Mental Health Expert Doesn't Understand Christianity

With an opening paragraph that summarizes best as "the top five most superficial, surface-level reasons people become atheists", it's easy to start rolling your eyes as soon as you start to read this article. Don't worry, though, because at no point will your eyes get any rest. The article continues to portray a misunderstanding of Biblical reality so unbearable, it's no wonder that anyone who has these hangups about their former faith left it in the first place. 

The first unhealthy, allegedly Christianity-induced thought pattern is "all or nothing thinking", wherein the concept that "no sin is too small to send you to Hell" is causing former believers to go too hard at work, which sounds much more like a works-based salvation problem, but why would I try to make sense of this hot mess of a conceptual leap that's already based off of flimsy, incorrect theology. Apparently working 20 hours of overtime a week is some kind of black-and-white thinking issue. Regardless, the real crime here is a complete misconception of what "sends" one to Hell. It even further exacerbates its floppy conundrum with a statement that contains two truths, but has them both jammed together in an incoherent way. "Jesus only saves because He was perfect." Yes... Only Jesus saves, and He is perfect, but these don't cause each other. So what's the Bible actually say about these things?

The only thing the author gets right is, yes, there is either Heaven or Hell and nothing in-between. To argue against this in the examination of "all or nothing thinking", though, is absurd. These refer to locations, relative to their presence or absence of God Almighty. You are either in the presence of God, or you are not. There is no grey area between Heaven and Hell because there is no quasi-"Shrödingers God" type location to go to. Of course, the vast majority of even the lukewarm-est of Christians should, at this point in modern Christian theological discourse, be quite aware that it's not sin that sends one to Hell, but failure to accept Jesus as one's savior. What some may not be fully aware of is that it wasn't just that Jesus never committed a sin, but that His conception was immaculate, that makes Him free of sin and thus perfect, and able to be the ultimate and final sacrifice needed to satisfy God's wrath. 

Immaculate doesn't mean "no sex involved," - you've probably at least once heard immaculate used to describe a cleaning job that was done so well as to not leave a single speck of dirt behind. "Immaculate conception" refers to a conception that was, in layman's terms, spotlessly clean. The manner in which He was conceived made Him born without sin. Denominations disagree about what this exactly means, with Catholics believing Mary herself was also free of sin, but the fact of the matter is that Jesus was exempt from the original sin of Adam. Thus, even if, somehow, a human being from start to finish, never committed a sin, they are still born of the original sin of Adam and still require salvation from Jesus. The very state of our existence is tainted by sin (something the author takes issue with later), so there's actually little need to worry about "even the smallest sin" sending you to hell - it's actually much simpler. The only unforgivable sin is "blasphemy against the holy spirit". Some people believe this translates more or less into the only unforgivable sin being the denial of Jesus specifically. However you feel about it, it's clear for multiple reasons that, theologically, the whole concept here is a mess.

Second of all, only Jesus saves, but not because He is perfect. He was, and is, (and always will be) perfect, but He saves because he chose voluntarily to be a sinless sacrifice to close the gap between humanity and God, allowing us to be with God through Jesus. These are, as we see, very different justifications for why, specifically, only Jesus saves. Only fleeting remnants of the herein accused "Christian" reasons for an all-or-nothing thought complex are actually present in our theology.

Next up we have the apparently uniquely Christian concept of Us vs. Them complex. Obviously that was sarcastic, since "Good guys and bad guys" is basically in vogue at the moment when it comes to the vast majority of our society, unless this author is going to try to convince me that nearly every politician, pundit, and political activist is an "ex-vangelical". The "us vs. them" trap is easy to fall into, and unfortunately Christians do, too, but likely not because of what's in the bible. What's worse is, not only is this laughably nowhere near a uniquely Christian idea, it's - yet again - not even a Christian idea to start. 

Most starkly of course is the concept that Christians view sinners as our Bad Guys camp, which would then imply that we would scorn, hate, and avoid them - but of course the bible has plenty of passages about praying for your enemies, loving people who hate you, and trying desperately to save sinners from the eternal torment of Hell. The bible tries very hard to free us from the prolific us vs. them complex, forcing us to see our enemies as God's beloved children, just as we are. Seems a lot more complex of a relationship than "good guys and bad guys".

To make matters even more laughable, we see the line in this paragraph, "Christianity offers no mental model in which people are complicated and imperfect but basically decent," which I laughed at in real time when I first read it. People being complicated and imperfect while desiring to be good, decent people and do what's right is such a frequent theme in the bible that I'm not sure this person is talking about the right religion. I'm not sure what these people think they converted from, but it wasn't Christianity.

This next one is an extension of the previous, wherein the argument is that, due to our awareness of our own failings, we feel we are never good enough, since we are supposed to be like Jesus, who is perfect. This may be the only arguably valid concern in this article as actually being a potential side effect of Christian thought, but it is nonetheless still not biblically reasonable. We coach against this destructive mindset with poignant reminders that, as simple as it may be, God loves us. Yes, He wants us to work to be more like His son, but He loves us still, even when we fail. He is not a preoccupied, busy working father who only notices us when we are succeeding and excelling, who we feel compelled to compete against ourselves for his attention and love. At our worst and most lowly, God is there with us and loves us.

Our fourth presumably Christian hangup is called "hyperactive guilt detection", which seems fully to be the same category as the previous issue and should probably have been the prequel to the third point, if I had to be the editor for this piece. Ultimately the issue being explained here is that doing morally wrong things causes one to feel guilty, so as one continues to do morally wrong things, it weighs down their conscious. I'm trying to figure out why that's a bad thing so I'll go out on a limb here and assume that, because the author disagrees with objective moral good, that they are insisting here that it's bad to continually feel bad for doing things that are bad. We will just have to chalk this one up to pagan shenanigans and move on, then.

The fifth one is a classic, so I'll try to avoid dedicating too many paragraphs as to why this tired old argument simply must be hung up to dry for the final time. While this piece does not state outright the argument against "sexual repression", it would be silly to think they don't believe in it. Essentially, the argument is that keeping the aspects of your sexual desires that are morally wrong under control, or "repressed", causes neuroses and generally bad, negative side effects. It's much better, the argument goes, to express your traditionally-considered-wrong sexual desires, or else it will build up and explode in some modernly-considered-wrong way.

Let's clear up a few things first - homosexual and premarital relations are as morally wrong in biblical Christianity as nonconsensual, pedophilic, and adulterous relations are - it's just the first two that modernists want us to consider as socially and morally acceptable. Then again, this particular author may disagree since they bizarrely use the commandment that tells you to not bang your neighbor's wife as an example of that mean ol' biblical sexuality. Given the fact that all sexual relations outside of heterosexual marriage are considered morally wrong in Christianity, but only half or so are considered morally wrong by secular standards, by what standard exactly do we base rape and the like as being acceptable to repress? Surely the author does not condone seeking sexual relations with minors, and yet somehow the concept of sexual repression is bad and will hurt people. What we have here is an argument not worth having unless this question can be answered - and don't fool yourself, the answer has nothing to do with "consenting adults can do whatever they want in their own bedrooms". Repressing a sexual desire to rape is analogous to repressing a sexual desire for your consenting boyfriend or girlfriend, in regards to the concept that repression of those desires will cause harm. The question is why is repressing a sexual desire to rape or to fornicate with 8 year olds not only acceptable but necessary, while other forms of sexual repression are evil and bad and will hurt the one repressing them? Without an answer, the "sexual repression" argument against biblical Christianity is nothing but vapid self-serving hogwash.

The next concern makes little sense, frankly, so I can only suspect the author has some kind of experience with people feeling this way in order to make a claim that anyone does this. The concern here is a strange take on the "build your treasures up in heaven" mindset wherein the person fails to also take joy in enjoyable things in life. The line "small every-day wonders that comprise the center of joy in mindful living" invokes thoughts of the exact sort of things that Christians emphasis daily, particularly when you use a term like "mindful living" which is a cornerstone of Christian culture. 

Perhaps I'm giving them too much credit, here, and the problem is that the things they think people should be "enjoying" here on earth aren't wholesome pleasures like spending time with family, gardening, playing a team sport, baking with your grandmother, stopping your busy life for five minutes to sit on the porch and enjoy the sunset, and so forth. If so, they did a fanciful job of hiding this behind a term like "everyday wonders", as those same everyday wonders are the things that we behold and give thanks and praise to the Lord for providing us. We typically pray before every meal, for heaven's sake, an act that regularly reminds me how blessed I am to eat such delicious food, increasing my enjoyment of it so much more - these are the everyday wonders of mindful Christian living that we take great joy in. Nothing in my life has come close to shattering my deeply embedded cynicism as effectively as my trust in and love for God. It is that very Christian outlook on life that grants me a deep, rich appreciation for the smallest things on this earth, the amazing miracle all around us, God's beautiful creation.

No, surely this concern is, in fact, referring to "everyday wonders" like hedonistic indulgence in self-destructive vices. There is no other explanation, aside from pure, unadulterated incompetence. 

This next one is not necessarily wrong so much as a potential side effect of coming to terms with the whole truth of Christ. "Fear of apocalypse" surely comes with the territory, but it is again a manifestation of poor emphasis on accurate theology. We should not fear the end times. The end times, the apocalypse, is the end of earth, but not the end of time. Through the bible, we are instructed not to look for the antichrist, but to look for Jesus. The return of Jesus is emphasized as a good thing and we do much unnecessary worrying when we focus on the "apocalypse" part.

