For the Umpteenth Time, Folks: Children Are People

Commentator Matt Walsh discusses a highly restricted set of topics (transgenderism is sick, abortion is murder, men need to man up, feminists hate men, ADHD is overdiagnosed, the Left is hypocritical), sometimes combines arrogance and naivete in an unlovely mixture, and takes too many words to get to the point. Nevertheless, I enjoyed a recent article in which Walsh explains why Duncan Jones shouldn’t use Twitter to express regrets over having children, or moan about how awful it is to have to take care of children.

Let’s take a look at the tweets Walsh was critiquing.

I have 2 kids. 2 1/2 years & 9 months old respectively. I’ll tell you something I never see anyone admit… they are exhausting, frustrating & life-destabilizing. They are rarely fun. Sure, smiles are great, hugs are lovely, but it’s HARD & not obviously a good choice in life.

This is where people feel compelled to say “i wouldn’t change it for the world!” But you know… Of course I’d reconsider! It’s exhausting! Its banal! It’s like looking after a dog you can’t housetrain. What it is, is that it is. & they are mine. Hopefully they turn out ok.

In what circles does Jones travel, that he’s never seen anyone admit that kids can be frustrating and exhausting? I write this post having come back from the doctor’s office with an antibiotic for my youngest kid’s ear infection, as well as a nebulizer for his RSV. The nebulizer involves keeping a mask on the child’s mouth and nose for about 10 minutes, a few times a day. About the time that my husband and I were hoping to enjoy his birthday dinner in a nice restaurant, we shall instead be trying to restrain a screaming 2-year-old in an effort to clear his bronchioli. So yes, I, like Duncan Jones, like Matt Walsh, like just about every parent ever, am fully aware that taking care of kids requires enormous amounts of time, energy, and money.

This isn’t some grand new truth, but a cliche. But the more bothersome part of the tweets is that Jones seems to doubt that his becoming a parent was a good choice, because his kids just aren’t providing fun and amusement commensurate with the difficulty of raising them. And the heart of Walsh’s critique is that if we cannot find joy in our children, it is the fault not of the children nor of parenting, but our own selfishness.

“In my experience, kids are the most difficult when you try to relegate them to the background so you can do something else with your time. Of course, sometimes it is necessary to do other things, like sleep, or work, or have an adult conversation, or spend some time with your spouse, or watch a movie that isn’t about talking animals or princesses. That’s when they can feel especially frustrating and burdensome. But if you find that your children are always frustrating, always a burden, “rarely fun,” and generally “life-destabilizing,” that’s probably because you are trying to keep them in the background and out of your way far too often. If you find no joy at all in parenting, it’s almost certainly because you have made no effort to actually focus on your kids and invest yourself in them. You are trying to live as if they don’t exist. Children will absolutely “de-stabilize” that sort of lifestyle, and rightfully so.

“I’m not saying that we should be completely focused on our children all the time. They do need to learn that the world doesn’t revolve around them. But it doesn’t revolve around us, either.”

Now, I do not think that parents need to be their kids’ playmates very often, unless maybe the kid is an only child and too young to go play with other friends. But it is important to spend time with them and make them feel a part of your life and household, even if they’re “helping” with a chore that would take far less time without their assistance. It’s important to teach them, by precept and example.

It’s important to help them realize that they, too, are human beings–not accessories that can be put away when not in use; not little godlings to be fawned on and worshiped; not toys or pets or machines or anything but people. To treat them merely as expensive nuisances is to deny that their own viewpoints are just as valid as yours, and to regret their existence is repugnant.