’" goes the old admonition – one I have long accepted as a guidepost for making choices in my own life. But why is that?

Why is the family so universally revered? Why do we admire people who choose spending time with their children over spending time at work? What’s wrong with deciding that most details of family life are boring, and choosing instead to pursue scholarship or fame?

I find it risky to ask myself these questions. It threatens many of the decisions I have made in the last decade or so – primarily the decision to work at home and to turn down full-time job offers. When my first baby was born 11 years ago, I jumped, feet-first, into the my-family-is-my-top-priority mentality. I have a lot invested – personally and professionally – in embracing that mentality without ambivalence. Maybe that’s why it was so unsettling this summer to feel so happy while my children were away.

As soon as Jessie and Samantha came home from camp, life went back to normal. The kitchen calendar, all but empty in August, became filled with reminders for orthodontist appointments, piano lessons, fencing classes. The house got messier, instantly. And it started chirping with the sounds of the girls’ voices everywhere, singing silly songs, calling from upstairs, bickering and complaining and giggling. I loved the change, but I also pined for the tandem solitude Jeff and I had enjoyed for four languorous weeks.

When we were young and thinking about whether even to have children, Jeff and I dutifully drew up a list of pros and cons. The cons I remember well: kids are expensive, they’re demanding, they restrict your freedom. I can’t imagine what we wrote down on the pro side, because we couldn’t possibly have understood, when we were 25, what it means for a child to give shape to your life, what it means to enfold your own little girl, to breathe in her puppy-dog scent and believe she is totally and forever a part of you. But I do remember the one big pro, the one that made us ignore the fact that, to a rational observer, the con side won the debate hands down. If we didn’t have children, we felt, we would regret it when we were 50.

I still believe that. I believe that, if Jeff and I were living every month the way we lived in August, we would soon tire of the freedom, and maybe even of each other. I believe that, headaches though they may sometimes be, my children are wonderful, and deserve nothing short of my rapt attention – because it will only be a quick blink of time before they’re gone. And I believe that, as far as our own little family is concerned, we were lucky to be able to have that month apart, to remind us all of what brought the four of us together in the first place.

But these are all private thoughts, based on the truths about ourselves as a couple, as parents, as a family. They still fail to explain the groundswell of family-centeredness that erupts at every soccer game and every P.T.A. meeting I’ve ever attended. Maybe my friends and neighbors are so strident in their collective belief in "family is everything" precisely because they have, as I do, an emotional and intellectual investment in justifying their choices – and a nagging suspicion that there may be some other ways to live a life that could be just as meaningful.