{"id":12668,"date":"2021-11-08T11:49:32","date_gmt":"2021-11-08T11:49:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=12668"},"modified":"2021-11-08T11:49:32","modified_gmt":"2021-11-08T11:49:32","slug":"the-most-natural-thing-in-the-world-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2021\/11\/08\/the-most-natural-thing-in-the-world-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"The Most Natural Thing in the World II"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Are you satisfied now, ladies and gentlemen, you counsellors and therapists of all stripes, with my do-it-your-self-psychoanalysis?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Despite my disdain for the so-called misery memoir, it is time to declare: my childhood was better than being brought up in an industrial school, or by an alcoholic or physically abusive parent; but, certainly by today\u2019s ideals, only just.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">In the first of a series on his attitude to having children Des Traynor explores his upbringing and argues that being anti-natalist is not to be unnatural.<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/GnTht5jurt\">https:\/\/t.co\/GnTht5jurt<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/broadsheet_ie?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@broadsheet_ie<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BowesChay?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@BowesChay<\/a> @corourke91 <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/danieleidiniph1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@danieleidiniph1<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/IlsaCarter1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@IlsaCarter1<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/KevinHIpoet1967?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@KevinHIpoet1967<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/GarzonVico?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@GarzonVico<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; CassandraVoices (@VoicesCassandra) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/VoicesCassandra\/status\/1455203700394373122?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 1, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Often, I am surprised that I even survived my upbringing, if not exactly thrived. It is an achievement, in itself, to be alive. Maybe I\u2019m suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, after all, and have been for most of my life. Which, in turn, has led to a bad case of Imposter Syndrome. Or better still, Postnatal Depression, which cuts both ways, and is a synonym for Life.<\/p>\n<p>But, as Flannery O\u2019Connor wrote: \u2018Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.\u2019 In the long run, you learn that parents are just people who looked after you when you couldn\u2019t look after yourself, with whom you have very little in common \u2013 except what they put there.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>\u2018misery on to man\u2019<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So, there you have it: I don\u2019t have kids because I didn\u2019t feel wanted as a child. I am just another classic example of the classical Sophoclean tale of the complexity of Oedipus, and how it wrecks. How neat, but how utterly facile \u2013 the kind of typically trite conclusion to which a therapist will always jump.<\/p>\n<p>For the psychological scaring of one\u2019s own upbringing is hardly enough to explain a lack of interest \u2013 or rather, an unwillingness to participate in procreation. After all, people with much more unsavoury childhood experiences than I still manage to produce children of their own. That\u2019s part of the recurring cycle of man passing \u2018misery on to man\u2019, in Larkin\u2019s phrase, from the one poem of his which everyone can quote from memory.<\/p>\n<p>It is what he means by \u2018Still going on, all of it, still going on!\u2019 to quote from another, less anthologised of his works. No doubt the mind-doctors will predictably claim that I am merely in denial here about the effects of my formative childhood experiences on my psyche. But denial is such a difficult concept to prove in practice. Not that I reject outright the idea that there may be some residual influence \u2013 how could there not be? My parents may well have given me \u2018all the faults they had\u2019 and added some more, just for me. But does that inevitably make me, in the words of a fictional Larkin biographer from another of his more well-known poems, \u2018One of those old-type natural fouled-up guys\u2019, the sort who notoriously cautions \u2018Don\u2019t have any kids yourself\u2019? Hardly \u2013 anyone who knows me will attest to my lively sense of humour.<\/p>\n<p>Ah, but maybe I\u2019m just trying to cover something up with a jokey, rock\u2019n\u2019roll exterior? Ah, but aren\u2019t we all \u2013 with whatever masks work best for us? We all \u2018prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet\u2019, like poor old Prufrock.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, your relationship with your parents, and your perspective on your childhood, is a bit like your relationship with and perspective on the place where you were born and grew up, or even with your country: some people become expatriates; some people stay close to home; and some people are at peace with whichever arrangement, and some are not.<\/p>\n<p>One can treat that relationship with as much seriousness or triviality as one likes, although for many professional mental healthcare workers, it will always be serious. In any case, this excavational writing project I am engaged upon vouchsafes that I am not in denial: I have acknowledged the debt the past has burdened me with; what you are reading can be construed as my effort to (clears throat) \u2018move on\u2019.