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The Paradox of Our Desire for Children
Paul van Tongeren
Today the problem of responsible parenthood is
frequently reduced to the question of whether or
not a couple actually desires to have a child. In
medical circles the same question is reduced even
further to a choice between the various forms of
medical assistance available to a couple who
might desire to have a child, but who have been
unsuccessful in their own efforts. As a counter-
balance to this narrowing process, it would seem
appropriate to ask a number of questions which
in fact ought to precede it: Why do we want
children in the first place? What are we really
looking for in our desire to have children? What
does it actually mean to have children?
In attempting to answer these questions, our
course will be a philosophical one, focusing on
the meaning of our actions and the reality which
surrounds us. Philosophy is unlikely to uncover
new facts in such an investigation; its task is
simply to examine the presuppositions present
prior to our interpretation of the data that emerge
from this. Our answers to the questions surround-
ing our desire for children and the meaning of
parenthood must come prior to the available facts
on the matter for the simple reason that it will
define the significance that these facts will have
for us.
The questions frequently raised in ethical,
pedagogical and juridical literature concerning the
rights of parents and children with respect to one
another must also precede our examination of the
facts. Rights and obligations always pertain to a
specific relationship. Knowledge of such rela-
tionships is presumed, therefore, when we go
about discussing the rights and obligations of the
parties involved. By exploring the presuppositions
which make our questioning and understanding of
the facts possible, philosophy endeavours to cre-
ate a space wherein we can look at things differ-
ently, a space where new and different possibili-
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Ethical Perspectives 2 (1995)1, p. 55
___________________________________
ties are opened up. While we admit that philoso-
phy is not going to uncover new facts, it will, if
it works, produce new possibilities for under-
standing the facts and give them meaning.
In this paper, I would like to begin by offering
a description of the love parents feel for their
children. In the second section I will attempt to
draw some conclusions from this description
concerning our desire to have the children we do
not yet have. In the final section I will endeavour
to situate these conclusions in a somewhat broad-
er context.
1. The Love of Parents for Their Children
It is quite remarkable that in the ‘ten com-
mandments’, the Bible requires children to love,
or at least respect, their parents (‘honour your
father and your mother...’ Ex. 20:12), while at the
same time there is no such commandment requir-
ing the same of parents towards their children.
Why is that? Perhaps it is because the love of
parents for their children is more obvious than
that of children for their parents. Yet such an
assumption, I think, would be rather strange.
Children depend on their parents, are entrusted to
their care for years and years, are indebted to
them for everything, even their very existence.
Nonetheless, there still appears to be a need for a
commandment which obliges children to honour
and respect their parents since it does not seem to
be an automatic response. On the other side of
the fence, however, parents must work hard for
their children, spend lots of time with them,
constantly indulge them, and so forth. And yet,
the care and love parents have for their children
does not need to be prescribed! How can that be
so? Perhaps this stems from the exceptional na-
ture of the relationship between parents and their
children. At the same time, perhaps that excep-
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tional relationship can reveal the actual motiva-
tion of our desire to have children in the first
place.
Let me elaborate this in a number of points of
comparison between the relationship parents can
have with their children, and the relationship
parents actually have with each other.
1.1. Objectivity
The relationship that partners have with one
another can be intimate and very intense. In fact,
the more intimate and intense that relationship is,
the more ‘perfect’ it is likely to be. Within this
relationship, however, there remains a distance
between the partners which allows for a greater
mutual ‘objectivity’ than is possible with their
children.
That distance, of course, can sometimes disap-
pear altogether. When partners are infatuated with
one another, there can be no question of objectiv-
ity. Yet even here we can detect the remains of
distance, although in a particular way: A man or
woman might remark that any comparisons be-
tween his or her actual partner and other potential
partners always turn out to the advantage of the
actual partner. He or she does make comparisons,
but one might say that such comparisons are
dishonest.
Where our children are concerned, however,
comparisons are impossible because we cannot
judge them objectively. This does not mean that
we always consider our children to be the best;
indeed, even this would be a comparative judge-
ment. Such comparisons are impossible precisely
because we cannot adopt an objective stance
towards our children. When we try to do so, it
only leads to absurdity. The play ‘Mrs Melanie
Klein’ by Nicholas Wright gives us a sense of the
perversity which can ensue when parents (in this
case the mother) attempt to treat their children
objectively.
