It’s About Making Babies!

NML has been covering relationships on Baggage Reclaim, especially toxic relationships for quite some time. She has written books and tons of articles, and even offered advice, a time or two. Today she reminds us that questions of our partner-prospect have to be contextual – that he or she has to be well respected in the community – and respectful and worthy of our respect at home, too.

One comment to NML’s article brought something to mind. When someone is helpful and kind at church, work, or in public, but harsh, unyielding, or even abusive at home – that, to me, suggests disrespect for her/his parents.

The enemy?

Traditionally we think that we treat enemies and allies – friends and dangerous people – differently. Towards one we practice defense, we may actively work to practice harm on some. Toward the other we support, nurture, and try to build up good will. Well-adjusted people will be courteous to friends, hostile to enemies; confused people may get the relationships and reactions confused.

Why couple?

We come together in couples because that is how we were raised. Most of us in the Western world were raised by parents in a home environment. We spent a childhood learning to be children in the culture – the practices, traditions, and values that our parents inherited or chose – and learned what adults are and do from watching our parents. Those that grew to respect their parents find that much of that home culture stays with them, and they bring that cultural background when they choose a partner, and begin to merge their home culture with their partner’s home culture, choosing their practices, values, and traditions from what their families taught, and what they choose from their life experiences.

People that grow up respecting their family and home culture, will be drawn to find a mate, and make a home. Some will take on family roles that mimic their parents because they choose to, others because they unthinkingly echo what they saw and learned as children, and passively repeat their history.

This is where the “Oh, my! I have become my Mother/Father! I swore I never would do that!” thing comes from. This most often happens as we take on a parent’s responsibility for enforcing discipline and etiquette in the home.

The downside

So, what happens when Daddy was confused – or under the influence – and instead of imposing discipline (the will to complete a task) on the household, instead applies force and other forms of coercion for momentary convenience, or to feel in control of something or someone – or that actively enjoys abusing others? If the acting out is only done at home – then the lesson is that behavior in public must be courteous, but at home an unthinking Tyrant is appropriate.

And you wind up with a partner that the community sees as a “good” person, that turns into an ogre at home.

What to do

The answer is to get to know someone before considering them as a partner prospect. Know their family and family history – if you end up together – his or her family will be providing a lot of cultural impact on the home you build, and their impact on you and your home in the future, as well.

Look for problems with roles in the family. Undue disrespect, tyranny, or substance abuse are all red flags. Does he/she respect and trust his/her family? Are the significant events of his/her childhood the adventures of a confident child, or traumas/dramas enacted with the parents? Did most of her/his siblings (brothers and sisters) learn basic discipline (will to complete a task), courtesy and respect, honor and honesty?

The risk

The risk, of course, is that the partner-prospect comes to treat you less like a neighbor (with courtesy) and more like the warfare she/he learned as a child, that is what “home” means to her/him.

Can people from bad homes, inept parents or families damaged by substance abuse, be good mates and co-parents? Certainly – if they have dealt with the cultural baggage of their childhood, if they acknowledge their challenges for healthy family living, and actively choose and reexamine their lives continuously, so that they actively take responsibility for their actions and relationships, and choose to modify their early training to be disciplined, honorable, trustworthy, and in all ways a partner of character and good will. Not that many people put that kind of attention into their lives, voluntarily.

Choose wisely

What is unfortunate, is that almost all families are dysfunctional in some fashion. Kids grow up, and rebel against the authoritarian discipline that good parents impose. And, today, fashion and mass entertainment have established the fact that sex is for recreation – indeed, social and governmental mores are stringent, about keeping children from learning about using sexual congress to fulfill family roles – to make a baby. From separate rooms imposed by housing regulations, to refusal to discuss conjugal relations in direct terms in public, for several generations we have let mass media, fashion, and marketing take intimacy away from the family experience, for most families.

The likelihood that a promising prospect considers sex as a recreation, and perhaps the sole reason for bothering with a relationship (a perpetual dater), is unfortunately high. Making a home with such a person is going to be a rough experience anyway, as the realities of changing roles and responsibilities as we form a home and family will come as rude shocks – since the home wasn’t their goal in the first place.

Whether the prospect wanted a home or not – if all they know of family life is twisted from a desired secure and safe, disciplined nurturing environment, then the odds of a happy home are terrible. This is but one of many problems we cannot “fix” in a mate. It would be rude and unfair to them, and unhealthy for us, to try. “Good emotional bonds to family, friends, and co-workers.” It still seems like good advice.

Just remember, it is a danger flag, if he/she starts treating you more like a battlefield opponent as you get closer together. Instead, you want someone that believes the home is a happy place, with trusted people of good character caring for and nurturing each other.

Blessed be.

Sharon at Casaubon’s Book mentions a recent CNN report about the Italian region of Lombardy offering cash to women considering an abortion – to keep the baby.

I understand the issues – the Muslim religion is exerting tremendous pressure toward population growth within their community (averaging 8.1 births per couple). This pressure must destabilize any non-Islamic nation.

