In this episode, we dig into the emotional, philosophical, and practical sides of having children, a topic Juno brings in after a conversation about it came up during a circling immersion in Tucson. Juno opens up about why she's never wanted to give birth, even though she'd love to be a deeply involved co-parent to other people's kids: it comes down to the outsized power a birth parent holds over a child's primary attachment. Benzi pushes back and shares that she does want to give birth, largely because of the singular closeness she has with her own mom and her wish to create that bond in the other direction, and Juno gently prods her on whether that connection can ever be guaranteed. From there we get into Juno's long-held anti-natalist leanings, the selfish gene theory, and why she thinks most people's reasons for having kids are really just evolution talking, versus Benzi's belief in unconditional love as a motivator and her skepticism of free will and "reasons" in general. We open up about our pretty different baseline views on whether life is worth living (Juno's is that we're mostly suffering and DNA's slaves to it, Benzi's is that heaven is a place on earth), get delightfully weird talking about vessels, experiencers, and Existential Kink, and land on Benzi's vision for communal parenting, day mothers and night mothers, wet nursing, and shared night shifts, as the antidote to the isolated, miserable motherhood we both witnessed in our old community. We also talk about our fears of being overstimulated or emotionally checked-out caregivers, how that connects to our own childhoods and abuse histories, the inherent powerlessness of being a child, Benzi's grief about becoming an older mom, and why taking kids' emotional experiences seriously (Wife Swap included) matters so much to us.
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