Is a Family History of Mental Illness a Valid Reason to Avoid Parenthood?
via Sarah Silverman’s Quandary: Should Depressed People Avoid Having Children? | Healthland | TIME.com.
Comedian Sarah Silverman, who routinely courts controversy with her edgy humor, recently made an attention-getting statement of a more intimate nature: because of her personal and family history of depression, she declared that she would not have biological children, to avoid passing her mental problems to the next generation. “I don’t want kids,” she said on The Conversation with Amanda de Cadenet. “I know that I have this depression and that it’s in my family. Every family has their stuff but, for me, I just don’t feel strong enough to see that in a child.”
Pundits across the Internet praised Silverman for her honesty and sense of responsibility, duly citing research that shows that depression is deeply heritable. People with a parent or sibling with major depression are two to three times more likely than average to develop it themselves.
But what the commenters didn’t mention is that the same genes that can cause depression may also encourage the sensitivity and sensibility that gives Silverman her creative talent. Indeed, some research suggests that the same exact genetics that might lead to depression can also lead to mental superhealth, depending on whether a person endured high stress in early childhood or had a calmer, more nurturing environment.
I wrote about this subject during the Republican primaries here.
Updated: And related today from Kathy Shaidle: I Kid You Not: The Top 4 Reasons I Don’t Have Children
For the sake of us all, Sarah Silverman shouldn’t have children. Please.
Unfortunately, the same genes responsible for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder also the same genes that provide for high intelligence and creativity. Creative sorts have reduced levels of latent inhibition, so their brains don’t filter out information, and they can continue to work with material that normal brains don’t. Unfortunately, schizophrenics completely lose latent inhibition at the start of their illness–and it may well be that the data overload is what causes the problem.
I have go laugh at this sort of reasoning — it completely ignores the strong probability that medical science will find a solution…
Oh the horror! Perhaps we should all go drink the collective poisoned Kool-aid to get it over with. Newsflash Sarah, perfect people don’t exist. Shhh, don’t tell the liberals, it might hurt their feelings. Weren’t the Soviets obsessed with mental health.
why does one have to have a “valid reason to avoid parenthood” in order to avoid parenthood?
Perhaps because for all but the mentally or physically impaired, avoiding parenthood is self-centered, shifting the burden of their future consumption of social-welfare-state goods onto other people’s children, rather than buckling down to the work of contributing to the next generation themselves?
The childless enjoy the goods of society without contributing to society’s continuation after their own generation. So either you have a valid reason to avoid caring for children (there are plenty available for adoption for those with genetic defects they don’t want to pass on), or you’re a freeloader. One who’s quite obvious to all those doing the hard work of continuing society past their own lifespans.
So you don’t “need” a valid reason, if you don’t mind public mooching. The desire to have a valid reason is the desire to avoid other people thinking you’re a generational leech, who refuses to pay forward the benefits you received yourself.
When’s the last time a member of a holy order requiring abstinence and a life of service to others felt the need to justify their childlessness? Those kinds of folks never seem to feel the need to publicize a whole list of excuses for why they just couldn’t have kids.
Shades of A Bill of Divorcement (1932):
Hilary Fairfield (John Barrymore) and his daughter Sydney (Katherine Hepburn) renounce love and marriage because they are tainted by hereditary insanity.
Madness in the family was a frequent theme in Victorian fiction.
A more light-hearted take was Arsenic and Old Lace (1944):
Mortimer Brewster (Gary Grant) thinks he must not marry after learning that his sweet old aunts have been poisoning their boarders. Fortunately he discovers he’s not really a Brewster – he’s a sea-cook’s son!
sarah silverman admits to smoking marijuana before going on stage to enhance her stage performance. Marijuana is a cns depressant absorbed into the fat tissues in one’s body. She’s willing to add to her depressive state to get what she wants: a transient show with her at the center of the attention on a stage.
she doesn’t want kids b/c she doesn’t want kids. That’s fine. Even in Victorian England, I’ve read that 25% of women didn’t have children. When we think of Victorians, they’re all elbow-deep in infants- their own, their nieces and nephews, orphans, all of it.
Motherhood is a calling. When we say everyone should do it, or can do it, we end up like in the seventies, when everyone was an artist-remember the macrames, and coarse embroideries, and crying clown paintings?
I think the bar is a little high right now- perfect parenting only permitted. Adequate works. Really good works. Uneven works. You have to be alive to be able to go into therapy to whine about your parents, you know? Good enough is how most of us got here in the first place.