A freelance writer whose specialisms are: education, science & philosphy, health & wellbeing, travel and short fiction

We do not have any children in order to own them or keep them. We have them so that they will leave us and love elsewhere...
French philosopher Andr? Comte-Sponville

Why do people have children?

One answer, of course, is that reproduction is a fundamental biological urge: a primitive desire that is hard-wired into our genes. But leaving that aside, what else motivates people to have families?

In his 1930 book, The Conquest Of Happiness, British philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote: 'When men and women have children they do so either because they believe that children will add to their happiness, or because they do not know how to prevent them.'

Today - in the developed world, at least - most people do know 'how to prevent them'. So I think it is fair to say that most people have children because they believe that doing so will increase their personal happiness.

Russell himself was one of the 20th century's great thinkers. He achieved world renown as a philosopher, a writer and a political activist. But he claimed to have achieved the greatest personal satisfaction simply through being a father. He wrote: 'I have found the happiness of parenthood greater than any other that I have experienced.'

Gift-love and need-love
Since people tend to have children in order to add to their own happiness, we might almost say that parenthood is generally entered into for selfish reasons. Or, more accurately, for reasons which are not altruistic.

We have children because we want - or need - them.

Of course, as soon as (or even before) the baby is born, parental affection kicks in. Suddenly the child's needs are paramount. The parent's overpowering impulse is to protect, nurture and otherwise care for the child.

Now, overwhelmingly, they need us.

Parental affection is very strong. It is, in Russell's words, 'a special kind of feeling which the normal human being experiences towards his or her own children, but not towards any other human being'.

This type of affection generally remains strong as the child grows. Many parents are willing to make great sacrifices for the benefit even of grown-up children.

So we see that parental affection includes a hefty dose of what the writer and theologian C. S. Lewis called gift-love. By this he meant the kind of unselfish, outward-directed love 'which moves a man to work and plan and save for the future well-being of his family which he will die without sharing or seeing'.

He contrasted gift-love with need-love, by which he meant the kind of love 'which sends a lonely or frightened child to its mothers arms'.

If we picture a mother nursing her baby, we have a striking illustration of the two kinds of love in action. The gift-love of the mother and the need-love of the baby are almost too obvious to miss.

But, in fact, the mother's love is not pure gift-love. For the truth is that the mother needs to give; and therefore her love is need-love too.

C. S. Lewis summed it up beautifully: '(Her) affection is a need-love...but what it needs is to give. It is a gift-love but it needs to be needed.'

The same holds true - although perhaps less picturesquely so - for the father. He too showers the child with gift-love. But again it is gift-love of a type that needs to be needed. So both mother and father experience need-love, which manifests itself in a perfectly natural craving for the affection of their children.

Letting go
But the parent's ultimate aim is for the child to achieve independence. We do not have children in order to keep them, but rather to set them free.

Unbridled need-love on the part of parents can easily send them astray. A too-ravenous affection will gratify itself by keeping its objects needy in order to hold onto them.

'Thus a heavy task is laid upon this gift-love,' said C. S. Lewis.

'It must work towards its own abdication. We must work at making ourselves superfluous. The hour when we can say 'they need me no longer' should be our reward.'

This is what the French philosopher Andre Comte-Sponville called 'the iron rule of the family and the golden rule of love'. We have children so that they will leave us, love elsewhere, and have children of their own.

Thus we become part of the great stream of life, and - through the lives of our children and grandchildren - keep a stake in the future even when we ourselves are old and grey.

E-mail: gary@garyhayden.co.uk

This is the second of a five-part series on relationships