Perhaps it is for the same reason that it is
socially unusual, and even risky, to declare how
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Ethical Perspectives 2 (1995)1, p. 56
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much you treasure your next door neighbour’s
spouse for his/her beauty, intelligence, strength of
character, etc. Yet at the same time, it would be
impossible to praise your neighbour’s children
enough! The former situation raises suspicions of
jealousy and competition, while the latter only
confirms the parents of those children in their
evident love for their offspring.
1.2. Choice?
No matter how deeply and how blindly in love
we might be, we are never so blind as to be
unable to observe and come to know certain
personal characteristics of the one we love. Al-
though our love cannot be accounted for or justi-
fied on an objective level, it is nonetheless this
particular person with his or her personal charac-
teristics that we are in love with, and not another.
In a certain sense, we are making a choice even if
it is a relative one. In making this choice, howev-
er, we are not completely free; we find ourselves
fascinated, enthralled, captivated by the other,
instead of being able to judge the other in a neu-
tral manner. When we want to explain why we
desire this person and not another, we can also
admit that the characteristics to which we appeal
are not always unique characteristics, but can be
found in several other individuals. At the same
time, we can admit that our choice of a partner is
not as evident in the eyes of other people as it is
to ourselves. There nevertheless remains some-
thing reasonable about our choice in selecting our
partner.
But where children are concerned, there is no
choice at all. We already love them before we
have even seen them. In addition, advances in
technology are gradually providing for the possi-
bility of anticipating a number of features of
future children, even, in principle, for the possi-
bility of certain features being ‘ready-to-order’
such as gender, colour of eyes, height, etc. These
features, however, are precisely the most external
characteristics, to which we would never dare to
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appeal if we had to account for our love for such
(made to measure) children. Parents would be
highly unlikely to say that they love their child
precisely because he or she has brown hair or is
more than 1.8 metres tall. If we are seriously
looking for reasons to account for our love, these
are more likely to be found in the child’s charac-
ter or in the things we have come to learn about
him or her through our daily experiences. No
matter how far technology advances, it will never
give us the chance to engage socially with our
children before they are born.
In the past, parents had little control over the
way children came into the world. Nowadays,
however, we are more (or better said more or
less, witness the number of ‘slips’ and
‘accidents’) in a position to decide when and
whether children are going to be born. In this
sense we have a greater opportunity to choose to
have children. The kind of choice we had in
choosing our partner, however, remains out of the
question; not because of some defect in technolo-
gy but because of the relationship we have with
our children. Even the children born out of a
decision to have children and at the moment we
decided to have them, even such ‘chosen for’
children remain a surprise.
1.3 Sophie’s Choice
We are all familiar with the famous scene from
the film version of the book Sophie’s Choice
where a mother has to decide which of her two
children would be spared and which would be left
to die at the hands of the Nazis. Everyone would
agree that this is the most central and inexpress-
ibly gripping scene in the book and film. Without
a doubt, choosing between one’s own children is
always an impossible task, and not only for those
in such an extreme and absurd situation as that
with which Sophie was confronted. Such choices
are simply never made, and if they are, they are
only apparent, taken back, as they are, with much
protest and feelings of guilt.
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Ethical Perspectives 2 (1995)1, p. 57
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Why is this the case? Would it be correct to
say that parents always love each of their children
equally? I don’t think so! No matter how much
they might say so, most parents simply do not do
it. Each of us has our preferences, even we par-
ents towards our children. The reason behind the
impossibility of choosing between our children is,
as far as I can see, because a bond exists between
us and our children which underlies all our pref-
erences, a bond which makes it impossible as
such for us as parents to distance ourselves from
our children in order to make such a choice pos-
sible. In other words, distance is a necessary
aspect of making a choice; we need to be able to
compare, weighing the different variants against
each other. Such a distance, with respect to our
children, would simply be out of the question.
I have already pointed out that the relationship
partners have with each other is a different mat-
ter. No matter how much two partners become
one, they remain in a position to judge each
other, to make comparisons with third parties.