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_12671\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-12671\" style=\"width: 856px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12671 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SinatraFamily.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"856\" height=\"858\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-12671\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sinatra Family, 1949.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong><em>It&#8217;s Parents<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>(Joke: It\u2019s not the mother and father I blame: it\u2019s the parents.) Except, for me, it\u2019s more a case of<\/p>\n<p>\u2018It\u2019s not children I don\u2019t like: it\u2019s parents.\u2019 For here\u2019s the thing: for someone who appreciates, if not quite advocates, childlessness, I quite like children. Obviously, one cannot generalise about all children, as individual children can differ from one another almost as much as adults do. But, in general, I prefer the company of most children to that of most adults.<\/p>\n<p>This has something to do with the hope projected on to them: they haven\u2019t quite been beaten down and made bitter by life experience, yet. If there is hope, it lies in the children. But there is no hope, because of the parents. Little people have usually regarded me quizzically, probably because they perceive me to be unlike most other adults in their lives. I can usually speak to them on their own level. I am not an authority figure.<\/p>\n<p>You can learn a lot from children about looking at the world in an original way, if you listen to them, which so few adults do. But I like being able to give them back to their biological parents, when the fun is over. I only want the good parts. (Joke: I like children, but I couldn\u2019t eat a whole one.)<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, this seems to suit most parents, who are only too glad to have their children taken off their hands for a while. I\u2019m thinking of all those poor little rich kids, from all over the place but especially the progeny of Russian oligarchs, whom I taught (i.e. babysat) on summer courses over the years. All the neglected boys could do was play computer games; all the neglected girls could do was go shopping. Of course, they are the issue of the class of people who view having children as a lifestyle choice rather than as a luxury.<\/p>\n<p>Parents may lavish fortunes on the education of their children, but they actively seek to avoid spending too much time with them. Just as children may look forward to hefty inheritances, but are quite prepared to deposit their parents in residential care homes while they are waiting for their windfall, rather than look after them at home themselves. Family values, eh?<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_12672\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-12672\" style=\"width: 638px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12672 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Stamp-Ireland_3d_1937_Constitution.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"638\" height=\"384\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-12672\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The 1937 Irish Constitution.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong><em>The Family<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u2018It\u2019s not children I don\u2019t like: it\u2019s parents.\u2019 Which means, of course, that what I really don\u2019t like are families, or rather, the fetishisation of \u2018The Family\u2019 as an abstract concept, as for example in monotheistic religions, or in <em>Bunreacht na h\u00c9ireann<\/em>, the Constitution of Ireland. (Article 41.1.1. \u2018The State recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.\u2019 Article 41.1.2.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018The State, therefore, guarantees to protect the Family in its constitution and authority, as the necessary basis of social order and as indispensable to the welfare of the Nation and the State.\u2019 Okay, so. But what about all the citizens who, for whatever reason, have never lived in families, and\/or never will live in families \u2013 unadopted or unfostered orphans, for a start, or Catholic clergy?) And I reserve a particularly virulent animus against \u2018The Good Family\u2019, as in \u201cHe\/She is from A Good Family\u201d or from \u201cGood Stock\u201d or \u201cDecent People\u201d, \u2018good\u2019 and \u2018decent\u2019 here invariably meaning church-going, law-abiding, well-connected, prosperous middle-class, and \u2018respectable\u2019 \u2013 except most of them are not.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, the origin of the phrases \u2018The black sheep of the family\u2019, and \u2018Disgracing the family name.\u2019 If I had a fiver for every time I\u2019ve been to a job interview \u2013 and even in supposedly liberal operations like newspapers or publishing houses \u2013 and been asked \u201cWho are your family?\u2019 or \u201cWhat is your father doing now?\u201d, I\u2019d have a tidy sum squirrelled away. \u201cWhere do you stand on the church?\u201d was also an old favourite when trying to land a teaching job, as recently as the late 1980s.<\/p>\n<p>Needless to say, the potential employers were not overly impressed with my answers. If it were not for hereditary privilege, many monsters (themselves the offspring of monsters) throughout history would not have got within even an ass\u2019s roar of power. Just think: wouldn\u2019t the world be a better place without contemporary manifestations of the phenomenon, such as Lochlan Murdoch or Ivanka Trump, having easy access to global media and political influence?<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_12673\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-12673\" style=\"width: 800px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12673 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SmilingChildren.