Parenting *Is* the End of the World
A response to "Parenting at the End of the World"
Questions surrounding marriage, children, and public support for families have become increasingly unavoidable during the last few years. It’s why, last month, Wisdom of Crowds co-hosted an event titled, “Parenting at the End of the World.” And it’s why we’ve invited
, who attended that event, to write a reaction to it here. Hers will be the first of what we hope will be several contributions to this ongoing and important discussion.— Santiago Ramos, Executive Editor
I was almost disappointed when the scene at “Parenting at the End of the World” felt nothing like the apocalypse. Such a title promises something about the gloom of modern parenthood, something that piqued my curiosity as the mother of an eight-year-old. The event, taped as a Wisdom of Crowds podcast episode, stemmed from Rachel Cohen’s well-reported Vox article on millennial dread about child-rearing.
The panel of non-parents, which included Cohen, discussed starting a family in a world of grim circumstances: climate change, genocide, structural racism, poverty, etc. They also described a culture leaning away from family-making, as the media portrays parenting as too hard, too tiring, too expensive, and too mentally draining. On the brighter side, they shared data that show children create happiness and counteract loneliness. These are convincing perspectives — and not entirely wrong — but without an actual parent on the panel, the conversation was just an exercise in speculation.
Until I became one, I didn’t realize that data, trend-watching, and popular media can’t prepare you for parenthood. What to Expect When You’re Expecting is still a bestseller but entirely useless outside the practicalities of pregnancy. Despite the ubiquitous self-help culture, there isn’t a podcast, subreddit, or printed tome outlining every single reality of parenting. If you speak with parents, they’ll share their difficulties, but they’ll also raise existential questions that really require deeper intimacy with the experience of parenting.
When asked, “How has your life changed since becoming a parent?”, I answer that it’s both the best and the worst thing that ever happened to me. My son is a joy, with a brilliant quirkiness and a love of reading. But before he was born, my life was one way. Pretty good. Even keeled. After my son was born, not only did popular narratives come true — sleep deprivation is scarier than I realized — but also, my self-understanding was shaken. To repurpose the title of the panel, it was the “End of the World.” My world.
The moment your baby leaves the womb, your world becomes their world. This isn’t a new idea, even in times of crisis like the one we live in today. Jennifer Banks writes extensively about this Natality: Toward a Philosophy of Birth, looking to existential perspectives across the last century. She cites Hannah Arendt, who examined the concept of child-bearing across her career, including as a Jew escaping Nazi Germany. “Birth turns us into newcomers, [Arendt would] later argue; we don’t know the world we are born into, and the world doesn’t know us.” Amidst natality’s complexity, Arendt chose not to have children of her own.
Had I known that parenthood would be so new that I’d need to relearn my place in the world, would I have become a parent? Perhaps not. In The Argonauts, philosopher and poet Maggie Nelson examines the foreboding feeling of prospective mothering, extensively citing psychologist and doctor D. W. Winnicott. He wrote: “Sometimes mothers find it alarming to think that what they are doing is so important and in that case it is better not to tell them. It makes them self-conscious and then they do everything less well … .” Self-consciousness begets introspection. Unlocking the answers to potentially alarming — although foundational — questions requires being forthright with yourself.
I admit that I didn’t dig this deep before becoming a parent because I didn’t know I needed to — but also because I didn’t want to. I’m certain most prospective mothers and fathers ask: How will a child change my life? In the bliss of gender reveal parties and baby showers, it’s unlikely they take the query a step or two further. The next step would be to ask: Will a child change my life’s meaning? Personally, I waited and ended up contemplating this question during those vast, sleepless hours between feedings and diapering and generally keeping my baby alive. Had my life’s purpose just changed completely?
Take, for example, work. Before having my son, I loved the intellectual challenges, long hours, and fast pace of my job. It brought my life meaning. Since his birth, I’ve spent eight years trying to maintain a thriving career, despite all the known obstacles: Childcare is overwrought and overpriced, and the burden mostly falls on the mother. Yet, the harder question is what comes first: Do I want my work or my child to bring me meaning in life?
The norms of American parenting establish expectations that almost preclude this question. The presumption is that, outside the 40 hours of work, a mother and father will give their time to their child. There are practicalities to attend to, like meals and transportation, teacher meetings and homework, sports and playdates. But perhaps most time-consuming and important is that children need their parents’ presence and emotional support to navigate the world’s chaos. With all this, there’s barely time for sleep, let alone more than 40 hours of work or other activities. If our systems — childcare, schooling, and work to name a few — shifted to fit the current culture of parenting, perhaps meaning could take precedence over practicalities, and we wouldn’t allow the day-to-day to crowd out these deeper questions.
These structures and norms extend to hobbies and how you spend your spare time. What are you into: Dinners with friends, live music, hiking? Porting a little body around adds a wrench in one’s plans, in a society where children aren’t welcome in many adult spaces. In The Argonauts, Nelson describes being stopped by a bouncer at an event with a 5-month old asleep on her chest: “He said the problem wasn’t my baby per se — it was that other people would see the baby, and thereby be reminded of the babies they might have left at home, and it wouldn’t feel to them like an adult night out.” The spaces where children are not welcome (or considered inappropriate) might also be those places where a parent once had found meaning.
These are just two of a myriad deeper ways of looking at parenthood that can’t come from a panel, especially one without parents sharing their experiences.
I understand the worry. We live in precarious times. But we are not the first to experience times like these and ask whether we should really be having kids at all. In 1925, Virginia Woolf wrote in Mrs. Dalloway: “One cannot bring children into a world like this. One cannot perpetuate suffering, or increase the breed of these lustful animals, who have no lasting emotions, but only whims and vanities, eddying them now this way, now that.” Woolf’s satire anticipates the modern media’s hyperbolic takes on parenting.
Prospective mothers and fathers need to puncture this bubble of discourse, the ever-present headlines about a foreboding future. Data and media lead to ambiguous conclusions. Instead, hearing directly from parents and asking yourself truly hard questions is the closest way to know how things will turn out, what life will look like on the other side of “the end of the world.”
 | A guest post by
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I can't count the number of arguments my wife and I had as I tried to work out my "ideal day" like a typical productivity bro when we were months away from becoming parents.
Now that my kids are here though, it's amazing how everything changes...and how I've learned to let it.
Sometimes it's ok for the world to end. As Paul Virilio say, somewhere, religion for him meant believing "we lose, we die, then we do something else." Same is true for becoming a parent, I think.
I love this article so much, thanks Kristina!!!! Such a valuable perspective. Yes, parenting is the end of our world, but it leads to a better one. The world is better because my kids are in it. We are scared to imagine how parenting will change us, because we can’t imagine it. We just find that we do change, after taking care of them day by day.
I’m a millennial but one thing I have kept from my own upbringing- send the kids outside! I am not my child’s playmate, I am their mother. I want them to know how to occupy themselves and as well as be self-reliant, able to self-soothe. The kids will not be able to do that if we feel like they have to be entertained 24/7 and it’s their parents’ responsibility to entertain. Let the kids play! My kiddos are 11 and 7.