I have a question about planning for the future in light of the recent presidential election and the prospect of potentially having a dictatorship in America. I’m a 33-year-old woman. For a long time I’ve wanted to start a family. I’m about to start investing substantial money into family planning. In view of climate change, overpopulation and now the result of the election, I’ve started to wonder if maybe it’s just not meant to be. There are so many wars going on, and with America turning isolationist, I fear for the world. It feels like everything is falling apart; there’s so much uncertainty, and it doesn’t feel safe anymore.
Knowing everything we know about the strain that will be placed on our democracy, a gutting of climate protections and climate-change policy and threats to women’s rights, is it right to be wanting/planning to start a family? Or should I plan to adopt instead? Am I being overly cautious, or is it valid to reconsider? — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist:
A hundred years ago, you would have been bringing a child into a country where perhaps a majority of people lived around or below the poverty line, where, as W.E.B. Du Bois wrote in 1926, “we continually have mobs fighting and doing unutterable things because at bottom, men are afraid of being unable to earn a respectable living,” where stepping on a tack could prove fatal, where environmental regulation as we understand it hardly existed, where segregation was widely entrenched and reproductive rights were scarcely to be found. In the meantime, Stalin was consolidating his power in the U.S.S.R., Mussolini was eliminating forces of opposition in Italy and Hitler was rebuilding the Nazi Party in Germany. Still, people had kids, and so here you are, able to look back in horror at the way things used to be.
You cannot, of course, guarantee that any children of yours will have a brilliantly successful life. For all the challenges we face, however, I’m not convinced that raising a happy and flourishing child in this country is bound to be so hard that it would be unfair to bring a new person into the world here. Many people will disagree with you about what the next four or 40 or, indeed, 400 years are likely to hold. (If you remain confident in your predictions, you could certainly join the estimated one to two million families waiting to adopt — a large multiple, in any case, of the number of children available for adoption.) As the saying goes, the future hasn’t yet been written. The question is how you feel about your progeny playing any role in writing it. If having a child is always a form of hope, not having one because you’re sure what lies ahead can, I fear, be a form of hubris.
Readers Respond
The previous question was from a reader who was annoyed by a well-intentioned friend. She wrote: “I have an 85-year-old neighbor who is a sweet friend and caring person. My issue is that she is very religious and I’m not at all. She prays for me and says it in person, texts and emails for even the most minor of situations. I’ve told her my view of religion and that she doesn’t need to pray for me. She said she has to, otherwise she’s not following the Bible. I’m trying to ignore this but it’s really bothering me that she can’t respect my wishes.”
In his response, the Ethicist noted: “The only reason you give for objecting to her prayers is that she has failed to comply with your wishes. Yet I don’t find that she has thereby treated you with disrespect, because I don’t see that you have the right to have those wishes complied with. You seem to be asking her not to do something she thinks there are compelling reasons to do. I’d have thought that this was disrespectful. So you’re not entitled to insist that she stop including you in her prayers. What you can fairly ask is simply that she refrain from informing you about them. Still, instead of requiring that your octogenarian neighbor change her ways, I wonder whether you might change yours — and learn to accept this woman for who she is, hearing her prayers as a sincere expression of her loving feelings toward you.” (Reread the full question and answer here.)
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I’m someone of deep faith who believes that prayer at the very least changes the heart of the person doing the praying to be more open and loving (and may do more, though proof is impossible to come by). I have learned that it is just fine to pray for others “in secret” when I know they do not subscribe to my particular understanding of Christian faith. The letter writer’s neighbor does, indeed, care about her; her prayers can be kept quietly in her heart. The advice to ask the neighbor to refrain from telling the letter writer about the prayers is kind and respectful to her beliefs. Someday the letter writer may be glad to know that someone cared so much, even if they never find reason to pray for themselves. — Ruth
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I had the same problem with my 89-year-old mother who is frantic because she doesn’t want her son to burn in hell for eternity for being an atheist. I told her that if she thinks that prayer is actually effective then to please pray that I become religious. That pretty much took care of it. — Shaheen
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I agree with the Ethicist’s response. But what if, instead of saying she was praying for her, the neighbor said she hoped the letter writer met with success in all of her endeavors and lived a happy fulfilling life? Isn’t that really saying the same thing as saying she is praying for her? Presumably that is the outcome she hopes will result. Perhaps we should focus on the spirit (no pun intended) of our neighbors’ wishes for us rather than on their particular worldview. There will be very little good will out there if we can only share it with those whose worldviews align with ours. — John
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Count me among those who are disappointed by the Ethicist’s giving a pass to religious beliefs held by an octogenarian. I am deeply upset by this admonition: “You seem to be asking her not to do something she thinks there are compelling reasons to do. I’d have thought that this was disrespectful.” As a nonbeliever myself, I have always been exasperated by this bias in American discourse. Why, simply because someone believes something to be true, a conviction with no empirical evidence to support it, should the rest of us honor religious faith as incontestable? The existence of god can neither be proved nor disproved. The existence of multiple organized religions, on the other hand, is a fact, as is the assertion that all of them had a moment in history when they began, when human beings invented them. Yet we nonbelievers are expected to regard these human artifacts as divine and politely defer to those who choose to honor tenets and practices of their particular religious affiliation. As an octogenarian myself, I take offense at the Ethicist’s implication that at this age I cannot process new information, information that might challenge what I have taken to be true throughout my life. For a so-called secular society, we seem disturbingly unable to rid ourselves of deference to dogma. I would not advise the letter writer to engage her neighbor in a philosophical-cum-scientific debate, but would hope the Ethicist could respect her position rather than rebuking her for holding it. — Katherine
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Following a medical emergency, the philosopher (and atheist) Daniel C. Dennett wrote: “What, though, do I say to those of my religious friends (and yes, I have quite a few religious friends) who have had the courage and honesty to tell me that they have been praying for me? I have gladly forgiven them, for there are few circumstances more frustrating than not being able to help a loved one in any more direct way. I confess to regretting that I could not pray (sincerely) for my friends and family in time of need, so I appreciate the urge, however clearly I recognize its futility.” Dennett’s essay is not unrelievedly gracious. He admits to suppressing an urge to ask whether these friends had sacrificed a goat, too. — Paul
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