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-12673\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Prashant Shrestha from Kathmandu, Nepal.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><em><strong>The Dialectic of Sex<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Before you peremptorily dismiss me as a crackpot, please hear me out, for I am not a lone voice crying in the wilderness in this predilection. In <em>The Dialectic of Sex<\/em> (1970), second wave feminist Shulamith Firestone criticised the nuclear family as a construct, arguing that it not only limits women\u2019s independence, but inhibits child development too. In her view, children are hindered in their abilities to develop because of their education, predetermined positions in the social hierarchy, and \u2018lesser importance\u2019 in comparison to their parents and other adult figures in their lives, who control all these aspects of the children&#8217;s lives. She believed that nuclear families, as a form of social organisation, creates inequality within a family, as the children are considered subordinates to their parents.<\/p>\n<p>This, in turn, has increased maternal expectations and obligations, which is something Firestone thought society should outgrow. This dependency on maternal figures makes the child(ren) more susceptible to physical abuse and deprives them of the opportunity to work towards being independent themselves, economically, emotionally and sexually. She sought to solve these problems by eliminating families for the raising of children, and instead to have them raised by a collective.<\/p>\n<p>William S. Burroughs also advocated for the disintegration of the family unit, most vociferously in <em>The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs<\/em> by Daniel Odier (1989), since he believed it to be redundant.<\/p>\n<p>Jean Genet wrote in <em>The Thief\u2019s Journal<\/em> (1949): \u2018In my opinion, the family is probably the first criminal cell, and the most criminal.\u2019 \u2018Ah, but those guys were queer\u2019, I hear members of the right-wing Christian fraternity proclaim, \u2018so what else would you expect from them?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Alright, let\u2019s enlist some good, straight, honest Irishmen as well. Poet Dennis O\u2019Driscoll wrote that \u2018Every family has passed its own version of the Official Secrets Act\u2019, and doubtless with good reason.<\/p>\n<p>Time and again in his work, Samuel Beckett targets parents as irresponsible criminals, by dint of their bringing more life into this sordid and corrupt world, and thus creating families. \u2018You\u2019re on earth, there\u2019s no cure for that,\u2019 says Hamm to Clov in <em>Endgame<\/em>, and addresses his father Nagg as \u2018accursed progenitor\u2019. Indeed, Beckett could easily be construed as a proto-supporter of women\u2019s reproductive rights, as the narrator of <em>First Love<\/em> is horrified when his lover Lulu\/Anna reveals that she is pregnant: \u2018Abort! Abort!\u2019 he says, adding, \u2018If it\u2019s lepping, I said, it\u2019s not mine.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, for Stephen Dedalus in the \u2018Scylla and Charybdis\u2019 episode of James Joyce\u2019s <em>Ulysses<\/em> (even if it can be configured, as Hugh Kenner chooses to do in <em>Joyce\u2019s Dublin<\/em>, as callow \u2013 in contrast with Leopold Bloom\u2019s mooted fatherly maturity), \u2018Paternity is a legal fiction\u2019 (or, as my own father used to put it more plainly: \u201cThere\u2019s manys the man rocks another man\u2019s child when he thinks he rocks his own.\u201d).<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_12227\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-12227\" style=\"width: 1280px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12227 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/StockTrader.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1280\" height=\"848\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-12227\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stockbrokers, New York, 1966 from United States Library of Congress\u2018s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID ppmsca.03199.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong><em>Wealth Accumulation <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It can easily be argued that marriage, monogamy and parenthood exist primarily to foster and protect property and inheritance, and to encourage wealth accumulation. These arrangements sponsor and attempt to justify the greed and acquisitiveness of rampant <em>laissez-faire<\/em> capitalism, since parents can always claim that they are not acting disreputably out of their own selfish interests, but rather are indulging in seemingly self-serving and nakedly avaricious behaviour merely for the good of their offspring, by endeavouring to give them the best start in life and ultimately securing their future.<\/p>\n<p>Thus the casting of family formation as somehow having a Stake in Life, or in Progress, or in The Future, or some such nebulous notion. But would people really be so competitive economically, to the detriment of others, if their children were raised communally, and all the children of the nation were really cherished equally \u2013 i.e. have exactly the same resources available to them?<\/p>\n<p>This alternative method of social organisation would certainly give the lie to the oft-repeated right-wing mantra that free market capitalism is a meritocracy \u2013 where the harder you work, the more you are rewarded \u2013 because all children would be starting life on precisely the same footing. After all, \u2018It takes a village\u2019, as even prominent neo-liberals like to tell us.