I think I am coming closer to answering a question that concerned me some five or six years ago. Telling kids to not get pregnant – or not to have sex – seemed short sighted. That was the initial question that got me started here at ItsAboutMakingBabies.com.

What if we explained why they should have babies, and work from there on when and where it works out for the very best? Only, I couldn’t see an answer. The Bible claims “be fruitful and multiply” which is a means of growth for the Church – but lacks anything but an authoritarian “Do it because I said so.” Don’t get me wrong – for that particular Authority, that is a pretty persuasive argument.

But I wanted an answer that fit non-believers, and a secular culture and society.

I consider culture to be the rituals and traditions, with the values and definitions of right and wrong, that a family chooses. Here I mean family as adults choosing to care for progeny; extended family is the families that the adults were raised in, and the families of their siblings (brothers and sisters). The cultures of the families in a community make up the culture of that community. In times of affluence (cheap energy), communities can tolerate a lot of outlying, non-conforming families (family cultures). During periods of harsh choices – during conflict, scarce resources, and other periods of stress – there will and should be less tolerance of “not our kind”. Communities have a vested interest in assuring that children raised there, and newcomers, come to assimilate the general definitions of right and wrong, the median values, the most common rituals and traditions. Without the communal culture, the community loses the ability to care for itself, to provide a secure environment for its families.

So. Why should we (as a member of a family or community), choose to have a baby? To honor the culture of our extended family and community.

We learn what we are raised with. If we respect (not necessarily the same as enjoy or adore) our parents – we must feel a need to grow into their examples of adulthood, including the family they raised us in. We would need to produce the next generation, to assert the fulfillment of our destiny, to recreate the role models of our parents and family and respected members of the community.

The notion of romantic love as a basis of forming a family – or having a romantic “relationship” without benefit of family – is quaint, and since its invention in Renaissance Italy, has sold a lot of soap, cosmetics, provocative clothes and fancy vehicles. What Romeo and Juliet point out, poignantly, is that ignoring the effect on the community and extended family when choosing a mate can be catastrophic to the lives of the people involved.

I note that weddings in the US typically require one or more witnesses to complete the marriage certificate; none are needed to proclaim “I love you, your place or mine?” That is, that forming a family is a public event, a community event, and creates a new member of the community – the couple joined together choosing to raise progeny.

I am not denigrating marriages that don’t contemplate having children, not even adopted. It is just that such couples have chosen a form of genetic suicide, and even a disparagement of their extended family cultures, since they are refusing to teach their values and definitions of right and wrong, their traditions and rituals, to the next generation. For whatever reason, as of the next generation – their legacy is no longer active, in a community sense. Adults sharing time and home serve many useful purposes to nation and community. Serving the next generation, however, isn’t one of them. (Choosing to unilaterally reduce one’s own society and community is akin to cowardice in battle – it gives aid and comfort to the enemy, and increases risk and danger to one’s companions. Pursuing mutual goals might be different.)

Let us tell our children, “Grow up and have babies, because that is the strength of our community and family.” “Grow up, and choose a mate to make a family, and your children will be a blessing to your faith, your family, and your community.” Maybe even, “Any person that wants sex with you, but doesn’t want to participate with you in the community and your extended family, is refusing to be a mate or co-parent.” “No rebel is ever really happy.”

Don’t tell the poor single girls “don’t have an abortion.” So called Right To Life activists have always offended me. They wait until the ladies and girls have an unwanted pregnancy, they intervene with their own moral interpretations of life, and walk the hell away. I could respect an anti-abortion activist that signs up to pay the medical bills and adopt the baby from the unwanted pregnancy – nothing less is conscionable. In my opinion.

Instead, tell girls and boy, and men and women, that their community needs them to form families. That they need to find a mate-prospect with similar cultures, with excellent character, with suitable life skills and character – discipline, honor, honesty – and build a home. That marriage, or a so-called relationship (fornication, cohabiting, whatever), is not about “the last first date you will ever have”. That forming a family is a stepping stone, carrying their truths and beliefs forward in the same manner as their parents and grand parents before them.

Many states in America, if not all of them, have statutes making sex with minor children illegal. So – explain to me why we worry about whether pregnant teens (and preteens) have abortions – when we aren’t sending some man to jail for each and every pregnancy, let alone every sexually active minor? When single women have an unwanted pregnancy, why are we concerned about whether she has an abortion – when we used to enforce community and state laws forbidding sexual intercourse outside the bonds of marriage.

For the ladies in the Lombardy region of Italy, my sympathy. The elevation of ambition (“I scored last night!”, and “He was so fine!”) has replaced contentment of family life and community. There may come to be a culture and society that provides a context for a fruitful life for the single woman or poorly married woman with children and no culture, few assets, and reduced prospects. But it hasn’t happened yet.

As for the anti-abortion people, what I recall at the time of Roe v. Wade, was that abortion was illegal – thus only unlicensed procedures were available. And lots of women died, unnecessarily, in the face of unwanted pregnancies. My personal feeling is that I hope no one I know ever needs and abortion – and I pray it is available to anyone that believes they need one.