Imagine that Sophie had to choose between her
husband and her children. Would such a choice
appear just as callous as the choice between her
children? Would we not consider it a heartless
mistake if she had chosen her husband over her
children?
1.4 ‘My Partner’ and ‘My Child’
We commonly use the possessive adjective ‘my’
both for our partner and our children. But does
this signify the same thing in each case?
Today many people tend to be reluctant to
speak so possessively of ‘my’ partner. We know
that we do not possess the other, preferring in-
stead expressions that indicate that our relation-
ship is not one-sided, but mutual, an equal part-
nership. You are no more ‘mine’ than I am
‘yours’. We, in fact, do not ‘belong’ to each other
at all; rather we work and live together. ‘My
wife’ should be understood as ‘my colleague’;
but even here there is a danger of sounding too
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possessive or too much as if I am placing myself
at the centre of the relationship.
Yet strangely enough, we do not exhibit such
reservations when it comes to our own children.
When we introduce someone as ‘my son’ or ‘my
daughter’, the opposite is likely to be true: we
experience no reservations whatsoever in using
the possessive adjective. How can that be? With
childern are we dealing with a relationship of
possession? Do we have the right in this case to
place ourselves at the centre of the relationship?
To a certain degree, of course, this is the case.
For an extended part of their lives children are
almost completely dependent upon their parents.
More importantly, they have their parents to
thank (or to blame) for their very existence.
Without me my partner would still exist (al-
though not as my partner); without me and my
partner, however, my children would not exist at
all.
Yet our children’s dependence upon us as
parents is only a very small part of what lies
behind our unabashed use of the phrase ‘my
children’. In spite of the depth of dependence
involved, their is no question of appropriation; I
can never say that ‘my children’ are my
‘property’. Furthermore, and perhaps more impor-
tantly, I cannot discard or dispose of my children.
Of course, I might lose them in a natural sense if
they die or leave me for another, or run away.
But even so, they remain ‘my children’. My part-
ner can cease to be ‘my partner’ and become ‘my
ex-partner’. My children, however, can never be-
come my ‘ex-children’. No matter how far away
they might manage to run, they remain ‘my’ run-
away children. At first glance it seems if we are
dealing here with a question of inalienable
ownership, something we own and cannot dispose
of.
Would it be correct, however, to say that I
have a guarantee of ownership on my children?
Again, the answer would have to be in the nega-
tive. In actuality, it is more a question of my
children possessing me than me possessing them.
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Ethical Perspectives 2 (1995)1, p. 58
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Moreover, property is something I have under my
control. Where my children are concerned, how-
ever, I do not have control, rather they control
me. There is no distance my children can run
from me in order to cease being ‘my’ children;
the same applies to me as well since there is no
distance I can run from my children in order to
cease being their parent. I can say that my chil-
dren are ‘mine’ because I cannot help it. When I
refer to them as ‘mine’, I do not place myself in
the centre, but simply recognise that I am bound
to them and that wherever they might go, I go
with them.
1.5. Mutuality?
Love for a partner is never only a one-way affair.
This is not to say, however, that partners always
love each other with equal intensity. It would be
wrong to deny that there are love relationships
which will remain crossed and unrequited. Fortu-
nately, such relationships are the exception, if not
numerically, then certainly in that they are experi-
enced as failures. Love demands mutuality in the
same way as friendship does (as Aristotle pointed
out long ago). Without mutuality, without some
kind of equal return, love is likely to wither
away.
Is mutuality also a necessary aspect of our
love for our children? Perhaps, but certainly in a
very peculiar way. In the first place, there can be
no talk of equal return where our children are
concerned. There remains an essential inequality
between parents and children in the sense that
while parents give life to their children, children
can only provide continued posterity to their
parents, never life as such. Apart from this, how-
ever, before children are in a position to love
their parents, the same parents will have to have
made an enormous ‘investement’ in their off-
spring. Even before children are born, parents are
already amassing considerable costs and making
painful decisions (cancelling holidays, making
house alterations, giving up careers, shelving
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future plans, etc.). There is no guarantee whatso-
ever that such costs will be repaid in equal terms.
