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Procreation is no more or less than a matter of personal preference. “I prefer conversations with adults about adult things, like books, immigration, religion and race” writes Sabine Heinlein in The Answer is Never: Rewriting the False Narrative of Childlessness. “I can talk about writing for hours on end. And I love to cook elaborate, super spicy dinners! None of these things indicate that I am more or less incomplete than anyone else.”

The anxiety that children might inconvenience one’s culinary habits or social life (in short, one’s “lifestyle”) courses like a subterranean river beneath the reasoned articulations of the child-free life. Indeed, the very phrase “child-free” appears to situate the decision to procreate among a host of other lifestyle choices, such as the decision to consume “gluten-free” bread, “hormone-free” beef, or “caffeine free” Coke. And as a lifestyle choice, the decision not to reproduce (along with the reasons that lie behind that decision) is beyond criticism: polite society will tolerate anything except intolerance toward another’s “lifestyle.” Not having children for fear of passing on a genetic defect thus requires precisely the same defence as not having children for fear of having to stop cooking spicy dinners — which is no defense at all.

And that is exactly as it should be. No woman (or man, for that matter) ought to feel pressured to reproduce, least of all those who are concerned that children might impede their existing lifestyles. To be sure, parenthood (particularly in its hyper-competitive, bourgeois, mommy-blogging incarnations) is also subject to the crass logic of “lifestyle” marketing. But parenthood, if that concept is to mean anything today, is special precisely insofar as it is a permanent choice (which, sadly, is never more true than for children of absentee parents); its permanence stands in stark contrast to the capricious series of consumerist poses that are adopted and discarded under the empty rubric of “lifestyle.”

Parenthood matters because it is the only truly permanent commitment left. Small consolation for anyone forced to endure a post-natal music class, but it’s a start.

National Post

Ira Wells is an assistant professor in the department of English and Drama at the University of Toronto.