{"id":6690,"date":"2013-10-10T23:23:25","date_gmt":"2013-10-11T04:23:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=6690"},"modified":"2024-07-02T14:26:27","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T14:26:27","slug":"parenting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=6690","title":{"rendered":"What It’s Like to be a Parent"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Deciding<\/a>
Deciding whether or not to have a child is a tough decision and one that philosopher Laurie Paul (not pictured in photo) writes about in the paper, \u201cWhat You Can\u2019t Expect When You\u2019re Expecting.\u201d (photo courtesy of Kozzi.com).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Let\u2019s say you\u2019re a student at\u00a0UNC, and you\u2019re trying to decide whether to be a doctor. How do you go about making that\u00a0choice?<\/p>\n

Probably you\u2019d try to imagine how you\u2019d feel as a doctor, what your day would be like, and whether you\u2019d find it satisfying. Then you might imagine doing something else: maybe graphic design, or dentistry, or staying home with the kids. You\u2019d try to pick which of those lives you\u2019d like\u00a0best.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what a lot of people call reasonable decision-making, says\u00a0UNC\u00a0philosopher Laurie Paul. \u00a0It\u2019s the way many twenty-first-century Americans make other major life choices, too, such as having a child or getting a PhD. But there\u2019s a problem\u2014that way of making decisions just doesn\u2019t work, Paul writes in a paper called\u00a0\u201cWhat you can\u2019t expect when you\u2019re\u00a0expecting.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

The trouble, she says, is that sometimes we can\u2019t get anywhere close to knowing what the future we\u2019re imagining will be like. It\u2019s just too different from anything we\u2019ve experienced in the past. \u201cBeing a trauma doctor in the\u00a0ER\u00a0at midnight, trying to save someone\u2019s life, is remote from the experiences you have as a first-year college student,\u201d Paul points out. \u201cYou\u2019re having to make that decision in a kind of void. It\u2019s a leap of\u00a0faith.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul had this type of experience herself when she decided to have a child. Maybe in part because she\u2019s a philosopher, she\u2019d really done her research\u2014she read books about motherhood and put a lot of time and thought into the decision. \u201cBut I was shocked by the reality of what it was like,\u201d she says. \u201cIt changes your life in a fundamental way. What I cared about before I had my kids is completely different than what I care about now. Not in all dimensions\u2014I care just as much about my work, for example. But I think about even that\u00a0differently.\u201d<\/p>\n

What does all this have to do with philosophy? It\u2019s about decision theory, Paul says. Used by philosophers, economists, statisticians, and others, decision theory describes an ideal way to make good choices. Leaving out the mathematics, it works like this: first you determine what the different outcomes of a choice might be, and then you weigh how likely each outcome is to\u00a0happen.<\/p>\n

Some people go with the safest bet: the choice that\u2019s most likely to have a good outcome (like putting your savings in a safe place, such as a money market account). Others go with a choice that\u2019s riskier but offers higher potential rewards (like playing the stock market). Whichever way you choose, you\u2019re using decision theory: weighing risks versus\u00a0rewards.<\/p>\n

Of course, decision theory doesn\u2019t work perfectly in the real world. When we make choices, Paul says, we often don\u2019t know for sure which outcome will be best for us. (Will Social Security and my savings be enough, or will I wish I\u2019d put more in a retirement account?) Or we don\u2019t know for sure how likely an outcome is to happen, so it\u2019s hard to make a safe bet. (If I put money in a 401(k), will it gain or lose by the time I retire?) When we run these scenarios in our heads, we have to guess and estimate. Still, this rough approximation of decision theory is the accepted \u201crational\u201d way many of us make choices. We weigh the different outcomes as best we can, and then we\u00a0choose.<\/p>\n

Decision theory may be the best way to do your financial planning. But it flat-out doesn\u2019t work with having a kid, Paul says. Being a first-time parent involves a lot of new experiences, such as tending to the needs of a child who belongs to\u00a0you\u00a0<\/em>and no one else. And those new experiences change who you are in ways you can\u2019t necessarily predict before you have a child. Many people who think kids are a lot of fun find that the day-in, day-out experience of parenting is far more stressful than they\u2019d\u00a0imagined.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean Paul thinks the more rational choice is tonot\u00a0<\/em>have a child. For someone who isn\u2019t all that into kids, it might seem sensible not to have any. But some people who don\u2019t like children in general get blindsided by how much they love their own. Without experiencing the changes in brain chemistry that happen to both mothers and fathers after birth, we can\u2019t know for sure how we\u2019d feel in that situation. (Paul points out at the start of her paper that she\u2019s talking about having kids biologically, not about adoption, but she thinks that adoption is also the kind of transformative experience that you can\u2019t accurately imagine in\u00a0advance.)<\/p>\n

According to Paul, what we\u2019re doing when we choose whether we want children goes beyond the normal guessing and approximating of real-world decision theory. When our decisions are about having kids and other radically new experiences, we\u2019re choosing for or against things we fundamentally\u00a0just can\u2019t know<\/em>\u00a0about. Nor can we simply trust the positive experiences of people who are already parents, she says. Studies on parenthood, summarized in Paul\u2019s paper, seem to show little evidence that parents feel more life satisfaction than adults without\u00a0children.<\/p>\n

So where does that leave us\u2014should we just make life choices at random? Paul\u2019s working on a book right now, expanding her ideas from \u201cWhat you can\u2019t expect when you\u2019re expecting,\u201d about the problems with how we make life decisions. She\u2019s quick to tell me not to expect a new, point-by-point system for decision-making in her book. She does give one tip,\u00a0though:<\/p>\n

To decide to be a parent, Paul says, is to embrace a role: that of mother or father. \u201cYou can make the choice knowing that you don\u2019t know what it\u2019s going to be like,\u201d she says, \u201cbut knowing that this is something people do as part of how they live their lives.\u201d In other words: when we make certain life decisions, we\u2019re just\u00a0doing what people do<\/em>. That\u2019s not the most satisfying basis for a choice to create a new human life, or to throw yourself into a long, hard slog of medical school, residency, and\u00a0debt.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy view is not that it is right or wrong to have children, nor that you should not be happy with your choice,\u201d says Paul, who went on to have a second child. \u201cMy view is simply that you need to be honest with yourself about the basis for this\u00a0choice.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe we have to confront the thought that we don\u2019t have as much control over our future lives as we\u00a0thought.\u201d<\/p>\n

By\u00a0Susan Hardy, Endeavors Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n

http:\/\/endeavors.unc.edu\/what_its_like_to_be_a_parent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s say you\u2019re a student at UNC, and you\u2019re trying to decide whether to be a doctor. How do you go about making that choice?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6697,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[24,36,38,39,40],"class_list":["post-6690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-carolina","tag-unc","tag-unc-college-of-arts-and-sciences","tag-unc-chapel-hill","tag-university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6690"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46248,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6690\/revisions\/46248"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}