Let's Not Sacrifice Children on the Altar of Personal Development

My third open letter to Jordan Peterson

An unappealing image by Harry Grout on Unsplash

This is part of a series of open letters to Jordan Peterson, inspired by my interest in some of his positions and my disagreement with others. Other letters in this series are here and here.

Dear Jordan Peterson:

When people ask “Why don’t you want kids?” I find it to be an odd question, like asking “Why don’t you want a tattoo of Betty Boop on your ankle?” or “Why don’t you become a plumber?” or “Why don’t you buy a case of horchata?”

To not want something is to lack desire for it.

I could say “Betty Boop doesn’t appeal to me,” but that would scarcely approach the concern. A passionate defense of the cartoon’s greatness wouldn’t change my mind, after all. The full answer would take too long to explicate, and would go something like this: “I don’t want a tattoo, I don’t want that tattoo, I don’t want anything on my ankle, and wait—why do I have to answer? There are literally an endless number of things I don’t want.”

Those who see the imperative to procreate as natural and inevitable find such analogies absurd. But to the disinclined, parenting is no more intriguing than a career in plumbing—and the stakes are higher.

Dr. Peterson, your call for women to bear children, whether we want them or not, is growing more frequent and more strident. Childrearing is “healthy” for us, you say, something only the “immature” would forsake. Choosing to have children will make us less “hedonistic,” more “responsible,” and give our life “meaning.”

I note that these are benefits to the parent, not to the child.

I could enumerate my personal reasons for remaining childfree. I could talk about my dearth of affection for children, my inexperience with young siblings or cousins, my specific health risks, the absence of good models of parenthood in my youth, or the intellectual pursuits I fear childrearing would stifle. I could speak of the demons I’ve spent much of my life fighting, unusual and raging drives that at times precluded even commitment to a partner, much less to a family.

But to do so would risk obscuring the point.

The point is that the personal development of adults—if that is indeed something conferred by parenthood, which is debatable—is less important than the safety and well being of their potential children.

When I was in my twenties—that ideal age for starting a family—my temper was so volatile and my patience so short I would have surely abused any child in my care. When I admitted as much, others scoffed and tried to change my mind—revealing that for many, love of tradition trumps any sense of child safeguarding.

When people care more about replicating cherished social structures than reducing harm to children, that’s a corrupt value system.

People do abuse and neglect their children, after all, and not just at society’s fringes. This study analyzes the effect of “cognitive variables“ on parents’ propensity to abuse, including “ability to inhibit aggression, problem-solving capabilities, parenting skills,” and “social isolation.” My own middle-class parents were slobbering drunk for much of my childhood. I witnessed drug abuse, sexual assault, and my dad beating the hell out of my mom. I was hauled to parties after midnight, shown pornography, and placed in vehicles with drunk drivers. I dodged flying dinner plates and a hallway skirmish over a shotgun.

If I’m right about my own temperament—whether inherited, the product of my childhood, or acquired at random—then experimenting with procreation in a selfish pursuit of “maturity” or “meaning” would likely perpetuate a cycle of abuse, placing my future children in peril of misery if not of life and limb.

Women less mercurial than my younger self aren’t always cut out for motherhood, either. This recent Reddit post from a reluctant mother was so harsh and heartbreaking that moderators removed it. Caring for her child has been neither a “joyous experience” nor a source of “deep fulfillment,” she writes, but a “prison” that has rendered her “irritable, tired, annoyed,” and “anxious,” draining her “ability to care about other things [including] herself.” Parenthood has strained her marriage and resurfaced a depression she’d wrangled into remission.

The Redditor reports that she’s executing her parental duties, but a mother’s depression (arriving postpartum for another 10% to 15% of women) too often spells neglect for children. Even in the less individualistic, more religious medieval period, some mothers left their children on the church’s foundling wheel. Where is the “maturity” and sense of “responsibility” parenthood should have conferred? At best it arrived in insufficient quantities to secure a good life for their offspring. Neglected children exhibit “higher rates of attachment difficulties, cognitive impairment, developmental delays, emotion dysregulation, poor school performance, delinquent behavior, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, suicidal behavior, self harm, and alcohol and drug abuse.”

Animals under stress have been known to eat their offspring. As animals of evolved intelligence, we’re learning to head off such crises pre-emptively: with the foundling wheel, with adoption, with birth control, and importantly, with self-regulation. Let’s not allow blind faith in maternal love or the status quo take us backward. Let’s not test our unproven theories about personal development on the lives of the innocent.