However, that isn't even the biggest spot of contention here for this section. The absolute most laughable concept, here, is the idea that fearing a cataclysmic, horrible end is uniquely Christian. Our culture today is never-ending doomsday prophecies, with just about everyone convinced that - one way or another - the world as we know it is ending, and soon. Climate change alarmists are predicting that earth will be uninhabitable by 2050 - that's a lot sooner and more concrete a fear than the Christian apocalypse deadline of "we don't know". My generation is so consumed by morbid confidence in a quickly approaching dystopia-slash-Armageddon that it's basically a running joke. The most ironic part is that, without the redemption arch of Jesus' return in the mix, secular doomsday fears are an order of magnitude more hopeless and dreadful than the biblical end times. In those scenarios, there is no paradise awaiting us - just total annihilation and subsequent nothingness.

The next one is yet another shining example of this list's awkward habit of naming things that are super common in secular culture and then saying they're uniquely Christian neuroses. "Idealizing leaders" as something Christians specifically have issues with is a new one - I'd argue this is more of a general thing most people gravitate towards - a good ol' classic "are you a leader or a follower" type situation. Yes, many Christians incorrectly idolize human leaders, but this is specifically something they should not do. Actual biblical guidance tells us to, in short, not trust flawed humans, but only trust God. There is no parallel here between our commandment to trust God and any sort of mental hangup over idolizing a human leader. "No king but King Jesus". The bible does not pull any punches describing the human leaders at the time - and all of their horrible atrocities. Nowhere will you find support for the idea of idealizing a human leader.

Of course, again, we must uncomfortably point out that this is not unique to Christians - there are bobbleheads of politicians and supreme court justices, after all. Of course, fixation on the "conservative" Trump cult is the flashiest talking point lately, but the idea that every Trump sycophant is also a devout Christian is simply a false concept. Most Christians raised quite the eyebrow at the trotting out of a literal golden statue of Trump at CPAC, and our constant reminders and basic worldview concept of the fact that human beings are flawed and imperfect leads most actual Christians toward remaining sane and stable as our associates grow closer and closer to the concept of Trump as a savior. Jesus as the only one who saves is, quite literally as well as figuratively, a bedrock upon which we can remain grounded.

Secular folks do not have this kind of grounding, allowing their devotion to ebb and flow as charismatic leaders, promising all of the social change they desire, rise up and battle for the spotlight (this is how the antichrist will gain power, loved by the world - not Christians). Of course, I must mention, for fairness and context, that the worship of politicians is somewhat uniquely American - many people from other countries comment on how strange it is. Unfortunately, no one from any country is safe from the risk of attaching to a leader or charismatic figure as long as they lack a rock upon which to stand and place their trust. Again, it is ironically the Christian worldview alone that protects from the mental problem described here.

This next one I find quite interesting, described as "desperately seeking simplicity". The concept here is that a biblical understanding of our world creates quite an easy to follow set of instructions for what is right and wrong. The main point of contention here is that the author insists the world is much more complex than what a biblical worldview allows. The problem here is not that the biblical worldview is simple, but a concern that Christians would supposedly seek simplicity where there is none. The main flaw in this concept is the idea that Christianity does not contain any murky situations that require nuance and deep, complex consideration. 

I'm sure you can guess, but that assessment is wrong. Yes, there are aspects that are simple, but there are aspects of life that are simple. There are, in fact, many things that are astoundingly simple. Just as many things in biblical understanding are simple and many things are complex, so it is in a general sort of way, about everything. I must also take a quick moment to point out, that surely this list item should have been closer in position to its counterparts, items 2, 3, and 4. Indeed, this seems at best to be just another branch of the "good guys vs bad guys" point of contention from above. However, I'll address it as if it were its own case.

Compartmentalization is a problem Christians can have, but so can anyone else. Indeed, the failure to consider things as parts of one whole is a common ailment of the general population. The real issue here is not of a failure for Christians to consider "complex moral questions" but the actual point of contention is that Christians have an objective moral standard through which they analyze moral situations. There is no argument to be made that it's somehow bad to consider things with a "simple" moral frame, as how simple your moral framework is, is irrelevant to whether something is moral or immoral. The argument being made here can only logically be that the Christian moral framework is incorrect, not that Christians are somehow "trying too hard to find simplicity". This is not too surprising, since the author clearly disagrees with Christian morals. To phrase this another way, the author is not upset that Christians have a simplistic moral worldview, but that the Christian moral worldview itself is simplistic. 

And, frankly, the Christian moral framework is only simplistic in the broadest terms. We can easily designate things as murder or theft, but this is one part of the equation. Indeed, what do you DO with the murderer and the thief? God only tells us these things are wrong, He does not tell us how to punish these sinners. You can be executed for murder, but adultery is not against the law. Both are egregious sins! How to move forward from someone else's wrongdoings is intensely complex and the Christian worldview does not simplify them anymore than a secular one. In fact, it may make them much more complicated. God wants us to forgive people who have wronged us, which some brave souls have so shockingly managed to do for people who have murdered their loved ones. I can barely imagine having that kind of resolve. This is supposed to be simplistic?

The list item has other concerns to point out, like perhaps a fight lacks any identifiable good or bad sides, or problems that have no "right" answer. I place suspicion on the use of the word "right", as the author likely meant "perfect". Mostly everyone knows there are problems with no right answer, but we simply try to choose the best one. Sometimes there does not even seem to be a "best" one. These issues do exist within a Christian framework, as if they did not, we would not be instructed to pray to God and ask Him for wisdom for such complex issues as these. The "good guys vs bad guys" issue has, of course, already been beaten to death.

The only difficulty the author has that I would concede as accurate is a concern for "blurry" lines between humans and other sentient creatures. There is a biblical truth that animals lack the breath of God that humans have; there is indeed no blurred line. However, there is no biblical justification for anything less than respect and responsible treatment of those animals, as we were given dominion over them, but also told directly by God to care for and tend to His creation. The issue here is - funnily enough - a lot more complex than the author would have us imagine. If it were not complex as such, we would not have the vast number of incredibly long debates about whether it's most biblical to be vegan if possible. Frankly, coming from a staunch believer in a large number of simple biblical answers for a wide array of things, I could not tell you for a fact that veganism is not biblically coherent. The bible provides no clear answer on whether it is most righteous to abstain from meat or not. The only things I can say for sure is that humans have the breath of life from God while animals do not, that we were given dominion over animals, that we were charged with tending to animals, and that we were given permission (not commanded!) to eat meat. From there, there's quite a lively debate.

The final list item is something I would understand as a mental problem for former Christians - the nagging feeling that you're wrong, that you've made a mistake. This is, of course, something active Christians also struggle with, and indeed, every single living human person. We all struggle with doubt, and I'd be quite suspicious of the one who claims they do not.

Thus, our unfortunate adventure ends with a few closing paragraphs. The author is, in fact, a former Christian, so I can only assume their upbringing and Christian instruction were flawed, as many experience, perhaps unknowingly. It is never enjoyable to see that someone has rejected God, since we all know what that means. 

I must draw attention to the quote, meant to be poignant, "I would rather live with unanswered questions than unquestioned answers". I am clearly not the person this quote is meant for, as it makes no sense to me. While living as Christians, did these people truly believe they had no unanswered questions? I have an absolute smorgasbord of unanswered questions. I am constantly in wonder at the universe God has created, the plans He has. Properly appreciated, Christianity leaves perhaps too many unanswered questions, which is likely how we got to the point of thousands of denominations. I also have very few "unquestioned answers," and I'm not sure that this phrase is much more than vapid nonsense. Perhaps it seems so brave and inspiring because people do not wish to appear stupid by questioning it?

Unfortunately, despite being so humble as to admit that one cannot possibly have all the answers, they contend that they do have at least one answer, which is funnily enough one of the most arrogant. Looking back and being "certain of one thing", which is, that God is not real, is the absolute most obtuse thing to be certain of. If you are, as nihilistic atheists are so fond of reminding us, one speck in billions of entirely common and non-miraculous living creatures standing upon a rock hurtling through space at millions of miles per hour, how can you be so certain that there is no God? They believe themselves to be so humble, yet drip of hubris all over. I would know, of course, being a former atheist. Unlike a former Christian, it does not bother me so much that I may be wrong to have abandoned atheism. Blaise Pascal has a good few points to make on that wager. While we all have our doubts, mine are quite fleeting, and mostly revolve around other things than the existential questions of life and death. 

This wild ride has drawn to a close. I will concede that improperly understood Christianity will likely lead to a good number of unhealthy behaviors and mental disturbances, but funnily enough I would view this list as a good diagnostic tool for finding out if someone is following a cheap riff off Christianity rather than the real thing. Maybe we should read this list in church to find people's weak points in scriptural and theological understanding. 

Motherhood Regret is In Style

I have semi-recently stopped using social media entirely, as it makes me anxious and depressed. It seems "content addiction" is not so easily stopped, as in its place I've started to read lots and lots of news articles. This makes me perhaps slightly less anxious and depressed than Twitter did, so maybe it's part of the healing process. I read these articles from an app that frequently updates and links to a wide variety of articles from different states, countries, and ideological leanings. A topic that has popped up often, a new article perhaps every one to two weeks, is about a mother who regrets, or at one time felt that she regretted, having her child or children.

