With just under two weeks to go until the end of classes here, my mind is starting to turn from the daily routines of course preparation and grading (although a nice big stack of papers sits besides me at this moment, waiting for my attention) as I look forward to the writing I will do in the summer and fall (I am on leave for the fall semester!  Hooray!).   My plan is to write at greater length, book length, on how ancient Chinese philosophy can speak to a broad range of modern concerns.  One area of consideration will be the proliferation, in recent decades, of new technologies surrounding human birth and what that means for how we understand family and social life.

      There are several books that have delved into this topic of late, two of which are reviewed today in Slate.  Liza Mundy’s Everything Conceivable was also reviewed in the NYT, which provides her first chapter here.   The other book reviewed by Slate is Peggy Orenstein’s Waiting for Daisy.

     I just wanted to jot down here a couple of ideas that come to mind when thinking about the new "fertility industry" from the perspectives of Taoism and Confucianism.

     One thing that strikes me is the deepening modern disconnect between the demands of work and career and the desires for family life.  This is not news, of course.  The work v. family tension has been with us since at least the beginning of the women’s movement 30 or 40 years ago.  My sense, however, is that the contradiction is only growing.  As men and women (this is not just a women’s reproduction issue but also a men’s commitment and priority issue) have focused more and more on the education and training and experience needed to establish themselves in well paying jobs (this is the issue for the upper middle class, at least), they have come to embrace more fervently the idea of a technological fix for the postponement of reproduction.  Some of this may be "lifestyle," but some of it, too, is economic necessity, or, at least, perceived economic necessity.  They believe that they have to avoid having children early in order to establish themselves in jobs that will ensure their family’s future prosperity.  That, at least, is the charitable interpretation.

     All of this centers on an assumption of control.  That we can control our career paths, our reproductive prospects, our lives.  Some of the most poignant stories emerge from those moments of realization that we do not have as much control over our fates as we think: the parents who postpone pregnancy, only to discover later that their increasing age has created obstacles to conception.

      The pressures thus created have redefined goals.  The Slate review notes:

Orenstein criticizes an industry that always seems to offer one more
procedure, one more promise to its patients. You become "hope’s bitch,"
she writes. "You don’t notice your motivation distorting, how
conception rather than parenthood become the goal, how invested you
become in its ‘achievement.’ "

     Why do we do it?  Why do we have children?  To gain a personal achievement?  Or to create a family environment in which, by giving up a portion of our personal selves, we find the means to enact Humanity?  Is is all about us, or is it about something more than ourselves?

     Enter the ancient Chinese.  One good thing about reading ancient texts is the absence in them of our overblown modern expectation of control.  Confucius, when confronted with the death of an acolyte, understands it as a matter of Fate.   Although raising children is central to his moral world view, he recognizes the variability of destiny and fate: not all of us will have the chance for our own children.  That is why adoption became an accepted practice as Confucianism was knit into the everyday practices of Chinese culture.

    I think, however, that Confucians would be somewhat sympathetic to a modest level of medical intervention to facilitate child birth.  They would probably want to regulate it such that its use was determined not by social conventions ("lifestyle" concerns) or economic interests.  They would be more likely to endorse in-vitro fertilization techniques in those cases where some surmountable medical problem is getting in the way, or where some unexpected circumstance has created an obstacle.  If it becomes a matter of personal obsession, it is perhaps detached from its moral moorings.

      But Confucians are crystal clear on why we should have children.  In its crudest form, the Confucian position emphasizes carrying on the family name, the family line.  This is tied in to our duties to earlier generations: they did what was necessary to ensure our existence, we need to do the same to ensure the continuation of the family’s existence.  I am deeply ambivalent about this argument, especially given the terrible distortions of it that can occur (female infanticide, etc.).  There is, however, another Confucian answer.  We should have children because it is in those most intimate family relationships that we create and extend into the world the highest moral accomplishments of Humanity.  We do it for the general betterment to society at large that occurs when we correctly fulfill our parental duties.  It is not all about me, personally; it is about something bigger than me.

     For Taoist, too, it is all about something bigger than us.  And that is Way.  But Way is vast and well beyond our control.  Fate, thus, looms larger here.  Taoists would almost certainly look askance at most if not all medical procedures to control or induce or micro-manage human birth.  If we have children, fine; that is obviously a part of the integrity (te) of human beings.   Yet if some persons are, for whatever reason, unable to have children, that, too, is fine.  Such is their te, their "essential nature."  It is not something to be happy or sad about, it just is.  If those persons are consumed with guilt or frustration, their problem lies in their pursuit of socially created expectations and desires.  Such things get in the way of acceptance of Way, of immersion in the immediate and ordinary experience of now.  Science won’t save such people, Taoists might say, emptying the mind will.