Dr. Peterson, it seems that female-typical traits, such as “sensitivity” and “conscientiousness,” inform your assertion that women are suited best to motherhood. Yet you speak often of the overlapping bell curves that demonstrate average versus outlier traits in populations.

from No One Is Born in ‘The Wrong Body,’ via Quillette

Women and men, as you often point out, are different on average, while a not-insignificant number of women (30%, in this study) exhibit male-typical traits (and vice versa). While your imperative to reproduce carves out an exemption for the rare “gifted” woman, it seems that a much greater number of us harbor the kinds of “masculine” temperaments that leave us ill-suited for motherhood, or at least better suited for something else.

That someone might end up doing what she’s unsuited for matters quite a lot to you when you’re evaluating the feminist project of “equal outcomes” in employment. “Why exactly is it a problem,” you ask, if most women “make different choices” from men when outside pressure is absent? I agree. But allow me to ask the corollary question: Why is it a problem when atypical women choose freely, too?

As my friend Nina writes, “Biological reproduction entails sacrifice, especially of the mother: an enormous devotion of energy and time, and giving up competing dreams and desires.” But if women’s humanity and fulfillment aren’t enough to warrant the pursuit of our myriad talents and curiosities and visions, consider instead the “net benefit to society” when people focus their energies on what they do best. Those include advancement for the Western society we both admire, as wells as a reduction in the poor mothering you’re quick to criticize.

(I’d argue that even a mediocre nurse or software developer makes a greater contribution to society than the production of more humans, but I digress.)

Now let’s briefly address two strawmen you’ve erected in the service of this campaign.

First, the false dichotomy of parenthood versus “hedonism” (which you further reduce to “drinking more vodka” in one pro-parenting clip). Putting aside the ubiquity of parenthood among unrepentant hedonists, most childfree people (like most other people) pursue meaningful lives. Among my childfree female friends is an army veteran who’s served in the gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and who now volunteers with the Red Cross and the Olympics. Then there’s the president of my neighborhood association. A finance retiree who fosters special-needs cats and donates thousands to animal welfare organizations. At least two teetotalers, which is a lousy way to do hedonism: one obsessed with reading and gardening, the other a filmmaker. Also, a teacher, a law student, a geologist.

The aforementioned Redditor, if she weren’t raising a child, would “focus more on building [her] friendships and community” and “give back to humanity in the ways that bring [her] joy.” In addition to holding down a full-time senior IT position, I write extensively on issues that matter and volunteer for five organizations.

The second strawman is the idea that declining to give birth somehow entails standing in judgement of those who do. “Every single one of your ancestors reproduced in an unending procession lasting three and a half billion years,” you say in this video, yet the childfree seem to assume “they're all wrong and [we’re] right.” ”Guess your mother was wrong,” you reiterate in this post.

Dr. Peterson, I began weighing whether I’d eventually push a person out of my body when I was about ten, after having dreamt I was pregnant. I’ve deeply considered the physical risks childbirth entails: tooth decay, varicose veins, perineal tearing, hemorrhoids, incontinence, and pelvic floor dysfunction, to say nothing of life-threating complications and maternal mortality. I’ve considered the responsibility of bringing an entirely new human being into the world, and what would become of his or her fate under my care and beyond. I’ve considered the inescapable duty of keeping the child alive, ceaseless responsibilities that endure for nearly two decades if not for life.

Here’s one thing I’ve never considered: whether other people’s decision on the matter was right or wrong. I’ll be honest; the glaring insignificance of such a factor in so momentous and personal a decision makes it difficult not to assume bad faith on your part.

This is a good time to mention your widely-observed drift from level-headed, thoughtful, intellectually honest author of long-form prose to sarcastic reactionary spamming X with “rage haikus.” I speak as someone who, despite holding a political orientation largely at odds with your own, has appreciated your perspective and agreed with you on a number of issues. I even read and enjoyed 12 Rules for Life, then purchased a copy for a troubled young man in my orbit. My disappointment in your trajectory deserves its own open letter. I’ll put that on my radar.

Let me be explicit. I don’t think two billion years’ worth of ancestors were wrong. I haven’t thought about whether they were wrong. I don’t care whether they were wrong.

It must be said: the implication that two billion years’ worth of ancestors were right is as indefensible as the (imagined) claim that they were wrong.

But since you brought it up, let’s consider whether my mother was “right.”

Right about what? That motherhood would save her from hedonism? It did not.

That having children would make her a better person? Perhaps it did, but not before she spent a decade putting my brother and me in harm’s way.

“Once you have kids it is not about you,” you say in this post. I agree. It is perverse, then, to sacrifice children on the altar of self-improvement for adults.

Let’s not. Let’s let those who know themselves regulate themselves.