This comes in a variety of flavors and I do not have a collection of links of all of them that I have ever read. One was about a woman who was raised to believe she should marry and have children as soon as possible, thus winding up with four kids by the time she was in her early 20s, to a man who was not a good husband or father. This situation resulted in her becoming a single mother to these four children early on and she began to regret her decisions that led to her being in this situation, up to and including having all four of these children. This particular woman was able to sort her emotions once the more tumultuous period of her life had stopped and concluded that she doesn't, and likely never did actually, regret having her children, but rather the circumstances in which they were born and thus the way their presence contributed to her life and how she wound up living.

This type of story would have a very different commentary from its more widely seen companion, which is the type of mother who declares in no unclear terms that she in fact regrets fully and completely that her children were ever born. There is no redemption arch at the end of this story, it's simply a full stop tragedy from start to finish.

These articles make a strong effort to ensure the reader that regretting having your children is common and valid. There was even an accompanying article just a few days ago, engineered carefully as a response to a common rebuttal against admitting your regret for your children. This is of course, "you will hurt your children emotionally and mentally if you tell them you wish they had not been born." This response article was that it was actually important to tell your children if you regret that they were born, with accompanying justification. What we have appears to be a push toward a cultural acceptance of "parental regret" - and all the neuroses that will surely come from being an "unwanted" child. 

I am not new to the concept of people who regret becoming a parent. There was a tweet thread that went viral a couple years ago for a man who candidly admitted he and his wife both wished their son had never been born and, at the young age of seven, had told him so directly. He was admonished and torn to shreds. He was by all accounts the perfect villain, as he also had obnoxious things in his profile, like calling himself a "polymath", which is the most obnoxious possible way to say that you are very smart and well read and know a lot of things about a wide variety of topics, which people don't normally say if they want anyone to like them.

However, that was years ago. It may have been as long ago as 2016. I vaguely recall having written about it, but I didn't notice anything after a brief search and gave up. Anyway, there are very few people who did not attack this man for, mostly, telling a seven year old he shouldn't have been born. They said, "even if he says he understands, he's going to have issues stemming from this. It doesn't matter that you told him "you still love him," you told him that you wish he wasn't born. Those aren't compatible concepts." This was the general consensus, that even if you regret having your children, for heaven's sake just pretend you don't, for their mental and emotional well-being.

More recently but still quite awhile ago, there was an article that was a list of "anonymous contributions" from parents who regretted having their children but did not want to admit it publicly, obviously due to the response they would receive. Many people who regret having their children claim that they "still love them unconditionally," but one submission to this list stood out to me. This one was actually from a father, which you rarely see - these are almost exclusively written by mothers. The reason this submission stood out was because he did not try to say that he still unconditionally loved his child, or even loved her at all. He of course felt a strong obligation to protect and care for her, but "love" did not stem from this, or at least not "feelings" of love as we generally understand them. He said something along the lines of, "I would do anything necessary to protect and care for her, but I do not love her," and finished by saying that this makes him feel horrendously guilty and like an absolute monster. I feel awful for this man, as I'm sure he would choose to love his daughter if he could, but he does not know how to.

Unfortunately for all of the parents of regretted children, I think this man is one of few who accurately described what these parents are actually experiencing. The parental obligation felt to care for and protect the children exists, but you cannot reconcile not wanting them to exist with "loving" them. You do not usually wish people were never born when you love them. I have seen countless explanations to try and justify this "I regret having my kids but I still love them unconditionally," mindset, even someone who went so far as to say it's simply "one of the many paradoxes of being human". If you are the kind of person who is satisfied to not think about things very hard, you may be happy to accept this explanation, but it's not truly acceptable. 

Maybe it is more easily understood by the person who feels such a way, that there is somehow some mysterious equilibrium where you feel and understand true "love" for your child, while simultaneously thinking the world would be a lot better if he didn't exist in it. The stark reality though, is that these are irreconcilable - the kind of cognitive dissonance that will cause mental holes in your thinking processes and will ultimately harm you and your child. 

Some people take it much further, like this article where the mother in question states outright that having a child is boring, uninteresting, and not worth it. This mother's regret drips obstinately with selfishness and a stark lack of empathy. I repeatedly had a reaction of visceral disgust with some of the things she said, which of course the people who write these things know their audience is having. It surely resonates with a small subset of the population, but the push to "normalize regretting your children" is met with overwhelming disapproval. Just check the comments on the article for a breath of fresh air after reading such a harrowing tale - no one is buying this.

Not yet, anyway. As with all other "social justice" and adjacent issues (which this is, make no mistake), they will simply push this more and more and attempt to guilt and shame people who - correctly - react negatively to it. When people reject the notion that it's simply "normal and acceptable" to wish you never had kids because your newborn is "unfulfilling" (an incorrect assessment, by the way), they will be accused of being bigots perpetuating outdated societal standards and all the typical rigmarole that comes with the forced re-engineering of social norms. They will be accused of alienating people who have these difficult struggles, or risking more 'regretted children' coming into the world by not "allowing this conversation to be visible" and so on and so forth. 

The true issue here is that - as usual, when it comes to these things - the parent in question has their own mental and emotional issues that need addressing. These people try and justify their issue as being "normal", but by all accounts, these are the outliers. The vast majority of parents love their children while simultaneously being very grateful that they exist. Children are very fulfilling and enriching, even as newborns, and even most parents who had "accidental" pregnancies wind up loving their children and being very happy that they were born. In fact, many of these articles try very hard to conflate "accidental pregnancies" with parenthood regret, when they are separate issues. You can have accidental pregnancies and never once regret having that child. No one would be able to tell the difference unless you told them.

Yes, some people do not want kids, or want kids and then wind up regretting it, but that's why it's not "normal" - some people do not want their kids. While the poll numbers for such concerns overwhelmingly show very few people regret having their children, there have been articles that have the audacity to claim - with of course absolutely no basis - that surely the number of parents who regret having their children is much higher. Despite these polls being anonymous, admitting regretting your children's birth is so taboo, that the number of parents with this regret is easily double the reported numbers! - or so we can claim with zero evidence. One particular person who wrote such an op-ed insisted that most parents regret having their children - y'know, probably - despite the numbers showing that the overwhelming majority do not regret them.

All this said, it is an important discussion, in fact, as we do want to minimize the amount of people who wind up having children when they shouldn't have. It's hard to guess, though, with a significant number of people who "never wanted kids" having them and loving them, while others wanted kids and then regret it. How do you figure the difference? What litmus test can we take?

Most people are likely to find my suggestions unsatisfying, offensive, presumptuous, or obnoxious. Maybe even yet another adjective, or a combination therein.

I can tell you with quite some confidence what is not the answer. You might still love having kids even if you don't like babies or other people's babies or kids. You might still love having kids even if you "love sleeping in on the weekends," or even if you're reluctant about the idea of not "having free time," or if the idea of schedules terrifies you. You may hate the sound of screaming children, the thought of changing a diaper may make you sick to your stomach, and you may be unable to imagine yourself as having the proper nurturing attitude or attentiveness required to keep a child alive - and still love and cherish your children more than you could have ever imagined. You may even, as horribly rude and presumptuous it may be to insist other wise, want kids later even if you are "absolutely sure" you don't want them right now.

I know these are not the right ways to know that you wouldn't want kids because I experienced all of them. A particularly strange tidbit about me is that my firstborn son was the very first baby I ever held. At 27 years old I had never held a baby, even when frequently visiting my friends who had just had a child. I was pregnant and refused to hold their child, as I did not want to. 

I read an article wherein someone's friend, who had always wanted children, asked to "shadow" this woman who was a mom to get an idea of what it was like to raise kids. The friend hated it so much she vowed to never have kids. This was a mistake. I am completely unsurprised she hated another mom's routine and parenting style while experiencing a complete emotional disconnect to the children involved. I have three kids and shadowing another mom sounds like a nightmare.

No, what I believe is the right way to know whether or not you would love your kids and feel like having them was the right choice has much more to do with your attitude and personality. I have two key things that I have discerned are likely to be good indicators that you would do well being a parent, and the second one may cause some offense, and maybe even both of them.

Do you take pride in your work, even if that work is unpaid, unappreciated, unnoticed, or considered unimportant (by either other people or even yourself)?

If the answer is no, you may have trouble finding parenthood fulfilling, or you may begin to resent it. You will be frequently, if not nearly constantly, unappreciated, mostly by your kids themselves. There is no boss to impress or coworkers who are going to look to you for advice as you allow yourself to puff up your feathers a little bit in pride. If you find that work isn't worth doing if you're not paid for it, buckle up for working 24/7 (even if you are otherwise employed, guess what happens when you're not working your paid position?) for free. 

I used to have a job and it was somewhere where people in suits look down at you. It was the kind of job where your social betters would say to get a real job. It was the kind of position where the people I was helping may have often failed to notice that I am a human being. I still took pride in the work I did, and I did the best possible work I could do. I would make a strong argument that this kind of attitude helps a lot as a mother. I read many, many articles about people who are mothers and the complex feelings they have for it. A large number of people, for whatever reason, naturally look down upon their "position" as a mother. Some fight against their inner predisposition for seeing the role of motherhood as not being important or as being "less than", but they still had those presumptions to start. In an act of self-preservation, mothers have to fight those feelings, or else they doom themselves to a position they believe, perhaps subconsciously, is unimportant and unfulfilling.

Whatever work you do, you should take pride in and do it well. You will find fulfillment in that - that is to say, your attitude toward your work will manifest as your fulfillment, regardless of what the work is.

A much more controversial, I'm sure, benchmark to decide if having kids is right for you - are you selfish?