<\/p>\n<p>Besides which, is the family really such a <em>Haven in a Heartless World<\/em>, as historian Christopher Lasch had it, in his 1977 tome of that title? Lasch traced over a century\u2019s worth of sociological and psychological theories on the contemporary family, situating his observations in the context of expanding social institutions and their besieging of the family\u2019s power and influence, and taking issue with most of them.<\/p>\n<p>However, while Pope John Paul II may have opined that \u2018as the family goes, so goes the nation, and so goes the whole world in which we live\u2019, surely if the family is a microcosmic unit within the macrocosm of society itself, then the overall health of the family should be a good indicator of the overall health of the culture at large. If the world is indeed heartless, then perhaps the first place in need of reformation is, in fact, the family. In this alternative cosmology, friends may well be God\u2019s apology for family since, unlike your family, you get to choose your friends.<\/p>\n<p>There is at least as much evidence to suggest that, far from being a haven, families can just as equally be claustrophobic minefields of unbearable tension and resentment. From the patricides, matricides and fratricides of Greek tragedy, to a headline ripped at random from yesterday\u2019s newspaper: \u2018Domestic violence by adult children against parents rises as stress peaks under lockdown\u2019, this assertion is incontestable. A recent statement from the Garda Commissioner informed us that domestic violence claims more lives in Ireland every year than gangland crime.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, you can counter-argue that these kinds of pressures on family life are direct consequences of consumer capitalism (adult kids can\u2019t afford to rent, much less buy, which is why they are living at home), but the fact remains that the concept of the happy and supportive family is an aspirational mirage, with little tangible substance: some parents may get on with each other, but many don\u2019t; some parents may get on with their children, but many don\u2019t; some siblings may get on with each other, but many don\u2019t; some children may get on with their parents, but many don\u2019t; some families may work, but many don\u2019t; some may work at different times, but not at others.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_12674\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-12674\" style=\"width: 800px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12674 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/GretaGarbo.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1009\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-12674\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Greta Garbo as Anna Karenina.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong><em>All Families are Alike<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Here we can invoke Tolstoy\u2019s famous opening line of <em>Anna Karenina<\/em>: \u2018All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.\u2019 But are all happy families really alike? Perhaps their happiness is just as idiosyncratic as the unhappiness of the unhappy. In addition to which, I can\u2019t help but ascribe a degree of conscious irony to Tolstoy\u2019s declaration. After all, we do not encounter any ideally happy families in <em>Anna Karenina. <\/em>Perhaps he knew, as well as anyone, that the Happy Family is a myth, an ideal to which we may aspire, while having no palpable earthly iteration. But whenever Family Values types start pushing The Family \u2018as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society\u2019 at me (unfortunate enough as that phrase is in its easy slide into Margaret Thatcher\u2019s infamous claim that \u2018\u2026there\u2019s no such thing as society.<\/p>\n<p>There are individual men and women and there are families\u2019), I usually refer them to the Christmas dinner scene in Joyce\u2019s <em>A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man<\/em>, which is, if nothing else, a needful corrective to the sentimental ghosts of Dickens, and bolsters Wilde\u2019s epigram to the effect that \u2018Sentimentality is merely the bank holiday [e.g. Dickens\u2019 Christmas] of cynicism\u2019. For, despite the episode\u2019s grounding in personal autobiography and the particular politico-religious strife among nationalists in Ireland at the time, the reason for this Yuletide row\u2019s universal appeal is that Joyce wasn\u2019t just writing about his own family: rather, he was writing about everyone\u2019s family, in every time and place.<\/p>\n<p>There is always something to argue about, and it hurts more to argue with relatives who espouse views diametrically opposed to your own than it does with anyone else. Or will you just sit there and bite your tongue for the rest of your life?<\/p>\n<p>At any rate, however positive or negative your view of family life, I have no particular desire to be part of the hurdy-gurdy of what a friend calls, speaking of his own familial ups and downs, \u2018the great human dance\u2019. Or, at least, his version of family dancing and enforced role-playing. I am more partial to jitterbugging than waltzing, to doing the watusi than executing a quadrille.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_8310\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8310\" style=\"width: 900px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-8310 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/OConnell_Street_Dublin_6007529359.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"900\" height=\"606\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-8310\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image: Richard Tilbrook (wikicommons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong><em>Irish Social History<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>These considerations take on a particularly lurid hue in the light of 20<sup>th<\/sup> century Irish social history, especially when juxtaposed with the aspirational \u2018official version\u2019 rhetoric which is still regularly trotted out around the Irish family (see Articles Article 41.1.1. and Article 41.1.2. of <em>Bunreacht na h\u00c9ireann<\/em>, above).