«Is it still justifiable to bring children into the world?»

Mrs Bleisch, why do we decide to have children?

That's a difficult question. Most people who have children would not be able to answer it. Many would probably say that they simply felt the desire to have a child. Some long for the specific lifestyle that parenthood brings. Others want to take responsibility for a being, pass on their own ideas and values or love a little person unconditionally and also be loved by them.

The desire to have children is a mixture of social and cultural expectations, biological causes, deep longings and ideas of a happy life. Reducing it to the reproductive instinct is not plausible.

By confessing to a child, you expose yourself to great vulnerability.

For what reason?

To claim that the desire to have children is a biological necessity and that its fulfilment is therefore «natural» would mean that those people who do not feel this desire are somehow deficient. Furthermore, such biologism would place having children in the same category as the sex drive. Today, however, we can live sexuality independently of the question of procreation. It is also possible to distance oneself from «natural» desires and prioritise other desires, such as professional ones.

What makes becoming a parent different from other big «life projects»?

The decision to have children is probably one of the most existential decisions you can make. It is irreversible: You remain a parent for life. And it's exclusive: it's not usually possible to be just a father or mother, you become the first point of contact for the child. What's more, you are entering unknown territory: you don't know what your child will be like, you can neither anticipate their temperament nor know whether they might go astray. By committing to a child, you expose yourself to great vulnerability.

What's more, you don't know how to change yourself.

That's right. Many people say that when they became parents, they themselves were reborn. In fact, being a parent is a different social form of existence. Parenthood is perhaps even one of the greatest adventures we can embark on in our secure, organised world.

But do children also make you happy? Or to put it another way: are parents the happier people?

There are many studies on this question, some of which are massively contradictory. Parents tend to be unhappier than childless couples when their children are young. As the children get older, parental happiness increases again and then exceeds that of people without offspring when they become grandparents. What bothers me about such studies, however, is that the concept of happiness in the social sciences is one-sided.

In what way?

Happiness is usually equated with life satisfaction, and this also depends on whether we get enough sleep, whether our relationship with our partner is sustainable and whether we have time for ourselves. However, if we assume a concept of happiness that is closer to the feeling of meaningfulness, parents are often happier than those without children. Having children of their own seems to have a meaningful effect for many.

Children change, and so does our relationship with them.

Everyday life with small children can be particularly stressful.

And physically exhausting. I can still see myself with my two daughters, one in my arms, the other in a pram, still carrying shopping bags in the other hand, no lift in the house. But it was also a very intimate time, when the children were completely safe in your arms and ran to meet you when you came home.

And that will be missing later?

Children change, and so does our relationship with them. The philosopher Immanuel Kant saw the task of parents primarily as educating children to maturity. Parents do not own their children, they only accompany them and must release them into freedom. This means providing a framework within which freedom can be practised. The most difficult thing is: how permeable can and should the framework be?

With the onset of puberty, the relationship between parents and children often becomes more difficult.

Even in friendships there are phases in which you don't get on so well, in which conversations are more difficult because you are both going in different directions, but at some point you find each other again and the friendship may even grow as a result of the crisis. It's similar with children.

There are times when you are very familiar with your own children. Then they take a developmental step and you may wonder whether you still know your own child. My daughters are now 10 and 12 years old. When they come home, they often ask what I did and how my day was. The fact that they also want to know how I am still touches me every time.

Nowadays, freedom of choice means that children are increasingly being carefully integrated into one's own biography. To put it bluntly, you could say that children are becoming the parents' project, in which they invest a lot of time, energy and knowledge as well as money.

That's certainly true. But I wouldn't judge this development so negatively in the first instance. Today, we know more precisely what a child needs, have the opportunity to consult experts if necessary and can provide children with targeted support. Firstly, this shows that we want the best for our children and also have the resources to consciously look after them. The fact that children today are no longer their parents' pension scheme or a useful labour force is certainly a welcome development.

At what point does this development become harmful for the child?

When the child no longer belongs to itself, but has to follow the plans that the parents have for it. Every child has a right to an open future: to be allowed to express their own preferences and views and to develop into the person they want to be.

Children also have aptitudes and cannot be moulded and encouraged at will. If parents ignore their child's talents and think that they can do anything with enough encouragement, they are mistaken and will mould the child in a way that harms it.

Parents should not want to raise their children to be successful, but to be happy people.

Doesn't this attitude also harbour a danger for the parents themselves?

In fact, parents in our society have become a kind of life coach for their children. They are quickly made responsible for the success or failure of their children, as if it were up to the parents alone what happens to them. As I said, children bring with them aptitudes and character. And how do we define «success» anyway? Parents should not want to raise their children to be successful, but to be happy people.

Isn't that easier said than done?

It is certainly not easy to escape the market of support and educational programmes. Even toddlers can attend music lessons, ballet and bilingual daycare centres. The imperative of self-optimisation spills over from adults to children: life as a constant competition in which we keep ourselves fitter, smarter and more competitive than our counterparts.

