For The Kids

Like everyone else, I don't really see an argument in what Maggie Gallagher purports to be an argument about same-sex marriage. It's just a collection of non-sequiturs. Nevertheless, her claim that we need to save "the once-privileged conjugal vision of marriage" as consisting of "the reality that humanity comes in two halves, male and female, who are called to join together in love, not only as a private satisfaction, but in order to make the future actually happen [i.e., have children]" strikes me as worth exploring. In Gallagher-land, this is the time-honored understanding of marriage that only recently has come under assault from SSM advocates and others who see marriage as about intimacy and self-fulfillment.

There are all kinds of historical problems with this account, that I assume you can find spelled out elsewhere. It also strikes me, however, that this "for the kids" mentality is actually pretty novel and in many ways on the rise. I probably haven't seen this better-expressed anywhere than in an article by another reactionary, Caitlin Flanagan's otherwise pretty objectionable "The Wifely Duty":

For many couples child-rearing has become not merely one aspect of marriage but its entire purpose and function. Spouses regard each other not as principally lovers and companions but as sharers of the great, unending burden of taking care of the children. And make no mistake about it: American middle-class families have made child-rearing a dauntingly complex enterprise. My children are still very small, but it has been made abundantly clear to me by friends and acquaintances that I had better get in the market for an SUV or a minivan, because I am soon enough going to be shuttling the children and their friends to a bewildering series of soccer games, soccer parties, soccer tournaments. Already I throw birthday parties with guest lists and budgets that approximate those of a wedding-rehearsal dinner. The curious thing about this labor-intensive variety of parenting is that it has arisen now, when parents—and specifically mothers—have less time to devote to their children than ever before. One can't help finding in these developments a frantic attempt at compensation for the hours some professional-class mothers spend away from their children. Mothering, which used to be a rather private affair (requiring, principally, a playpen, a back yard, a television set, and a coffeepot), has now adopted a very public dimension. Why, of course Sarah So-and-So is a good mother: little Andrew is at Gymboree, Music Rhapsody, Bright Child, and Fit for Kids every week! All of domestic life now turns on the entertainment and happiness not of the adults but of the children. At vacation time my husband and I don't drag our little boys through the Louvre, as I was dragged at a tender age (because my parents wanted to see it, and it would never have occurred to them to consult their children about where to go on holiday). Rather, we check into hotels with elaborate children's pools and nightly fireworks and huge duck ponds.

I've never been married or had children, obviously, but this rings true to me. To an almost shocking extent, nowadays American couples that want to be thought of as doing right by their children dedicate themselves to their kids' contentment almost exclusively. For a parent to participate in some amusement they don't really care for because the kids like it is totally normal. To demand that the kids put up with something the adults want to do is unthinkable. People inconvenience themselves by moving further and further toward the fringes of urban areas in order to be able to afford houses and yards that are, by world standards, simply enormous and huge swathes of these massive spaces are given over to the children. Sentiments like "children are to be seen and not heard" couldn't be be more dead. In essence, couples are expected to more-or-less give up on their lives for a couple of decades in order to raise their kids. To do anything less -- to inconvenience or annoy your children or deprive them of something they might want to do or to have for the sake of something you want -- would be abhorrent and neglectful.

To some extent, of course, it's good to see people dedicated to their children. On the other hand, it's not so surprising that as social expectations of what parents are expected to do for their kids of skyrocketed, that people are increasingly disinclined to actually have children while those who do have children to seem to be increasingly driven a bit batty by the experience. Would it be so bad if the typical middle class family decided to only put in 90 percent of the effort that you usually see today? That would still be an awful lot of effort, after all. And given that humanity has survived for thousands of years, it's obvious that kids do not, in fact, require the extraordinary level of pampering provided to typical American kids nowadays in order to survive.