<\/p>\n<p>The record of incarceration and institutionalisation of Irish citizens in <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/society-culture\/society\/mother-and-baby-home-whitewash-compounds-victims-torture\/\">Mother and Baby Homes<\/a><\/span>, Magdalen Laundries, Industrial Schools and Psychiatric Hospitals is grim, and involved the blatant rejection of children and grandchildren by their parents, siblings and extended families, in the name of a church-and-state-sponsored \u2018respectability\u2019 based on the notion of \u2018legitimacy\u2019. These wounds are still raw in many peoples\u2019 memories. As a younger acquaintance recently put it to me: \u201cI was born in 1993 to a single mother who raised me. The last Mother and Baby Home in Ireland closed in 1998. It could have been us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Therefore, I salute the scholarly tenacity of both Clair Wills, in her article <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lrb.co.uk\/the-paper\/v43\/n10\/clair-wills\/architectures-of-containment\">Architectures of Containment<\/a> <\/em><\/span>(<em>London Review of Books<\/em>, Vol. 43 No. 10 \u00b7 20 May 2021), and Catriona Crowe, in her piece <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"http:\/\/The Commission and the Survivors\"><em>The Commission and the Survivors<\/em><\/a><\/span> (<em>Dublin Review<\/em>, #83, Summer 2021), for their persistence in wading through 2865 pages of what is essentially obfuscating, buck-passing apologetics contained within the <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.ie\/en\/publication\/d4b3d-final-report-of-the-commission-of-investigation-into-mother-and-baby-homes\/\"><em>Final Report of the Commission of Investigation into the Mother and Baby Homes <\/em><\/a><\/span>(Government of Ireland, October 2020), and their deep excavation and dismantling of it.<\/p>\n<p>Wills refers to the \u2018inalienable family logic\u2019 of the system, and speculates that: \u2018Arguably the rhetoric of the Irish family was a smokescreen for the absence of the family as a private sphere of emotional and affective ties\u2019, declaring that \u2018the Irish church and state, with the passive acceptance and sometimes active collusion of Irish families, was willing to sacrifice its own children \u2013 of whatever age \u2013 for what it considered to be survival.\u2019 Crowe comments: \u2018One has no right to expect dazzling prose in such a document, but it is striking how badly written, argued and organised the commission\u2019s report is. The tone is at times hectoring, at times defensive, at times cryptic \u2013 and sometimes all three\u2026\u2019 The cover-up continues\u2026<\/p>\n<p>While some may read more recent progress in Irish social legislation \u2013 such as the legalisation of same-sex marriage and the repeal of the eighth amendment \u2013 as forms of \u2018respectability politics\u2019, they at least demonstrably signal significant shifts in attitudes as to what constitutes concepts of the Irish Family, moving on from a theocratic patriarchy to a broader and looser inclusivity.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_12675\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-12675\" style=\"width: 800px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12675 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/BiblePictures.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"991\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-12675\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, imagined here in a Bible illustration from 1897.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong><em>Patriarchy<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u2018Which means, of course, that what I really don\u2019t like are families\u2026\u2019.\u00a0 Which means, of course, that what I really don\u2019t like is patriarchy. Men can be victims of patriarchy, just as much as women. (Although, even if they aren\u2019t, they should still dislike it, out of solidarity with their womenfolk.) I myself have suffered my whole life at the hands of all manner of male authority figures (e.g. priests and Christian Brothers to whom my parents deferred, and so who consequently had inordinate control over my formative years; teachers too interested in favouring students with more upwardly-mobile parents than mine to pay attention to me; doctors and surgeons who would not admit mistakes when they treated me, when it was obvious mistakes had been made; potential employers who found my performances at interviews too idiosyncratic to countenance employing me, despite abundant relevant qualifications and experience).<\/p>\n<p>Bumptious, self-important fools. I could never imagine myself in the role of a patriarch, or even a more benign paterfamilias. Hence, perhaps, another reason why I don\u2019t have children. Not that I hold much brief for matriarchy either \u2013 which, curiously, has markedly strong manifestations in Ireland: just look at the ubiquity of mariolatry imagery.<\/p>\n<p>I myself have suffered my whole life at the hands of all manner of female authority figures (e.g. women in many of the same roles as the men already listed \u2013 proving, paradoxically, that equality isn\u2019t always an unalloyed \u2018good thing\u2019). Brash, conceited harridans. I could never imagine putting someone in the role of a matriarch, or even a more benign materfamilias.