It’s fair to say that if you are in a position where you feel the need to write to the Irish Times, or any other newspaper, for advice on your love life, things are not going particularly well. That was true of this week’s petitioner to the Irish Times’ relationship and sex “expert”, Roe McDermott. The person who allegedly authored this week’s plea for good counsel finds themselves in a position not unheard of in human history: In conflict with their partner over the question of whether to have children.
My partner and I have been together for three years. Like any couple, we have had our ups and downs, but on the whole I would describe our partnership as being full of love, trust and care for the other. It is clear that we both want to be together in the long term. We have recently had discussions about our shared future; whether to get married, where to live, whether to have children. We are not on the same page about any of those questions. While there can surely be compromise on the decision to get married and where to live, the decision to have children is pretty binary and would be life-altering.
Yours truly is no agony uncle, but this, surely, is a common problem. The majority of people, as we can observe from looking around us in society, want to have children. That’s the “normal” state of being, for very good evolutionary reasons. Indeed, the pages of the newspapers are filled with tales of people who will almost bankrupt themselves paying for IVF treatments, or getting their eggs frozen, or turning in desperation to commercial surrogacy overseas. For people who want children, it’s not the same as wanting a new car or a place to live – it’s a biologically driven imperative that leads them to throw everything they own into the project.
The letter writer says that “the decision to have children is pretty binary”. That’s obvious: There can be no compromise on it.
Or can there?
Here’s what the Irish Times’ agony Aunt, Roe McDermott, suggested:
Not all relationships last forever. Not all relationships are destined for marriage and children. And I agree that if one of you wants children and the other doesn’t, in the long run it will become necessary to end your romantic relationship. It isn’t fair or right to make someone who doesn’t want children have them, nor to ask someone who desperately wants children to give up that idea.
(I will mention here that there is the possibility of having a non-monogamous relationship with each other and other serious partners who are open to children, but that’s a big lifestyle decision and, as you haven’t mentioned non-monogamy, I won’t dwell on it.)
Can you imagine? In this situation, the partner who wanted children would find an alternative man, or woman, to father or mother their children, but keep their original partner, who didn’t want children in the first place. Stay away from moral judgments here and just think about this in practical terms: The partner who doesn’t want children, in this situation, is expected to remain in a relationship with somebody who is busy parenting a family, and the other parent in this family is to be expected to tolerate their partner maintaining, essentially, an affair with their ex. That’s the advice on offer in the Irish Times, these days.
I might venture to suggest, at this point, that Roe McDermott is not a stupid woman, and knows full well that an arrangement like the one she suggests would end in disaster and heartbreak, even assuming that some poor fool could be found to act as the child-producing third wheel in the troubled relationship in question. So why suggest it? A small symptom, I think, of the larger problem in society: That being perceived as modern and tolerant and kind is more important than actually helping people. Good life advice would be “stay away from Polyamory at all costs, because the chances are your brain simply isn’t wired to cope with it”. But that wouldn’t make poor aul’ Roe sound like the progressive, uber-liberal person that she wants us to believe she is, and so we get this instead.
Thank the good lord that many Agony Aunt columns are in response to fake letters. We can only hope that’s the case here.