Of course everyone's natural instinct to this question would be "No! Of course not!" but I would advise against lying to yourself. After all, this is a very, very important choice to make. You may very well be selfish. Think genuinely about it. Do you care about the needs of others, even if they are different needs from yours? Do you find it acceptable to compromise between your needs, wants, and desires, and those of others? Do you recognize and respect the humanity and innate value of the life of people who are not you? Think about these questions in consideration of people other than those close to you - would you give up your spot on the bus for an older person? What about someone who simply looked tired, or someone who just asked if they could have your seat because they just really want to sit down? Do you tend to withhold love and obligation from someone who normally receives it, but has recently made you angry? Do you try to take "revenge" on people for wronging you? These are all selfish behaviors and may indicate that you don't have the empathy to care for a child. 

From reading so many articles about parents who regret having their children, I have noticed a common trend, which is that these people are very selfish. It may be hard to spot selfishness, as many people misconstrue it for other things. It requires a thoughtful person to find the distinction between someone's "aspirations, dreams, and goals" and their sense of entitlement. It has been common lately, in fact, to try and redefine the willingness of the mother to "sacrifice themselves" for their children as a bad, negative thing - one of those outdated societal standards that, for some reason, needs to change. Yes, there is a difference between a mother who practically kills themselves over caring for everyone else other than her own self, and the mother who understands that some sacrifices for their children and family are simply unavoidable and part of the package deal. The problem has come from the conflation of the two, and it stems from a misunderstanding as to what truly is selfishness and entitlement.

This flies in the face of everything you've heard about achieving your dreams and reaching your goals, but your life isn't only about you. It's about you, yes certainly, but you necessarily affect the lives of everyone around you in good and bad ways, so it is not only about you. "Finding happiness" is not solely a "you" journey - your choices affect everyone around you, to some degree. There is a lot of crossover I don't have the time or desire to get into here, but the old argument that adults should be able to do whatever they want as long as it "doesn't hurt anyone" is a bad basis for belief due to the unchangeable reality that we all exist here together and affect one another. You may very well hurt other people by finding your own happiness and chasing your dreams - whether or not it's warranted may be another discussion entirely, but the fact is we are all affecting one another constantly. Your life necessarily involves other people and you have to think about what that means for you. If you find that you couldn't imagine changing your desires because of other people's desires around you, you shouldn't have children.

I would argue that the mother who finds her newborn "unfulfilling" or just otherwise uninteresting is suffering from an aspect of selfishness - the inability to see the value in other people besides themselves. The inability to even think about the concept of another person. A lot of thoughtless people have often looked at other people's babies and thought that they appeared somewhat boring - or that all they do is poop, cry, and sleep. This has created an untrue trope of babies as being "annoying" - and thoughtless people will allow this to influence their belief about their own child. It's a crying shame, as babies - at the very least, your own baby - are absolutely not uninteresting, not as newborns or at any point thereafter.

The very first interesting thing a baby does is exist. It's fascinating that this human was created - whether you believe that God stitched him together in your womb or he's just a cosmic accident of two sets of cells bumping really hard into each other, the fact that this baby is here is astonishing. It seems very shallow and thoughtless to behold this infant and not be dumbfounded by his physical presence. The first day in the hospital for all three of my children was spent in bewilderment that I had grown and nourished this baby, this precious being, and that he is now here and in my arms - each and every time it is amazing, even after having done it before. I can't imagine what sort of television fuzz is going on in the brain of the mother who finds this newborn uninteresting. From there it only gets more wild as the baby open his eyes, clasps his little hands, and begins to react to the world around him. At as young as six weeks, a baby may learn to make a vocal sound for the explicit purpose of getting your attention, and yet some women report finding their baby "boring" for as long as six months. Unbelievable.

I strongly believe that it is a lack of empathy, stemming primarily from selfishness, that creates the problem for some people where they find their newborn as nothing more than a burden and a chore. This type of parenthood regret may go away once the child grows into their own personality, since it's much easier to relate to someone when they can talk and have opinions on things. But that's quite a gamble to take, especially since the needs of children actually exponentially increase as they get older. The newborn phase is sleep deprived, but ultimately the easiest, as their needs are incredibly basic. It gets so much more difficult once they realize they can cry because they want to play with a pocket knife when you won't let them.

I'm sure it sounds like I am shaming people who don't connect to their newborn or don't find their baby fascinating, but I don't think this is an insurmountable problem. It's possible to learn empathy and to unlearn your selfishness. You're not innately a bad person for having these feelings - as I said before, it's very important that we figure these things out ahead of time. If you are selfish and uninterested in having children, you probably should not. But if you think you want children, but find that you may have an empathy problem, it's something you can fix. 

I actually used to be incredibly selfish, and twice as thoughtless. I treated my family as a means to an end and often only called when I needed something. Unfortunately, I did not have an easy lesson - ultimately the catalyst to snapping me out of my selfishness was having my mom suddenly die when I was young. I hadn't spoken to her for three months before then, and not because we were feuding or on bad terms. I just never made an effort. Losing your mother that way can dig up a lot of seemingly unrelated trauma, which I had desperately needed to reflect upon. There was a much longer healing process toward learning true empathy and consideration for others that followed, but without it I'm sure I would have been a terrible mother.

Is there anything else which may help you predict if you will regret having your children? It's of course important to ensure that you can handle the physical demands of being a parent, but that doesn't necessarily translate into regret for your children's existence when that need is not fulfilled. Some people may conflate the difficulty in raising their children with regret for their existence, but this is either an inaccurate reactive conclusion due to stress and failure to cope properly, or again due to selfishness. The woman from the first article that I mentioned suffered from this problem - when raising her children became very difficult, she felt as if she regretted having had them. She was in a bad place in her life and when she fixed her other problems, she realized she did not regret having her children. 

"I regret having my children because raising them is hard" is an unhealthy conclusion which is usually ultimately wrong and reflexive. If you find that it is true, then this is selfishness yet again. If your reaction to someone needing your time and energy is that they should have never been born, then that's ultimately selfishness - a alack of respect of the innate value of someone else's human life. It would make more sense to regret the decisions or ill-fated events that occurred to make it so difficult for you to raise those children. If you find that you resent people for needing you, and consequently losing out on some of your own needs and desires because of that, then you are selfish and shouldn't have kids.

If giving birth harmed you or ultimately something about having your kids was the catalyst for other difficult or harmful events, it's not healthy to connect this to the children themselves and you should redirect your frustrations to the actual harm itself or the people or systems which allowed such harm to occur. If you find yourself thinking it simply would have been much easier for your children to have not been born in the first place instead of being able to see past the child as the issue and understand the issue lies elsewhere, then you may be suffering from selfishness. 

Now, coming to harm through pregnancy and giving birth is common, and an unfortunate side effect of that is resentment of the child. This is a real problem and is certainly serious and deserves attention - but it is another case of placing blame where it doesn't belong. This sort of thing warrants some sort of counselling or therapy and is as serious as post-partum depression, if not sometimes a cause of it. Now, resent and regret are different things - and I would argue it's actually possible to resent something about your child while loving them, as long as you do not also regret having that child. In this scenario, you love the child and don't wish for their un-existence, but simply wish they hadn't "caused" the harm done to you by birthing them. The desire for this harm to have not occurred manifests unhealthfully as resentment and is something that must be worked through. Part of the cause of this resentment is grieving for what the child "should have" been and healing involves coming to terms with how things wound up instead.

This is different from selfishness as it stems not from your inability to see and value your child, but an inability to accurately view the situation and scenario, separating your baby himself from the unfortunate tragedy that occurred concurrently with his birth. There can be crossover between resentment and regret as well as between resentment and selfishness, but we're getting very far into the weeds here. Ultimately, what I aim to establish by bringing up the difference at all is simply that not all complex relationships with our children are due to selfishness. What is selfish is trying to convince everyone that wishing your child wasn't born is totally normal and should be socially acceptable.

It's actually quite revealing that parents who find themselves too selfish to appreciate having children would push to normalize such a concept - due to their underlying narcissism, they find it imperative to insist that what they think and feel must be acceptable and anything less than full understanding for their misguided thought process is an attack on them. Accepting that maybe there is, in fact, something wrong with them, simply doesn't jive with their self-importance. 

It is, by all accounts, important to have this discussion.  But not because it should be "acceptable" - the parents who find themselves regretting their children need counselling as much as the parents who resent their children. It helps no one to try to convince us that we should simply accept that some parents wish their kids - with all their emotions, relationships, impacts on us and others, all their experiences, memories, and complex inner consciousness and lives - should simply have never existed. I can't think of a more cruel indictment from your own parent, and yet these people want it to simply be accepted as "normal" and then we all nod our heads and move on. No, these people need therapy to find out what's wrong with them, because it's actually wrong. We should not accept it, we need to fix it. 

The article where the author tried to justify explaining to your children that you regretted having them postulates that you may as well tell them because they will pick up on how you treat them due to wishing they were never born. This argument itself paints a bright red, glaring and obvious picture of precisely why it's not possible to argue that you still love the child who you wish didn't exist - they would not pick up on this if they were truly loved as fully and unconditionally as you purport. How could they pick up on your regret for their existence if you loved them the same as a parent whose child does not pick up on "wish you weren't here" vibes? There necessitates a difference if you can argue that the child "knows".