<\/p>\n<p>Hence, perhaps, another reason why I didn\u2019t want to give a woman a child. So maybe it\u2019s not so much patriarchy (etymology: \u2018from <em>patriarkh\u0113s<\/em> \u201cmale chief or head of a family\u201d \u2019) or matriarchy (etymology: \u2018government by a mother or mothers; form of social organization in which the mother is the head of the family and the descendants are reckoned through the maternal side\u201d, formed in English 1881 from matriarch + -y and \u201cpatterned after patriarchy\u201d) that I dislike, as \u2018archy\u2019 itself (etymology: \u2018word-forming element meaning \u201crule\u201d, from Latin <em>-archia<\/em>, from Greek <em>-arkhia<\/em> \u201crule\u201d, from <em>arkhos<\/em> \u201cleader, chief, ruler\u201d, from <em>arkh\u0113<\/em> \u201cbeginning, origin, first place\u201d, verbal noun of <em>arkhein<\/em> \u201cto be the first\u201d, hence \u201cto begin\u201d and \u201cto rule\u201d.\u2019)<\/p>\n<p>As a good ex-punk (is there really any such thing as an \u2018ex\u2019 punk? \u2013 no, of course not, old punks never die, they just sign to CBS, and\/or get into country music), perhaps the only -archy I like is an- (from Greek, \u2018without\u2019) -archy. All rules are arbitrary. They are mutually agreed conventions, employed for as long as those with power consider them useful, until they are convinced otherwise, or in advance of them losing power. As with the power of parents to rule the lives of their children.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-12676 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Parental_Advisory_label.svg_.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1219\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Meet the Parents<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is plain to see that parents get a bad press, in both popular culture and theoretical discourse. From \u2018Mom jeans\u2019 to \u2018Dad rock\u2019, from <em>Meet The Parents<\/em> (and <em>The Fockers<\/em>) to <em>The Happiest Season<\/em>, parents are presented as embarrassingly and quintessentially naff. Parental units are decidedly unerotic, and are easy targets for comedic caricature. Sometimes they bring it on themselves: consider Parental Advisory Explicit Content stickers on album covers.<\/p>\n<p>No offspring wants to sit watching grown-up films or television series with their \u2018Old Pair\u2019, or even share their musical tastes and latest tunes with them. Picture Sherilyn Fenn\u2019s iconic small screen epiphany as Audrey Horne in the first season of David Lynch\u2019s seminal series <em>Twin Peaks<\/em> (1990), where during a job interview at One Eyed Jacks she knots a cherry stem with her talented tongue, and the large cringe factor of your Old Dear piping up from her rocking chair, perplexedly, \u201cWhat does it mean?\u201d (Mind you, it wasn\u2019t just the Mother; the Sister dissed the show after seeing Audrey swaying around the Double R Diner to Angelo Badalamenti\u2019s theme music \u201cLike she was on drugs\u201d.)<\/p>\n<p>Hands up if you can remember being told to \u201cTurn that racket down\u201d while losing yourself in the latest punk masterpiece (e.g. The Clash\u2019s eponymous debut album). I even have a more precise memory of <em>ma m\u00e8re<\/em>\u2019s shocked chagrin on overhearing the line \u2018By the devil\u2019s holy water and the rosary beads\u2019 in The Radiators\u2019 classic \u2018Song of the Faithful Departed\u2019, from <em>Ghosttown<\/em> (1979) \u2013 a song \u201cmocking God\u201d. \u2018Who were your parents?\u2019 and \u2018What was your childhood like?\u201d are the first questions any self-respecting and well-trained psychotherapist is going to ask you in a consultation (\u20ac50+ an hour, and they\u2019re fifty-minute hours too), and we all know where the blame for your troubles and woes, your utter fucked-upness, is going to lie.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Radiators From Space - Song Of The Faithful Departed (1981)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ThaJmtpX0j4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Personally, I struggle to listen to any opinion being expressed when it is prefaced by the age-old, ingratiating formula \u201cSpeaking as a parent\u2026\u201d. Is there any more grating conversation-stopper, guaranteed to shut down any debate, than \u201cYou\u2019d understand if you had kids\u201d? \u201cI have kids to support\u201d is used as an excuse by parents for every unenviable life choice they make, from staying in an insalubrious work situation (\u201cMy boss is such a bully\u201d) to, worse, staying in a bad marriage (\u201cNot in front of the children\u201d). For the majority of parents, their children represent hostages to fortune.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Bonkers Parenting<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Literature furnishes plentiful examples of misguidedly inadequate or blatantly bonkers parenting. Passing over the treatment of daughters by their parents \u2013 usually their mothers \u2013 in the fictions of Jane Austen, I could also cite Mrs. Kearney in James Joyce\u2019s short story \u2018A Mother\u2019, who mortifies her daughter Kathleen, an aspiring pianist, by sweeping her out of a concert hall and irritating the promoters and other artists, with her impatience to get paid immediately for Kathleen\u2019s contribution to a recital series, thus ruining her career in Dublin musical circles.<\/p>\n<p>But I\u2019m thinking specifically and more contemporaneously of Donald Barthelme\u2019s very short short story, \u2018The Baby\u2019, a succinct satire on the arbitrariness of parental discipline and punishment.<\/p>\n<p><em>My wife said that maybe we were being too rigid and that the baby was losing weight. But I pointed out to her that the baby had a long life to live and had to live in a world with others, had to live in a world where there were many, many rules, and if you couldn&#8217;t learn to play by the rules you were going to be left out in the cold with no character, shunned and ostracized by everyone, <\/em><\/p>\n<p>reasons the father of a fifteen-month-old baby girl, sentenced to spend four hours alone in her room for every page she tears out of books. \u2018We had more or less of an ethical crisis on our hands.