In fact, after the child is born, parental costs in
terms of time, money, labour and sacrifice are
likely to increase to such an extent that repay-
ment, if possible at all, would require many
years. It is hardly surprising that research done a
couple of years ago showed that, in general,
people with children tended to live shorter lives
and could not be considered happier individuals
than those without children.
I am well aware that fathers and mothers
consider themselves richly rewarded by their
infant’s first smile, or by the first ‘mama’ or
‘papa’ their baby manages to gurgle; but this only
reinforces the inequality of their relationship!
How so? How can we still talk of ‘love’ in a
relationship which is so extremely one-sided? It is
my belief that we can talk of love not in spite of
the apparent inequality, but indeed because of it.
Our relationship with our partner might be
described in terms of a ‘contract’. We tend to
think about it in such terms when things are not
going so well with the relationship. It is evident
that more and more couples are terminating their
contract because they feel that the balance be-
tween the partners has been disturbed: the rela-
tionship involves ‘too much effort’ or seems to
‘give little in return’; couples feel ‘short-
changed’, etc. Arriving at such a situation implies
that at a given moment we became aware that our
relationship was, in fact, conditional. Perhaps its
conditions were never expressly stated at the
beginning, and have only come to the fore after
repeated frustration, but where our children are
concerned, there can be no talk of conditions
since they simply do not exist in this regard.
In short, our children are the only ones we
love unconditionally. This does not mean to say,
however, that our children cannot disappoint us.
Our children, and what they ultimately make of
their lives, can fall short of our expectations, but
we would never consider this as a ‘breach of
contract’. We continue to love our children even
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Ethical Perspectives 2 (1995)1, p. 59
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when they fall short, and even when that love
turns into anxiety, or possibly even anger. There
nevertheless remains a significant difference be-
tween the anger we feel towards ungrateful chil-
dren and the regret we might feel concerning our
choice of partner.
In successful relationships the difference is
even more apparent. What we might consider
personal sacrifice with regard to our partner
would not be called sacrifice at all where our
children are concerned. We would not expect a
partner to reciprocate everything we have done
for him or her, but our children are even allowed
to forget us completely... as they might do when
they tell Santa Claus how grateful they are for the
gifts we bought them or when they give all their
love to their own partner later in life.
2. The Fervent Desire for Children
and Its Paradox
If what we have been saying is true, and if it
reveals something about what we really want
when we desire to have children, then it becomes
clear why people are prepared to do almost any-
thing in order to become parents. If a child, and
only a child, can constitute such an extraordinary
and incomparable partner then it would not be
strange to say that a child can appear as the
fulfilment of his or her parents’ life and that lack
of success in a couple’s efforts to have children
can cause an emptiness which can never be filled,
certainly not by ‘paying more attention to the
home or our pets or our friends and neighbours’.
Against this background, the common lack of
understanding between those who have children
and those who have unwillingly remained child-
less also becomes understandable. Those who are
parents are not always or completely conscious of
the depth of the bond that exists between them
and their children. Unaware, they talk about the
many cares and concerns they have to endure in
raising their offspring. Such concerns, however,
are not likely to distract those who are childless
___________________________________
from their perhaps purer and more resolute under-
standing of the value of having children.
It is clear, nevertheless, that many people who
really want to have children will do anything and
spare nothing to attain their goal, or at least
uncover the cause of their ‘failure’ and try to
correct it. Where medical technology is able to
offer more and more possibilities to redress such
situations, the pressure is likely to grow because
every increased possibility does not reduce the
not-yet-possible, but actually increases it. It is
here that we encounter the paradox referred to in
the title of this article.
The paradox which concerns me comes to the
fore when the manner in which we want some-
thing is in conflict with the nature of the thing
we want. As far as I can see, this is what happens
not only when we desire children (i.e. ‘would like
to have children’) but also when we try, in and
through that desire, to get rid of the uncertainty
and the lack of knowledge surrounding what we
desire, or when we pretend to be in control of our
desire at the cost of the gratuitous nature of what
we desire. This can take place in a variety of
ways.
Firstly, it happens when we think we know
exactly what we want; when we fancy ourselves
to be absolutely certain as to what we desire in
our desire for children.