This is also a great argument for why the problem lies with the parent, as well as the fact that it could be fixed. The argument made by this author, is to go with the flow of your mental hangups and dump them on your child - regretting your child is totally normal, so don't try to go to counselling so that you can properly care for and love that child - that you insist you love so dearly in spite of wishing they weren't there for you to love. The man who admitted he did not love his daughter is the only sincere person I've seen who suffers from regret for their own flesh and blood child, as he does not delude himself into thinking he's providing the emotionally enriching love he knows children deserve. He understands the problem is him, and he clearly mourns for this problem, but cannot fix it by himself. If people stopped trying to tell him it was "normal" - which he knows in his heart it is not, which is why he feels like a monster for it - then maybe he would feel more empowered to seek counselling to help him love his daughter like he knows he should. It's true that he's shamed by cultural and social norms that tell him he's a monster for not loving his daughter, but the solution is not to empower him to simply, what, be brave enough to say it publicly? He should be empowered to find a real solution.

Yes, of course, if you regretted your child and it spilled over into how you treated and raised them to the point where they suffered some sort of mental issue due to it, then part of the healing process for them would be to admit it. But ideally it would not come to that - how is this seen as an acceptable solution? Just passing on your neuroses to your child? The author offered that she was a child whose parents "regret having her", and that being told the truth helped her recover and heal from her trauma. This may well be true, and perhaps it is merely my overstimulated nature to believe this, but it seems to me there is no true "solution" to this relationship disaster.

There can of course be closure, but the closure you get from realizing the disconnect you felt from your parents was real all along is no substitute for a rich relationship with your parents. Unless your solution is to basically go no contact with your parents, how do you even continue to have an adult relationship with them? How do you ever ask them for advice, or for help? The nagging thought lingering forever in your head, that they would have been much happier were it not for you and your trifling existence? Your birth, childhood, coming of age, all nothing but road blocks to your parents' happiness and content. How glad they must be that you're an adult and out of their lives now, how could you continue to insult them with your presence? It's irreconcilable.

It appears to me that trying to continue a relationship with a parent who does not reconcile with themselves their mistake of regretting their child - which is to say, you - requires yet more cognitive dissonance, from both parties. Unless the parent can admit it was wrong to regret having you, there is no room for reconciliation - this is a person definitively declaring that they don't think they are in any way wrong for saying you should not have been born. How ghastly.

However, there is an inaccurate conflation here in the this article. It appears that the parents of the author don't actually regret having her, but they regret the circumstances of her birth. This is different, and trying to join the two concepts it wrong. Teenage parents who are scared, don't know what to do, perhaps give up the child for adoption, or otherwise were totally mentally unprepared for the predicament they've found themselves in is not anywhere near the same level as the Twitter "polymath" who told his seven year old son to his face that he would have been much happier if he had never had him. Indeed, I'd argue that the advice from this author is far less about "tell[ing] your child you regret having them" and more about becoming pregnant without desiring a child. 

These are distinct things and, frankly, it's fairly obvious why - a mistaken pregnancy occurs before the child is born, while regret happens after. You can have either or both, but that doesn't make them the same thing. If you do not want a child and become pregnant without wanting to be, you can try to right such a mistake by doing what's best by the child, such as giving her up for adoption when you aren't equipped to care for her yourself. You may enter the situation emotionally unstable, scared, and ready for disaster, but you may find ultimately that you are happy the child was born. Your difficulties may resolve themselves, and once you're in a better place you find that you love and cherish this child, if the circumstances resolve in such a way. Regretting the manner in which you became pregnant is not the same as regretting having the child. It would likely and understandably take some time for this resolution to occur, as not everyone is so lucky as to suddenly realize the moment their child is born that everything is going to be okay and it was meant to be this way, but after the hard work is done many parents still realize that it was in fact for the best, in hindsight. These circumstances are markedly different from still deciding years and years later that you wish you had never had a child. Wishing you became pregnant in a more stable environment is not regret for the child herself.

This is different from what many of these articles are saying. While heartless monstrosities wherein mothers declare that their babies were not "worth" the trouble exist, many demand strongly that we sincerely believe they love these children they wish didn't exist. Mothers will insist in painstaking detail all the proofs that they simply love their kids to bits, but pivot last second saying something like, if they could go back in time they wouldn't have had this child. 

This is nonsense. It can only possibly sit comfortably in a mind that does not think too hard. You and I are standing beside a playground, the warmth of children's laughter wafting on the spring breeze as we chat. The children are playing tag and their broad smiles are infectious. It is nearly impossible to not watch them and vicariously enjoy the kind of energy and lack of body aches required for such high energy adventures. You turn to me and say, "Look at my precious boy, the glint of the sun shining off his new haircut. We had such a good time yesterday, we went to his favorite spot for lunch afterwards. If only I could go back in time and never have him, maybe I'd be in an important meeting right now instead." 

If you truly love this child, if you are deriving happiness from motherhood, if you see and value your child and their life and impact on your family and others' families, if your heart truly fills up and nearly explodes from the overwhelming, inconceivable love and care you hold inside of it for this precious soul you birthed and nurtured, if you daydream of them growing up and all the adventures you will have with them and that they will have on their own - then how could you ever imagine going back and choosing not to facilitate bringing forth this cherished creation into the world? The very thought is nightmarish to me, not only the idea of not having these children I love so dearly, but that I would ever so selfishly choose to rip their presence from the world if I could somehow stop their conception. The very idea is viscerally disgusting. Horror films are made where the antagonist attempts to utilize some sort of time travel or timeline manipulation to wipe another person from existence and we are intended to, and rightly should be, thoroughly disturbed by such an endeavor. A mother candidly admitting that this is exactly what she would do with her child if given the chance should elicit as much of a reaction.

These articles are sometimes headlined by declarations that these mothers are shattering taboos and redefining motherhood in the process of admitting their parental regret. This should not be seen as okay. You cannot convince me that motherhood should be redefined by women who would choose to be comic book villains, fiddling with timelines to undo their own children for their own personal ambitions. These women mourn their former selves or their corporate aspirations and see their children as roadblocks to the life they wish they had had. This is another symptom of "what do you want to be when you grow up" syndrome, where people put far too much stock in their predictions of their ability to control the trajectory and the future of their own lives. It doesn't work out that way most of the time, and while children are often quite a hard stop on that sentence, the future you wanted is almost never the future you'll have anyway and you're simply taking it out on them - quite unfairly, I may add. These women refuse to move on with their lives and look forward to their new futures, instead choosing to wallow in the "what coulda been" useless hypothetical of something that will never manifest.

Being a parent is wildly complicated and difficult and everyone is affected by it differently. Women have different concerns and struggles and there are many issues that are fact imposed on them culturally, which cause them difficulties and heartache. I had a friend who was often shamed by her family for not having children, despite also being unmarried and struggling to find stable housing. She was with her boyfriend of the time for only a year or so before she became pregnant unintentionally, while the pressure from her family to have children had persisted for many years prior. It would make more sense, to me, assuming they could not have chosen to simply not pressure her at all, to at least harp on her to find someone to have children with before shaming her for not having children? Despite barreling between apartments and housing with a not-so-promising career and no partner to even conceive children, she was badgered by, surprisingly, her sisters moreso than anyone else, to somehow in the midst of all of this, have some kids. How obtuse. These sort of situations are not acceptable and create difficult situations for women who otherwise may actually want children.

I disagree with the lengths to which many modern women convince themselves they must go before having kids, but somewhere to live and a trustworthy male to father the children are surely conditions we could all agree on beforehand, though it seems even these are considered arguable to some. These discussions themselves are not wrong, and given the lengths some people will go toward convincing women to have children as soon as possible despite some very obvious flaws in the plan, they are very important for the well being of those children to be had. But the push to "normalize" everything and "redefine" everything needs to stop somewhere. We can agree that we should make good decisions about whether or not we want to have kids and when to have them, and the fact that some parents regret their children is important as to ensure people are aware kids don't magically fix all of your problems, but ultimately all of these discussions should be done in the interest of ensuring the children are loved and cared for. Yet again, the issue is rooted firmly in the selfish tendencies of these adults to centralize themselves as the core of the discussion, their dissatisfaction with parenthood, their desire to undo their children's existence, their lack of fulfillment are all the most important talking points, rather than minimizing harm done to vulnerable children who deserve to be loved.

And let us not forget that those unloved children will grow up to be adults - and this is why there are terms like "cycle of abuse". Fix your hangups before you dump them on your children and stop trying to celebrate your parental regret for your own self indulgent posturing. You're not the center of the world.

This writing was sort of all over the place, but I don't feel particularly invested in a lengthy proofread and editing process, so I'm slapping the publish button.

Self Help Problems

I have written about the main problem with self help before (rampant secularism), but that's not the only one. While secularist self help can, in most cases, easily be deciphered and translated into the terms and conditions needed for those of us who affirm religion-oriented worldviews, this other problem I've been noticing is actually much more difficult to overcome. That is, mainly, self help is written by and for the day to day lives of people who only have themselves to worry about, and likely with a rather cushy set of responsibilities to boot.

If that's not the case, they sure do a magnificent job at appearing that way. It seems they have never had to consider the difficulty one may have in "dedicating a full day to blocking everyone else out of your thinking space" when they live with family and have daily responsibilities or "learning to say no when you're having me-time" when their toddler has chosen just that time to poop their pants. It turns out a lot of nice-sounding ways to reduce your stress or increase your productivity are likely to do the exact opposite if you try to apply them as presented when you're not a single, childless journalist living in a studio apartment. 