\u2019<br \/>\nTo be fair, fiction is also replete, from a parent\u2019s perspective, with skewering specimens of outrageously uncontrollable children. I\u2019m thinking here of the monstrous Marmaduke, the ten-month-old toddler from Martin Amis\u2019 <em>London Fields<\/em> (1989), an infant his parents agonised over bringing into the world, given its less than perfect state, who then turns out to terrorise their lives like a violent dictator. But perhaps the most equanimous artistic depiction of parents\u2019 burdensome redundancy to their busy children is Yasujir\u014d Ozu\u2019s unbearably moving <em>Tokyo Story<\/em> (1953), a masterpiece of such universal resonance that it regularly tops polls as one of the greatest films ever made. Do you seriously believe your parental journey will be significantly different from any of the examples highlighted above?<\/p>\n<p>Some people get to resolve their differences with their parents, usually as they move into middle age and take on the trials and tribulations of parenthood themselves. This will not happen for me. My father died when I was thirty-three; my mother died when I was forty-one. They were both six foot under, and I had failed to produce an heir, to add to their already numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They are united now at last in death, for ever, as they never were in life, decaying together in Deansgrange Cemetery, in the wet, mulchy earth, underground.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-12677 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/UN_population_estimates_and_projection_1950-2011.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1022\" height=\"674\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>More than Enough<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>To look at the broader picture, and to echo some anti-natalist arguments: there are more than enough people in the world. (Roughly 8 billion, give or take a few hundred thousand, and rising by \u2013 at a conservative estimate \u2013 at least 1 per cent annually: that\u2019s 80 million a year, in plain language. Visit<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"> <a style=\"color: #0000ff;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.worldometers.info\">www.worldometers.info<\/a><\/span> for impressive minute by minute stats. There is <em>way more<\/em> than one born every minute.)<\/p>\n<p>What kind of bloated egotism does it take to believe that your priceless strands of DNA are going to make any difference whatsoever to anyone other than yourself and\/or your partner, much less make that world a better place? Particularly when the species isn\u2019t exactly in imminent danger of completely dying out anytime soon.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, on the contrary, more people are more likely to hasten the demise of humanity\u2019s living space, Planet Earth, through the devastation that overpopulation brings. To those who would admonish me to the effect that my child freedom is merely an unwillingness to shoulder adult responsibility, I say: in all likelihood I am more responsible than you, by not having any children. To say nothing of the fact that there are huge swathes of people who, for a variety of reasons, have great difficulty or ultimately find it impossible to reproduce.<\/p>\n<p>Both LGBTQ+ couples and heterosexual couples with fertility issues are required to take circuitous and sometimes difficult routes into parenthood, either through assisted reproductive technologies like IVF and donor insemination, (which detractors would call \u2018unnatural\u2019, and which is why, of course, they are considered such an abomination by the Godly \u2018pro-lifers\u2019), or via other complicated arrangements such as surrogacy, co-parenting, adoption or fostering.<\/p>\n<p>Then there is the childcare issue. Despite the good intentions of the aforementioned Constitution (Article 41.2.1. \u2018In particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.\u2019 \u2013 itself the subject of much controversy and contentiously archaic because of its gender specificity), Irish society has organised itself over the years into the current shambles whereby, under the influence of Anglo-American neo-liberalism rather than European social democracy, both members of a couple are required to work to maintain a roof over their and their potential or actual offsprings\u2019 heads, which in turn means they are required to stump up exorbitant fees for private creches to look after said offspring while they are out slaving to provide food and shelter for them. (So much for Article 42.1.2. of The Constitution: \u2018The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.\u2019)<\/p>\n<p>Does that seem like a fair deal? So, essentially, unless you have other family members (usually grandparents) or friends willing to take them off your hands for the best part of the day, or you move to a mainland European country with proper public services, you are snookered.<\/p>\n<p>The professional classes, i.e. those in the best position to exploit and therefore gain most from the present system, solve this conundrum by availing themselves of <em>au pairs<\/em>, or by hiring and underpaying Filipino nannies. Here, as with so much else, they \u2018go private\u2019 \u2013 doubtlessly believing that this is the natural order of things. Here, as elsewhere, my hardwired class antagonism \u2013 which some will doubtlessly dismiss as merely \u2018a chip on his shoulder\u2019 \u2013 burns brightly.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_12678\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-12678\" style=\"width: 1280px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12678 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Will.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1280\" height=\"887\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-12678\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alfred Nobel&#8217;s will.