i am thirty-three. i will turn thirty-four next month. many of my friends are having kids, or getting married so they can have kids. most of the women i am friends with have kids, or want them. most of the women i’ve dated want kids.
it is normal to want kids. it is the default path. if U want kids, very good. all is right with the world.
as for me: i do not want kids. and this can be hard to understand, sometimes:
i guess i’m tired of feeling weird and misunderstood and like an odd person for just Intentionally Making a Different Choice. to me, my reasoning and motivations are really obvious. and perhaps, God Willing, one day i will find a partner and a wife who feels similarly.
so this is an essay about why i, Tasshin Fogleman, do not want kids, at the time of this writing, the year of Our Lord 2025. it is not an essay about why U shouldn’t want kids, trying to persuade U as such. and it’s definitely not an invitation to persuade me otherwise. it’s just trying to describe clearly why i don’t want them.
No one should enter the family pattern unless one is as much called into it as I was called to my pilgrimage. Otherwise, there will be tragedy.
— Peace Pilgrim
i would be a good dad! i have a kind, loving heart and i would give abundant love to my children. i would enjoy many aspects of being a parent, if that came to pass.
people talk about children as a great spiritual path. i believe this, truly. i can see how having children would give U a sense of unconditional love, and the opportunity to grow developmentally through repeatedly solving problems ur family faced, through staying even when things are hard.
Being in the family pattern is not a block to spiritual growth, and in some ways it is an advantage. We grow through problem and being in the family pattern provides plenty of problems to grow on.
When people enter the family pattern they often have their first outgoingness from self-centeredness into family-centeredness. Pure love is a willingness to give without a thought of receiving anything in return, and the family pattern provides the first experience of pure love: a mother’s and father’s love for their baby.
i think parenting is something you should do whole-heartedly, with full commitment to giving love, care, attention, time, and energy to your children for at least twenty years each.
i want to devote that level of dedication to my life’s work instead.
you become an adult when you notice life has tradeoffs, when you deeply accept that as inescapable fact, and begin to intentionally choose which tradeoffs to make.
i have a very clear sense of my life’s work. i am currently stating my vow as, “to demonstrate the intimacy of fun and service.” i am doing that through The Service Guild, through its three major themes: Love, Curiosity, and Empowerment.
i would like to be an excellent leader, to hold a strong vision and foundation for The Service Guild. i would like to help our three existing departments to flourish, to be of tremendous, historic benefit in the world. i would like to build an organization that can sustain not only those departments, but future crews and themes. i pray for an Art Department, an Earth Department, a Peace Department.
i would like to be an excellent novelist, and an excellent musician. i would like to deepen my meditation practice, and my movement practice, and my visual art practice. i have many other aspirations. i would like to direct films one day, for example.
certainly it would be possible to be an excellent novelist and a parent. there have been many. certainly it would be possible to be an excellent musician and a parent. there have been many. but would it be possible to be an excellent novelist, an excellent musician, and a parent? to do all those things, and lead The Service Guild to the degree of excellence and historic impact I believe it can have, and also be a father?
even more importantly, would it be possible to be an excellent father, with abundant love and care and attention devoted to my children in the way i would want to, that i would feel a deep sense of duty and obligation to do so, and also do those other things, with the same degree of excellence and commitment? i think not.
there was a very brief moment in my life where i wanted children. i was twenty or twenty-one, and i had a fierce crush on a witty, vivacious Catholic woman several years my senior. i could be Catholic, I thought. we could have a big old family together. it would be magnificent.
that dream lasted about as long as my crush. since then, i’ve not especially wanted children.
whenever i date a woman, and fall in love, there’s a part of me that imagines what it would be like to have children with her. and yes, she would be a wonderful mother, we would have beautiful, good, kind children together. but then i remember who i am, and what i stand for, and what i am aiming for.
i have found it useful to view the organization I am creating, the crew I am steering—The Service Guild—as my child. i am putting the same life energy i might put into raising a child into bringing this organization and its vision into the world.
i have this deep sense that i have so much to give. i want to give every gift i can. i wish to live my life whole-heartedly, not half-heartedly. i wish to full-ass my life, not half-ass my life. if i am going to do something, i want to do it well, fully.
this, i would advise others of—not whether or not to have children, or to follow me in not having them. but rather, to do whatever they choose to do whole-heartedly. doing things half-heartedly is a spiritual disease, a poison, a vice. doing things whole-heartedly is a virtue, of great benefit to oneself and also to the world. parent whole-heartedly, or do not parent—there is no try.
I was not called into the family pattern. Most people are, by this thing we call falling in love, and then they act as a family unit. It was not my calling. There are a few people not called into the family pattern.
Thank U to my friends River, Jane, Bera, and Renee for reading drafts of this post and sharing their feedback. Obviously, my opinions expressed here are not expressing theirs.