These problems are not so easily translated for us in these situations. While we can take some secular self help advice and actually heighten and accentuate its value by understanding it from a Christian worldview, that's more of a philosophical translation. Today I read a tidbit about changing your "have-tos" into "get-tos" which is a page taken right out of the Christian book of how to be grateful and contented. You don't "have to" cook dinner, you're blessed enough to be able to, to have the ability and freedom to create your own meals - or more drastically, have the means to eat at all rather than starve. This is Christian gratefulness 101, but for a secularist with no true moral grounding it's simply nice sounding. Without the backdrop of understanding the value of appreciating God's grace and mercy, it may be very difficult to apply to your life effectively.

This other problem is not simply translation trouble, but a flat out inability to even perform the self help advice in question. I have a toddler who is about to turn three and was a late bloomer into his "terrible twos". He's a lot of work, emotionally needy, and stubborn as a mule, a family trait inherited from both sides. He is literally fighting with me right now over the fact that I've told him not to pick loose skin from a wound on his toe. I have forgotten the sentence I was planning to write and am holding one hand over his foot while typing on my phone with the other, trying to reason with him why it's bad for him, whether a boo boo and a wound are the same thing, and why it wouldn't change if it was okay to pick at it whether it were a boo boo or a wound. Does the single man in his apartment writing his self help article think I can simply lock my kids in the other room like he does with his cats? (This is not a slight against cat owners, I have three.) Or does he, more likely, not even consider the varied lives of others while he writes?

Today an article suggested "reducing the amount of decisions you make per day". It explains a concept called "decision fatigue" which causes rational people to make poor decisions as their day progresses and their mental energy decreases. The author suggests either automating or delegating decision making to help reduce your mental burden and allow you to continue to make sober decisions well into the evening of your day.

My first decision of the day is usually at 3-6am, when my youngest son climbs out of his crib, scampers to my and my husband's bed, and stares at me until I wake up from nothing but the sensation that I'm being stared at in my sleep, which is something I didn't know could wake me until recently. He wants to sleep in our bed until the sun comes up, which is at about 7am, two hours before "awake time". It's not good for his independence and not good for our sleep, which we desperately need. When he wakes up at sunrise, he normally runs in and out of our room to his and back until I make the decision to stop him. Periodically he will go into the living room or dining room unless I make the decision to stop him. Both him and his brother are supposed to be allowed to play in their rooms from 8am to 9am, but the youngest enjoys waking his brother up early and asking if he can begin playing at 7am. All of these decisions ride on whether I want to pretend I'm going to get anymore sleep that morning or if I'm going to give up on that dream and just wake up. Both of these decisions come with yet more of their own sets of inevitable decisions, as if I'm awake and wandering the house, both kids usually come out to ask me questions and attempt to collect further privileges, believing that since I'm awake it must be awake time, unless I make the decision to be stern and authoritative when I tell them to go back to their room, which may not work anyway and thus be a waste of my energy.

The day continues like this where I must make constant administrative decisions about how much effort my exhausted, pregnant mind and body feels like dealing with at the moment. Honestly, I'm sure Vincent didn't mean any harm when he wrote this article, and he surely is trying to help. He's not doing anything wrong on a level of personal responsibility, but it doesn't help to dull the reactive, incredulous laughter in response to advice like this. My two and four year old children cannot make these decisions themselves, nor can these decisions be automated. I can refrain from actively making any decisions, which is itself is a risk-reward decision that comes with its own set of stresses - allowing my children to push the ticket and develop bad habits, a lack of respect for rules, or possibly a selfish and thoughtless attitude and perspective, versus whether I need to get up or not. A bowl of apple pieces is surely a better snack than saltine crackers, but the children cannot cut up an apple alone. If they eat a whole apple without it being cut up, they waste nearly the entire thing. Is the monetary cost of anywhere from 4-14 apples being 1/4th eaten a week worth me not getting up? Will having an apple distract them long enough for it to even be worth it? Should I try again to explain the importance of eating the entire apple or will they ignore that for the 300th time? Is it really that huge of a waste if I'm feeding these three-bite apples to the chickens? Surely the chickens could use some apples, my exhausted self reasons, feeling quite justified.

When the kids refuse to take their naps, is it worth it to let them make a ruckus and cause a commotion up to and including simply coming out of their room altogether? Do I have the mental energy necessary to talk them down from their rule-breaking high? Will it even be worth it to ignore, since I'm not getting any rest anyway? Will declaring naptime over and simply allowing them to "wake up" (despite having never fallen asleep) cost less energy than attempting to enforce nap time?

Vincent, and most self help writers, have not considered this, probably because it has never entered their mind. My decision to not make a decision is a decision itself, an active choice that causes a staunch risk-reward weighing challenge in my mind, of whether this particular fight is important enough today, whether not fighting this fight will embolden my children to initiate this fight again the next day. The two year old is stubborn and mischievous, but that four year old is manipulative. He has the memory of an elephant and is an aspiring lawyer, reminding me of that one time I let them have marshmallows before bed, or when I let them watch youtube videos in the morning that one time three weeks ago. I let him come out during nap time yesterday, so surely that is the new, established norm, despite the precedence of weeks of intolerance to his rule breaking beforehand. 

Roy F. Baumeister, the man who coined decision fatigue, explains that needing to make too many decisions causes us to get worse at making decisions. We either avoid making decisions or make the easiest decisions when we suffer from decision fatigue. I definitely believe this is a thing, and I'm sure I suffer from it, but probably all the time rather than just at the end of the day. My decision fatigue seems chronic, given the near constant demand for decisions. I attempt to make what seems to be the easiest decision at the time from the start of my day - I gave up attempting to disallow my child from climbing into our bed at 3am long ago. Our 9am awake time has been as early as 7:30am some days, and saltines sound like a great snack pretty often. It's not that I don't think decision fatigue is a real phenomenon, but rather that the advice given by Vincent and others is utterly useless to someone in my situation.

Is there then no other treatment? Is decision fatigue only combatable via the "automate or delegate" method? Is my situation hopeless? These are the questions left for people like me, who read these well-meaning self help suggestions written by people who forget not everyone lives a life like theirs. 

It can't be the only solution, as there are times, utterly exhausted and running on empty, in a place where it seems impossible to do any single thing more - when allowing the kids to watch youtube for another hour sounds better than actually putting them to bed - where I make the right decisions. The pure force of will to demand my mind and body do the right thing when it matters is within my grasp, though perhaps harder to locate on certain days than others, despite making administrative decisions since 3am that day and every hour before that since I first gave birth about 4.5 years ago.

The solution is somewhere for people like me, but the people who have the time and luxury to publish these sophisticated self help books and run self improvement seminars are not the people who have experienced them. Vincent cannot help me, and likely Roy F. Baumeister cannot either.

Having children isn't the only life situation where generalized self help from well off suburbanites isn't going to be applicable, either. From homeless teenagers to lonely elderly folks, it's clear we are not getting enough information for the demanding lives of the majority of people. Hopefully most people reading these articles recognize that they are not doing anything wrong by being entirely unable to adhere to these suggestions, but the tone carried in some of these articles can be their own problems.

I read one article about how to increase your productivity that suggested taking "quiet time" to yourself, even making a whole day of it. This is clearly not possible under certain circumstances, but the author took the time to more or less shame people who don't take time for themselves. We work so hard to keep ourselves available for everyone, he says, and we need to take a stand and tell others that they aren't entitled to our time. It's a poor personal decision not to give yourself me-time, he all but states out loud. Yes, I will go ahead and explain this to my two year old right now, sir. I'll surely be surprised when he intentionally does something he knows is bad and requires immediate attention in order to force me to acknowledge his existence specifically because I told him to not be in the same room as me.

Teaching children to respect their parents' alone time is a long term, decision-wrought experience of its own. It is probably a very smart and proper decision to begin teaching boundaries and establishing mama's alone time as early as possible, even if it doesn't pay off until much later. This is, of course, the more difficult decision to make, and highly likely to not be the decision we make while decision fatigued. Maintaining a constant dedication to responsible decisions that facilitate positive long term payouts amid the daily and constant demands of our children requires a different solution than we are offered by people who've never even had to consider how to handle it. Making fewer decisions is unworkable and will likely harm our children, one way or another - physically, emotionally, or developmentally. The solution to decision fatigue for people like us is not going to be avoidance, but acute awareness of it and the proper tools to counter it.

From the fact that I've yet another child who won't understand the concept of boundaries or independence for at least year and probably longer arriving in just a few months to the near disorder level attachment suffered by my youngest who hasn't separated from me with any regularity for a year due to lockdowns, a solution such as "simply make fewer decisions" is not just inapplicable, it's practically tone deaf. The self help authors start to seem less innocently naive and more like disconnected, upper class snobs. The helpful-sounding advice to improve my sleep routine and stop allowing people to demand my time turns suspiciously into an implication that my lack of alone time and poor sleep are my own uneducated, irresponsible decisions stemming from a lack of discipline and willpower.

Putting my foot down and disallowing my child from laying down with me for "one more minute" before bed, which turns into several sessions of one more minute spread over the next half hour as he continues to test my leniency or a fierce battle of wills as he continues to come out again and again despite my objections, is not a failure to make responsible personal decisions and take my life and my sleep schedule into my own hands. It's also not a failure of parenting that despite days and months straight of attempting to dictate how they should behave at bedtime, their willpower is greater than mine. I will miss one day the mischievous grin of my tiny children as they slowly reveal their presence at my doorway and quietly plead "one more minute?" an hour after I've put them to bed. The risk-reward equation is far more complicated than assumed, as the "best" decision is frequently unclear and, sometimes, depending on your outlook, may actually be the easiest decision. 