Secondly, it happens when we think we can
choose to have children as if we were choosing a
holiday destination, i.e. when we imagine it to be
a question of weighing up alternative possibilities
which both partners are free to present and about
which both partners can reach a conclusion after
assessing the advantages and disadvantages.
Thirdly, it happens when we try to enforce the
fulfilment of our desire by some technical means,
that is, either by trying to determine the precise
moment of birth (let alone any attempt to manip-
ulate the physical form the child will take) or by
pretending that by arranging that a child will be
born, we are completely forcing the fulfilment of
our desire.
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Ethical Perspectives 2 (1995)1, p. 60
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I refer to this as a paradox because it seems to
me that the very nature of what we desire here
resists any such manipulation and control. In my
opinion, the essence of everything we have said
so far about the meaning of having children is
that the meaning itself has to do with matters we
ourselves are unable to create or determine. The
relationship I have with my child is not a rela-
tionship in which I create myself and which
offers me control from the beginning. More than
any other relationship, and no matter how strong
my initial choice to have children, my relation-
ship with my child is one which recedes and
withdraws from me. Even with the knowledge
that I made a choice to have children, I did not
choose to have this child. At the same time, the
exceptional nature of my love for children is not
just for children in general, but for this child, for
my child. While my child is more ‘mine’ than
any partner or colleague could ever be, he or she
is concurrently more ‘other’ than they. Firstly,
my child withdraws from me more than my part-
ners or colleagues because I can leave the latter
but not the former. In the second place, and here
we are dealing with something quite exceptional,
the child who withdraws from me does so as my
child: my child is ‘mine’ in a manner beyond my
control. My child is the transcendent in me, the
beyond in me. My child is immanent transcen-
dence par excellence.
Concerning fatherhood, Cornelis Verhoeven,
the Dutch philosopher has written: “While father-
hood in our day and age no longer seems to be a
question of fate or instinct, but has become a
freely chosen task, this does not mean that it has
become something entirely within the reach of
human activity and rationality. We might oversee
the initial decision but the beginning, middle and
end of fatherhood is a surprise before which we
remain, for the most part, passive.”1
The attempt to eradicate the element of sur-
prise through force is just as paradoxical as our
behaviour in the ghost house at a carnival. We
pay money for a chance to ride on the train and
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be scared. We are, of course, never really scared
because only surprises can scare us, i.e. only
those things we did not stage or manipulate for
ourselves. It might also be compared to those
who keep themselves awake by their own fervent
efforts to fall to sleep. But those who would like
to fall asleep need to give sleep the chance to
take them by surprise. In this sense a kind of
passivity must take the place of activity.
But note well, neither contraception nor artifi-
cial fertilisation are excluded by what I have been
saying; they are simply relativised. What we
achieve with such means is not yet the fulfilment
of our actual desire. What we desire when we
desire to have children essentially invovles some-
thing we cannot manipulate, something wherein
children and our relationship with them with-
draws from us. Perhaps the most appropriate
attitude towards the children we desire to have is
one which manifests the awareness of non-manip-
ulable transcendence. Just like our efforts to get
to sleep, an essential gulf remains between what
we can do and what we want to achieve by what
we do.
I am of the opinion that the more aware we
become of this gulf, and the more aware we be-
come of the real desire behind our desire to have
children, the more we will be able to cope with
both our unwanted inability to have children as
well as the children we did not want or plan for.
The fact, however, that both sets of circum-
stances continue to confront us with more and
more difficulties is undoubtedly due to a wide
array of elements in our socio-cultural context.
By way of conclusion, then, let me briefly take a
closer look at this context.
3. Activity and Passivity
Our inability to be passive is most likely due, to
a greater or lesser extent, to the success of our
activity, because our ability to manipulate and
control is constantly increasing. This also delin-
eates the problem of coming to a practical con-
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Ethical Perspectives 2 (1995)1, p. 61
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clusion. Our intention should not be to deny or
limit our technical abilities by force. Where it is
possible to make the world a better place (i.e.
more in tune with our real desires), then we
should certainly attempt to do so. We will only
be able to discover those real desires, however, if
we avoid concentrating exclusively on what we
ourselves can create, manipulate or control.
