the feminist librarian reads

I’ve been reading all these FEELS about parenting and marriage lately …

… and what sort of family situations are best for kids. Like EPIC hand-wringing on all sides: are single moms okay? only if they’re rich? what if they’re poor? if you’re married does that mean you’re less likely to be poor? if so, are you somehow obligated to get married? are kids from homes with married hetero parents better off than anyone else? what about lesbian and gay parents – is it better if they’re married, or should they just not have kids at all BECAUSE OF REASONS.

(Yes, I do read wingnut blogs on occasion. I find the right – religious and otherwise – an interesting subculture to think about.)

And here’s what I keep thinking.

YES, children’s experience is important. I grew up in a family where as kids we were valued and central members of the family – our voices COUNTED. And I think that “family values” talk aside, kids are marginalized and ignored and treated like shit a lot of the time. As not-yet-humans in our culture. I write and think about ageism a lot.

But I’m struck as I watch this “what’s best for the kids?” debate about family forms unfold by who actually vanishes from the discussion, whose experience and subjectivity is erased: the grown-ups in the family. 

It’s kind of similar to the way women in anti-abortion diatribes are reduced to womb-casings, as if their lives aren’t somehow covered at least as much as the lives of fetuses in the whole “pro-life” landscape.

The experiences of children MATTER. Yet so do the lives and experiences of parents – AS PEOPLE. If a parent is unhappy with their partner, not to mention being abused, if they’re trying to make ends meet or pursue the career of their dreams, if they’re in love with a person of the same sex, or in love with three people all of whom they’d like to incorporate into a poly family life – THOSE NEEDS ARE AS VALID AS THE NEEDS OF THE CHILD OR CHILDREN. 

As grown-ups, we can make some decisions to defer gratification and/or self-care in ways children can’t. But if we defer self-care or ignore our basic desires too long we’re gonna be SHIT care-givers. Because we’ll be broken, unhappy people. And broken, unhappy people whose needs aren’t being met make piss-poor caregivers.

So I guess what I’m saying here is I don’t understand why the conversation about family formation and marriage is so focused right now on the needs of children, when children are only one part of the inter-generational family question.

(Let alone the fact that “children” are not all clones of one another, and each child’s needs and wants are going to be slightly different from the next – just like adults’!)