Therein we see the greater problem with presumptive self help gurus who tell you authoritatively the best ways to get better sleep, improve your outlook, get more out of your day, or simply live your life "most effectively" - their advice is given in a vacuum, absent any greater context. If self help makes you feel stupid because it seems so simple and easy and yet you fail to make it your reality, it's probably not due to your own personal failure to "just do better". It may not even be good advice. If trying to "make time for yourself" causes more problems than it solves, then it's probably bad advice for your life situation, not your own fault.

I can hardly get my kids to take naps and the power struggle of trying to enforce it is an exhaustive routine. They remain awake after bedtime and test boundaries for as long as two hours every night. They wake before the sun and know I am at my weakest in the morning where they have learned to take full advantage of my leniency. There is no space in my life for the traditional concept of "time to myself". It would invariably cause more stress than it would alleviate to even attempt something so ill-advised.

I actually used to get time to myself, when the kids were one and three and my husband worked early, they actually took good naps. I had 1-2 hours a day to myself. Right now, my reality is that I do not have time to myself. Believing I may rest in the morning, at nap time, or after bed time will likely only set me up for disappointment. It is much more realistic to assume I will not have time to myself and merely take advantage of the opportunity if it arises. Indeed, I've realized lately that the expectation that I will not have to respond to my children before 9am, after 1pm, or after 8pm has led me to being short with them or dismissive to their needs. This doesn't mean I don't ever relax, but simply that such advice as "you don't always need to make yourself available, be assertive and make time for yourself" is ineffective advice for me, possibly even harmful. Finding ways to relax alongside my children is much more effective advice, but a line of thought I have never once seen from these esteemed self help gurus who make their living off of trying to help others "improve their lives". The chasm of disconnect between the lives we live is practically impossible to breech. 

So those of us who must adapt constantly to the ever changing demands of our lives, compromising with children, our basic needs, and the passage of time itself for even a small reprieve, must make our own advice. You should not feel bad if between the constant emotional and physical demands of your daily life you can barely muster the creative juice to even begin to consider how to make the best of your sleep, your me time, or your diet. Given that these disconnected urbanites' self help articles are not good enough for the vast and varied kind of lives we all live, we have little choice but to figure it out ourselves. What we should do is share with one another, our friends and families, how we manage to cope with the unrelenting demands of life and take advice from people who actually can actually relate, because these authors and their cats have absolutely no idea the extent of demand we experience daily.

There are surely people writing advice for broader audiences with all of their various life experiences, but they are not broadcast like these others. I do not seek out self help articles, though it may seem that I do as I've written about them before. I, for some absolutely stupid reason, enjoy clicking on article titles that I think I will find issue with, and self help articles fall under that umbrella consistently. I receive a mailing list from Medium, which publishes a vast variety of articles but definitely has a bias toward the kind that it will amplify, especially in the top spot of their email newsletter. This is not Medium's fault necessarily, as they often spotlight authors and contributors that are already popular. It's so seamless I would believe it if you told me it was fully automated based on view metrics. I find other articles here and there and read them out of a morbid curiosity and masochistic tendencies to make myself upset at the internet. While there are articles about specific types of scenarios (job interviews, fighting writer's block, or saving money at the grocery store), I find the majority of the generalized "be better at being alive" advice columns just assume we could all easily just "take a day off".

This lack of signal boosting for whatever beautiful souls are out there writing about how they have managed to accomplish seemingly impossible tasks for those of us with constant, unignorable responsibilities is perhaps my real complaint, as the milquetoast musings of the upper class writer from his skyrise talking about all the great advice he's read from books, because he is very sophisticated you see, simply aren't helping many of us. "Establishing a better sleep routine solves so many of your problems," he says, as if we all have simply never thought of it before. The bare basic commandments of improving your life are repeated so often that they become almost annoying. Of course you shouldn't use screens before bed, which means to live a better, more successful life, definitely don't use that one hour you have between when the kids actually fall asleep and when the sheer exhaustion of life hits you all at once to play video games or write a post about how tired you are of hearing the same droning self help advice from every well off "professional writer" on the internet. Maybe it's just my decision fatigue convincing me to make poor decisions at the end of the day - or maybe life advice really is not a "one size fits all" situation.

Listen to Experts

I came across the most astonishing article I have seen in recent memory by far. In this article, the writer implores us to, in summary, simply trust what scientists say and never attempt to come to our own conclusions. To be fair, the article is accurate in its description of "how we come to conclusions". The writer accurately describes the typical method through which we make conclusions, not just about science but about anything, really. Spoiler, it doesn't include "thoughtful and unbiased contemplation of both sides":

 

• formulating an initial opinion the first time we hear about something, 
• evaluating everything we encounter after that through that lens of our gut instinct, 
• finding reasons to think positively about the portions of the narrative that support or justify our initial opinion, 
• and finding reasons to discount or otherwise dismiss the portions that detract from it.
  

The fact of the matter is that we are actually driven first and foremost by our preexisting biases. The good news is that our preexisting biases are usually based on experience, pattern recognition, and survival instincts - these are actually all good things. Without these intuitions, you would make terrible decisions every day about an astonishing number of things. Our logical reasoning process is inseparably tied to our "emotional cognition", which is to say, how things make us feel, which we construct based on living day to day. This might feel icky to you if you regard yourself as an enlightened, rational thinker - which, funnily enough, is a fantastic example of our emotional, preexisting biases influencing our opinions on things. Amazing.

 

The largest flaw that the article has is ironically this exact explanation. The implication it attempts to make is that scientists - either through will power or kung-fu-master-like discipline - suppress their emotional cognition, their "formulation of an initial opinion the first time they hear something" step, as listed above. It may be surprising to you, but scientists are people, too.

As a church-goer, I have long understood that my religious teachers are not exempt from the same plagues of us common rabble. The priests and pastors are not magically more righteous and free from the temptations suffered by the rest of us. It appears that scientism worshipers - those who have made science their religion and scientists their priests - have yet to recognize that. My pastors have always encouraged me to read my bible and check behind them after a sermon, and yet the priests of scientism are doing what anti-theists accused the priests of old of doing to the peasantry - forbidding them from reading the source material, perhaps even hiding it behind a paywall, or at least writing it in a language that is difficult for the peasant class to read. The resemblance is striking, scarily so.

The second implication, then, if the first is that scientists can avoid their gut instincts influencing everything they interpret about a subject from that point forward, is that the peasantry cannot manage to recognize when their initial gut instinct was wrong. Indeed, the main idea here, in any other words, is that people who are not scientists are stupid, illogical, slaves to their biases, incapable of analyzing information like the esteemed scientist caste. Somewhere, in the process of being educated how to use lab tools and publish scientific studies, amongst the scramble to create a dissertation in order to cement your place in the union and continue to receive funding, a steadfast, mental acuity toward bias-rejection is magically instilled into the scientist - the creature who is identical in every way to the plumber or janitor. 

Of course, the article continues with some more amazing assumptions, which is to outright say we are all far too stupid to understand scientific data. A nebulous concept of "expertise" is invoked, insisting that scientists who study established scientific facts for awhile in between coaching on the politics and financial workings of actually being a scientist are naturally smarter than any given person. The implication here, of course, is that "professional" education via college makes you an expert. It is, as we all know, actually impossible to research anything online, the place where infinite knowledge is available to everyone who would seek it. Teaching yourself anything is, as we all know, literally impossible, a fevered dream of a madman, a person seeking to be their own teacher. Obviously, teachers are also magically better people, as they also had professional education. Normal, stupid people do not know anything. Indeed, anyone who is smart enough to be a scientist is already a scientist. No one who is smart is not a scientist, so we must assume anyone not a scientist is too stupid to understand things. The magical status of "being a scientist" is truly powerful. 

This particular line from the article is striking: "It’s absolutely foolish to think that you, a non-expert who lacks the very scientific expertise necessary to evaluate the claims of experts, are going to do a better job than the actual, bona fide experts of separating truth from fiction or fraud."

Astounding. The writer makes no attempt to avoid calling you stupid. The average prole is beaten down, an emotion-driven attack on their confidence and trust of their grasp on reality. Here, us peasants are gaslit against every conclusion we have ever come to through a logical analysis. 

The article has more to say, of course, about how misinformation becomes embedded in our minds. It speaks about vaccines and how, as we all know, there are people against vaccines, and thus, people who do not get vaccines. Within a paragraph about this, there is a very, very important line. The author creates a problem that I do not think he knows about. The following sentence reads, emphasis mine:

But if you “do your own research,” you can find a small percentage of online activists, and even a few medical professionals, who rail against the overwhelming science, pushing discredited claims, fear, and often unproven cures or supplements as well. 

 

Ah, but wait, I thought any scientist who dedicated years of their life to college education to acquire that magical scientific expertise was reliable? The problem inherent in the "trust the experts" mantra blares out of this line, a small dependent clause the author likely should have simply left out, but perhaps his own dedication to "appearing unbiased" caused him to reveal this flaw in his argument. The article states outright that people who are scientists have expertise. At no point in the beginning paragraphs does the author shed doubt on the concept that we can "trust the experts" (but not ourselves) because they have that mystical expertise. They, of course, got that expertise from years of scientific study. The medical professionals here, then, surely have the same accredited, respectable expertise as any other given scientist.

Except, clearly, the author does not think that. The author believes that only certain experts are actually reliable, while these "few medical professionals", for some reason, are not trustworthy. Why are they not trustworthy? Where is the difference between the college educated experts who agree with the author and the college educated experts who disagree with the author?