The disappearance of a self-evident integration
and practice of religion is also part of the ques-
tion here. Religion trains us, as it were, in dealing
with that which we cannot create, manipulate, or
control. Religion is the ideal context for learning
to deal with that which is other than ourselves
and our creations.2 Transcendence is the techni-
cal term for that which withdraws from us. The
divine, the holy, is the ‘concretisation’, the repre-
sentation of the manifest transcendent. In a secu-
larised culture the development of our human
capacity to relate to transcendence comes under
threat.
Furthermore, individualism reinforces our
tendency to economise on our relationships. Un-
derstanding ourselves as ‘separate’ individuals
leads to the problem of forming community. “Wir
Alle sind kein Material mehr für eine Gesell-
schaft: das ist eine Wahrheit, die an der Zeit
ist!”3 wrote Nietzsche. In the modern period,
social and political philosophy solved that prob-
lem by permitting individuals to enter into a
contract: agreement or accord became the cement
of social life. This implied that society based on
individual self-interest would lead to an agree-
ment via a defined calculus of given conditions.
Real community, however, cannot emerge natu-
rally from such an agreement. The problem is
reinforced when our understanding of community
as a relationship of agreement is not only applied
to political institutions, but also more and more to
so-called natural communities. Instead of
choosing for the family, we can now choose for
other forms of community. Likewise, the bond
we have with our partner can be easily seen as a
contract which can be terminated under certain
___________________________________ ___________________________________

circumstances. This, however, does not make it
any easier to observe and value the true worth of
that which seems so essential in the bond we
have with our children.
Moreover, individualism and activism call for
rights. On the one hand, these rights set the
boundaries of individualism and activism (deter-
mining the point where the legitimate confines of
another’s individualism and activism begin and
end), while on the other, they provide a stimulus
within those confines for a person to do whatever
he or she wants, create whatever he or she can,
etc.
In speaking of the rights of individuals we run
the risk of misjudging the relationship within
which rights as such can have true existence. The
obligations of a child towards his or her parents
cannot continue to have any meaning detached
from the love or friendship within which they
came to exist. Similarly, the significance of hav-
ing children cannot be expressed in the form of a
right to have children.4
This does not mean to imply, however, that
those who want to have children, but who have
encountered difficulties in the process, should be
denied the right to medical intervention, nor that
their search for the causes of their inability to
fulfil their desire for having children, and their
endeavours to resovle this, should be obstructed.
It is, of course, an unavoidable fact that we
will search within ourselves for the cause of our
unfulfilled desire to have children, and this with
an eye to removing that cause. Such a course of
events is unavoidable not only because medical
technology will tend to stimulate the search, but
also because we are always looking for the cause
of things that happen which we cannot accept,
even when our efforts are evidently pointless
because the effects of that cause are irreversible.
This search for causes, however, should not be
understood per se in terms of activist efficiency;
it also has a symbolic and consolatory effect, i.e.
it is the way we slowly but surely come to terms
with fate. Those involved in assisting in the
search for causes and explanations of infertility
might do well to be more aware of this additional
function. Instead of the security sought in some
technical assurance of the fulfilment of our desire
for having children, we find consolation in the
sense of ‘making sure’ and ‘making strong’,
strong enough to bear even the non-fulfilment of
our desires.

Notes

1. C. VERHOEVEN, De resten van het vaderschap. Beschouwingen over de levensloop. Ambo, Baarn, 1975, p. 44.
2. P. VAN TONGEREN, ‘Morality, Transcendence, Conception of Life’ in A.W. MUSSCHENGA, et al. (eds.), Morality,
Worldview, and Law. Van Gorcum, Assen, 1992, p. 39-51.
3. Friedrich NIETZSCHE, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, Samtliche Werke: kritische Studienausgabe, Vol. 3, München,
Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1980, p. 356.
4. J. ENGLISH, ‘What do Grown Children Owe their Parents?’ in O.O’NEIL, W. RUDDICK (eds.), Having Children.
Philosophical and Legal Reflections on Parenthood. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1979, p. 351.

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Ethical Perspectives 2 (1995)1, p. 62