When I’m asked why I never had kids, my standard answer is, I’ve spent my life in mortal fear of being tethered to another human in a manner from which I can’t legally walk away if I choose.
That’s an honest answer, but it’s not the complete one. The second part, which I always leave out, is that I was petrified of having a tard. There’s no history of tardiness in my family. But no matter your family history, having kids is always a roll of the DNA dice, and I couldn’t face the possibility of having a child who would be, shall we say, more work and less payoff.
Yes, that’s a terribly unflattering thing to admit. But it’s true.
Folks say to me, “Dave, you’re 54 with no one to take care of you as you wither; you shoulda had kids.” Fair enough, but I’m also not guardian to some drooler who’ll be a dependent for life.
I chose not to roll them dice. The notion of inseverable legal responsibility, already a fear, was bad enough. But the chance, no matter how slim, of having a child with problems that become a lifelong burden for me was an outcome I wouldn’t risk.
It’s a coping mechanism that’s humane, but more important, practical. There’s no changing the reality of the child’s condition, so put the best face on it. “That millstone is a blessing! That albatross is actually a majestic eagle.”
When a problem is intractable, when “fix it” isn’t an option, you cope, and sometimes that means detaching from reality.
Last year gave us two youthful mass shooters who came from good conservative MAGA stock. The Illinois Independence Day shooter’s dad is a prominent local GOP gun rights politician, and the Colorado gay nightclub shooter’s grandfather is a prominent Southern California Trumpist assemblyman. In the Colorado case the biological dad was a “based” MMA Joe Rogan-type rightist (and porn actor…does that make him more based, or less?).
Both families spawned—and coddled—mentally ill kids who went on to slaughter a bunch of innocents.
It’s easy for conservatives to say “the solution to mass shootings is lock up the crazies.”
Easy to say…until it’s your family. Until it’s your son or grandson exhibiting the symptoms of mental unwellness. “Lock the wacko in a padded room” sounds fine until that wacko is little Bobby, little sweetiekins, the bright-eyed boy who used to sit on your lap on Christmas Day with joy in his eyes. You remember what he was, so you can’t abandon hope that with enough love, he can be that again.
That’s the coping mechanism of parents of mentally ill kids. And it’s why the mass shooter problem has no final solution. Conservatives can blithely opine “once a young person shows signs of potentially dangerous mental illness, impound ’em.” But every youthful mass killer had someone who was trying to hold on to them, to “fix” them. Someone who wouldn’t give up. And you can deride those people all you want, but if your genetic dice had come up “schizo kid,” you’d be unwilling to relinquish the wacko to a padded room too.
That’s why the mentally ill shooter problem is intractable. Parents saddled with defectives must live with the hope that the condition is reversible. And most of the time they’ll live with that hope in the face of all evidence to the contrary. Because clinging to the dream that lil’ bright-eyes Bobbykins might return is the only way they can handle the burden.