They are not to be considered trustworthy because they have gone against the majority opinion. This is not a conspiracy but an easily logically discernible conclusion. Allow me to lay it out easily for you:

1. There is a "majority opinion" where many scientists agree on Thing X
2. Scientist A says "I don't believe Thing X is true"
3. The majority opinion holders accuse Scientist A of not being a trustworthy expert, because they have said Thing X is wrong, and the majority opinion holders say it is right

Genuinely, no smoke and mirrors, the only thing that is happening here is "appeal to the majority". The author betrays their own assertions from the beginning with this quip here. If scientists can be trusted because they are experts, because they have graduated from college in their field, then we must trust when Scientist A says they don't believe Thing X is true. If we cannot, then, logically, there is no magical aspect of scientists that makes them any more reliable than anyone else. If Scientist A's expertise and scientific training did not magically teach them Thing A is true, then the author must admit, at the very least, that either 1. Thing A could be false, or 2. Being a scientist doesn't make you capable of magically divining the truth. (The trick is that both are true.) 

 

Furthermore, when disagreeing with the majority opinion causes irreparable harm to your career, causes your credentials to be revoked, and permanently brands you as a "dangerous lunatic" whenever your name is mentioned in the public sphere, the validity of the "majority opinion" should rightly be called into question. The entire history of scientific advancement came from the fact that people challenged the status quo. Imagine if we executed the first guy to question humorism. Imagine indeed, as all scientists would then agree unanimously with humorism, since the alternative is execution. We would still practice humorism today, even if a large number of people had a strong suspicion that it wasn't true. It's almost like this is not how science is supposed to be used.

The fact of the matter is that, in every single way, scientists are exactly like everyone else. Scientists are subject to their biases, they are subject to ingroup preference. They can be bought and sold, they will manipulate data to serve their own agendas, they will ignore evidence that goes against their beliefs. Absolutely nothing about being a scientist makes a regular human, subject to all the extensive mental faults that plague every other human, some sort of superhuman power thinker.

You may wonder, then, what are we to do? Surely, even if "expertise" from professionally educated scientists isn't perfect, it's better than nothing, yes? Well, unfortunately, it may be literally impossible to know what to believe. That's just my opinion, anyway. Stay tuned if you'd like to know why.

An article I read several years ago actually tells us exactly how big science is broken. An exact oppositely titled article says science is not broken, but they both actually make the same point. "Science" as a system, as a "corporation" so to speak, is nearly irreparably corrupted. 

 

The first article cites a "replication crisis" (simply view the actual article for details) wherein an overwhelming number of studies have not been or cannot be replicated. Replication, if you know things about the scientific process, is the method through which we confirm that a scientific finding is accurate. If you run a study and get a certain result, but can never get that particular result again, we can be nearly certain that the first result was "a fluke" and not, say, a scientific "rule" of reality. That means an overwhelming number of studies appear by every measure to be flukes. That would be like believing walking under a ladder was bad luck because exactly one time that you did it, you broke your wrist five hours later on the same day. That is, by all accounts, an exact parallel to believing the results of a scientific study that cannot be replicated.

If that weren't enough, there is evidence that scientists regularly engage in outright lying, or fraud as it were. This was done via a survey where they simply asked scientists if they had engaged in unethical acts, such as selectively choosing results that supported their beliefs, or straight up fabricating data. Considering such admissions mean that the scientists are admitting to doing things that are bad we can only assume the number is actually higher, as we can safely assume not everyone was keen to admit wrongdoing, even if the survey is anonymous.

Finally, the icing on the cake, the peer-review process that is supposed to weed out faulty data before studies get published? It's compromised, too. Even when scientists knew they were being tested via faulty studies, they still rubber stamped them for approval. The social-aspect failures continue, with an explanation that older scientists are as superstitiously embroiled into whatever their original biases were as any irrational religious zealot, resulting in younger scientists needing to submit to whatever the more established scientists say, or risk losing their union membership. There are even more articles about how peer-review is abused, citing new and exciting ways scientists are ruining science, including the practice of letting scientists choose the people who will peer-review their work. To believe this wouldn't be abused would be to quite literally put scientists on a pedestal, above any other given human, assuming all scientists are naturally, unwaveringly ethical and working from a mindset of advancing scientific progress rather than their own paychecks and status (or that it's not possible for them to convince themselves they're doing both).

There are plenty more astonishing facts about the state of "big science" in that article, but I'd like to move onto the second article. Herein we find a new sort of excuse for the absolutely destitute state of modern science, and that is - and bear with me - that science is very hard.

The article makes an excellent point - and supplies an interactive little chart, even! - that shows how easy it is to manipulate data to say whatever you want. Given we know that some scientists admit to fudging data to support their claims via a voluntary survey, it should not be surprising that it is as easy as the interactive data chart makes it appear. And that's the part that this article claims is "hard" - it's hard to work with such small numbers, such small differences, and not only find valuable, useful data, but interpret it responsibly. In fact, the only way to recognize if the conclusions pushed by scientists are merely borderline-statistically-insignificant manipulated data is to, phew, do our own research.

But wait, I'm not even done. Here is an article that discusses how a "phantom reference" infiltrated hundreds of otherwise real scientific papers. The reference in question is from a paper that is not real but was still managed to be cited 480 times. It goes on to discuss how most scientists who write papers and make citations do not even read the cited works, they simply cite works other scientists have cited, almost a game of "citation telephone" wherein you wind up with papers making claims and citing sources wherein the claim made is not written. Later in the article we find the approximation that "only about 20% of citers read the original". 

 

This means that those scientists we are supposed to essentially trust with our very lives are possibly manipulating data, lying, simply kowtowing to majority opinion for brownie points, or referencing studies they have not even read - or are reading papers that reference other studies that are nonexistent.

So what are we to do? It is, frankly, a bit much to expect the everyday person, the average Joe, to do painstaking research about so many things. The fact of the matter is that many people do simply "trust the experts", as the alternative is much more difficult. We often do not want to take our lives into our own hands, hoping a confident, trustworthy authority figure, looking out for our best interests, will simply tell us what is best. The fact of the matter is that there is no one looking out for our best interests. The experts do not care about us, they do not even care about the truth. I have been let down by doctors, people paid to care for my health, multiple times. Many people report doctors dismissing their problems and people have even died for it. Medical malpractice is an incredible killer. Those same pompous, educated "experts" in the form of scientists are no more interested in your health and well being. Scientists are bought and sold like anyone else, dissenting views are suppressed and attacked regardless of the validity of their methods. The only way to truly get a grasp on things is to explicitly do our own research.

Unfortunately, it will be pretty difficult to do even that. If the data is compromised, that means any research your look at could be compromised. This includes dissenting opinions. Yes, what I'm saying is all scientific research is suspect and it's nearly impossible to know which scientists lied or manipulated their data for their own ends. Regarding things we could not possibly hope to research ourselves, like whether the arctic is shrinking, we truly can have no idea what is the honest truth. 

 

In fact, a very interesting tweet I came across explained this problem well, but maybe without realizing it. The OP laments that it's nearly impossible to do research because there's conflicting data everywhere with no way of telling who is "trustworthy" or not. They ignorantly - but innocently enough - "miss the days of Encylopedia Brittanica". The ending sentence of the tweet shows that they miss the point - there was likely always dissenting science by any number of opponents to the majority consensus, but because all of our information was compiled into name brand books which were then the main staple of libraries across the country, no one knew about it. Now any dissenting scientist can publish their work and get noticed. This seems like a new problem, but it actually discounts the fact that dissenting scientific opinions could be right, and thus, the majority opinion in Encyclopedia Brittanica, may actually not reflect reality, but a misled majority opinion based in nepotism and brown-nosing. If we only had "majority opinion enforced" encyclopedias today, I can only imagine how much worse the status-and-money-grabbing state of science would be. In a way, allowing dissenting scientists a platform may actually be healthier for truth-seeking than it is unhealthy, though I'm not sure it's salvageable at all at this point, frankly.

 

There is good news, though it may not seem like it at first. Most things do not actually matter. It actually, despite the outcry and controversy, doesn't matter if you think the earth is flat. What difference does it truly make to you, the average person, if pluto is a planet? It is not important. I think, however, for the things that matter, we can get a pretty good idea of what is right. Unfortunately, one of the kinds of things that is very important to the average person is notoriously one of the most difficult things to research, and that is nutrition science. If you are going to dedicate hours of research into anything, don't worry about planets and icebergs - figure out what the food you are putting into your own body every day is doing to you. What is most amazing about this type of research isn't simply that it is applicable, but due to your very close, personal relationship with yourself, nutrition science is something you can easily study with the consent of the subject. You can, in fact, employ bona fide, grade-A science to your own life by making alterations to your diet and paying attention to the results! Amazing. In a real way, the science that truly matters to us is the most accessible, as it is personally testable.

It may never be possible for us to know particular things for certain, as science as an institution has been compromised. The things that personally affect us the most, however, we can figure out ourselves by utilizing the actual scientific process that professional scientists have left behind in favor of social status and wealth accumulation. You can lie about climate science all day and the average person cannot actually contest you with data of their own, only the data from other scientists. You cannot lie to someone about what certain foods are doing to them - they will find out on their own. What's important is not "listening to experts" but learning the mechanisms and functions behind what "science" actually is and applying them where it matters in your own life.

It's important to recognize that we do have biases, but it's also important to understand that our gut instincts are there for a reason. In this day and age, with the complete degradation of trust in "expert opinion", I would argue that you are better off trusting your gut instincts and your own judgements. Both systems are flawed, but at least you have your best interests in mind, where we cannot say as much for "the experts".