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong><em>Legacy Issue<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Then there is the legacy issue. If you happen to have done well for yourself, whom do you leave your fortune to? In that case, having some blood heirs might be a good idea \u2013 although as previously mentioned, perhaps you have only done well for yourself because you had heirs in the first place. And what of those, the majority, on average incomes, or the poor, who have amassed little or no capital to pass on to their sons and daughters \u2013 many of whom, in any case, may be just waiting around for parents to pass on so that they can get their greedy paws on what loot there is? Many people still have children as a form of long-term investment, because they think their offspring will contribute to the household budget \u2013 although these days parents are more likely to get stuck for stumping up deposits for their first time buyer children\u2019s houses (in Ireland, we actually have an ex-Taoiseach (Prime Minister) and current T\u00e1naiste (Deputy Prime Minister), who recommended in the D\u00e1il (Parliament) that young people go to \u201cThe Bank of Mum and Dad\u201d as just such a method of securing a mortgage); or because they think their flesh and blood will be a comfort to them in their old age, or at least look after them in their declining years and decrepitude \u2013 when in reality they are more likely to be packed off to a care home, so that the ungrateful fruit of their loins can get on with their own mid-life lives.<\/p>\n<p>In fairness, given the lack of state services for elder care as well as child care (described above) under the present dispensation, and the inter-generational disparity in access to property ownership, the overworked adult children and parents often have no other choice but to outsource caring roles for family members younger and older than themselves, which were traditionally performed by family members.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, privatisation begets more privatisation, and neo-liberal capitalism actually works to the detriment of The Family, or, more accurately, non-affluent families, which it ostensibly trumpets upholding.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_12679\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-12679\" style=\"width: 1200px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12679 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Americanization.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"599\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-12679\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Americanization of California (1932) by Dean Cornwell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong><em>Enlightened Self-Interest<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In any case, the inheritance question is not one that applies much to me personally, either as recipient or as donor, because amassing a nest egg to make life easier for his litter was not high on my father\u2019s or mother\u2019s list of concerns.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are no pockets in the last suit,\u201d quoth he, perhaps hoping to imbue me with the same fatalistic attitude. I dare say he succeeded. He clearly had no ambitions towards founding a dynasty, at least not one based on the accumulation of financial wealth and economic power. His plans for his bloodline probably extended no further than \u2018put them on the right road\u2019 and \u2018let them find their own way\u2019, with the Catholic religion, the \u2018one true church\u2019, as their guide.<\/p>\n<p>Naturally, if I were the progeny of a wealthier or landed lineage, perhaps my analysis of inherited wealth would be entirely other. With notable exceptions, altruistic or aspirational, most people tend to espouse the socio-political philosophies and policies which are best tailored to the fullness or emptiness of their own pockets, rather than worrying about an ill-defined \u2018greater good\u2019. \u2018Enlightened self-interest\u2019, I believe it\u2019s called.<\/p>\n<p>Who knows, what a great Fine Gael\/Tory\/Republican Party fascistic scumbag I would have made, and what horrors I could have perpetrated, if only I had had a family fortune to protect and grow.<\/p>\n<p>Given these considerations, probably the only truly selfless and ethical way of having children and creating a family is by adoption. At least you are caring for already born orphaned or abandoned kids, whose own parents could not or would not look after them. Failing that, get a dog or a cat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Are you satisfied now, ladies and gentlemen, you counsellors and therapists of all stripes, with my do-it-your-self-psychoanalysis? Despite my disdain for the so-called misery memoir, it is time to declare: my childhood was better than being brought up in an industrial school, or by an alcoholic or physically abusive parent; but, certainly by today\u2019s ideals, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":12670,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[1509,1656,1720,2422,2426,2438,2974,3297,3359,4019,4236,6280,6437,7191,8373,8500,8523,8922,8975,9018,9047,9178,9242,9371,10207],"class_list":["post-12668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society","tag-catriona-crowe","tag-christopher-lasch","tag-clair-wills","tag-des-traynor","tag-des-traynor-on-being-childless","tag-desmond-traynor-on-having-children","tag-enlightened-self-interest","tag-final-report-of-the-commission-of-investigation-into-the-mother-and-baby-homes","tag-flannery-oconnor","tag-haven-in-a-heartless-world","tag-human-overpopulation","tag-most","tag-natural","tag-philip-larkin","tag-shulamith-firestone","tag-society","tag-song-of-the-faithfully-departed","tag-the","tag-the-commission-and-the-survivors","tag-the-dialectic-of-sex","tag-the-family-under-the-irish-constitution","tag-the-most-natural-thing-in-the-world","tag-the-radiators-song-of-the-faithfully-departed","tag-thing","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}