Parents are constantly being told that their child will be at a disadvantage if they don't take this or that measure. It no longer seems to be enough to offer the child a warm nest. It is becoming more difficult for parents to remain calm and trust that the child will find its place.

Will parents also have to deal with the question of whether it is still ethically justifiable to have children or more children in the future? In your new book «Kinder wollen», a sub-chapter deals with the question of the extent to which the climate debate will or should have an influence on family planning.

A study conducted in 2017 at the Universities of British Columbia and Lund concluded that a person could save 0.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year by giving up meat and 2.4 tonnes by living a car-free life. Not having a child would save a whopping 58.6 tonnes. In light of these results, the Club of Rome think tank has called for us to rethink having children.

And do without children to protect the climate?

Or at least not start a large family. However, the figures and the measurement methodology were also called into question. For example, the fact that future generations will hopefully live more ecologically thanks to climate protection measures was not taken into account. Or that the birth rate is falling in many industrialised countries anyway and that children in developing countries have a significantly smaller ecological footprint due to their different standard of living.

In principle, there is no entitlement to a specific gesture of gratitude.

Do you see a trend towards fewer children among younger people?

These questions should be answered by social scientists. I just notice that different generations react differently to these demands. My parents' generation finds the idea of not having children for climate protection reasons rather abstruse; my generation is more sympathetic to it; students at university, on the other hand, discuss this issue at length.

And the so-called climate youth?

Of course, they don't decide in favour of or against having children now. But a certain «fear of the future» certainly goes hand in hand with the question of the world into which children are being released. On the other hand, parents in particular may have an important reason to campaign for an ecological policy - in favour of a future worth living for their children.

Not childless people?

That would be a gross insinuation. I would put it the other way round: Having children perhaps places a special obligation on us to at least think about the world we are leaving behind for future generations. Because, as the philosopher Leander Scholz writes, children create a «relationship to a future» that extends far beyond our own time.

Your last book «Why we owe our parents nothing» caused a furore. What prompted you to write about this topic?

On the one hand, we all have parents, and everyone probably wonders from time to time how they should deal with the demands of their own parents - especially if they want to be on good terms with their parents. On the other hand, I became a mother myself, was grateful for the help of my own parents and experienced how they in turn also looked after my grandparents. I began to wonder how we can think wisely about the expectations that exist in families - so that families can succeed and everyone can flourish.

And you have come to the conclusion that children owe their parents nothing?

Yes, for various reasons, which I reflect on in detail in the book. Above all, I believe that the idea of guilt is not only unjustified, but also inappropriate. Parents don't want their children to look after them out of a sense of guilt, but out of an interest in each other and in their relationship with each other.

But shouldn't we at least be grateful to our parents?

Gratitude is a central virtue, the value of which I like to emphasise. Grateful people are also happier, as many studies have shown. But the crucial question is whether gratitude implies that we owe our parents something to which they in turn are entitled. This does not seem to me to be the case. Gratitude can be shown in different ways. There is no entitlement to a specific gesture of gratitude.

And vice versa? What do parents owe their adult children?

The question cannot be turned round one-to-one and I do not yet have a definitive answer to it. As a mother or father, you bring a person into your life. That definitely makes you responsible. Ideally, this responsibility ends because the child becomes independent and can - and incidentally wants to - look after itself.

But what if this is not the case? What if the child is ill and can never lead an independent life? Or if it gets into a crisis in adulthood?

I don't think parents can simply take the view that their responsibility ends when the child comes of age. Rather, it is probably part of the risk of parenthood that we can never know whether the child will find and follow its own path. But of course it is also a social responsibility to support parents who are overburdened by childcare.

Let's look at an example: an old woman is no longer able to live alone and wants one of her three adult children to take her in and care for her. All three say no. Can they do that?

Of course, this depends on the social system in which the woman lives. If it is possible to accommodate the woman well in a care home, children are not obliged to change their lives completely. In a society where there is not a sufficiently good social system, parents may be completely dependent on their children. They would then find themselves in an emergency situation from which only the children can rescue them. Emergency aid is then mandatory.

And is a mother allowed to refuse when her adult daughter asks her to look after her children?

Yes, having children means taking responsibility for them. But parents are not also responsible for their children's children. On the contrary, I think that the contribution grandparents make to society is not recognised enough. They do a lot of voluntary work, without which many things would not work!

Will it be the turn of the older children to give something back to their grandparents?

That depends on the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren. In the book, I argue in favour of exchanging the transactional view for a relational view. In other words, not to ask what I have to give back. But to ask: What does this relationship mean to me? How can I nurture it so that it can succeed? Relationships can only succeed if we nurture them, invest in them - but do not completely abandon or deny ourselves.

This also applies to the parent-child relationship: the relationship with our parents is irreplaceable and nobody gives it up lightly. However, if children are unable to develop or feel that their plans for their lives are constantly being controlled, they will have to free themselves from the family.