The Big Read: To breed or not to breed?

A few weeks back an aunt of mine asked me what I'm sure she believed was an innocuous question: "When are you having children?"

Perhaps because it is still frowned upon for one not to aspire to parenthood, I gave a shrug, as if to say: "We'll see." Of course it is not a question exclusive to me - I'm certain we can all identify with such pesky interrogations from relatives.

The question followed a conversation we all had about continuing the family name, especially after the passing of our parents - almost 12 years apart.

What I thought and how I reacted was poles apart. The recent passing of my mother, especially, made me feel like the one person I wanted to do proud had left me. It felt as if all the goals and targets had disappeared. It felt, and feels, empty. I sometimes feel devoid of any aspirations. What her passing has also brought about is the feeling that I want a child or children - perhaps, in a hope that I will have someone to make proud and someone who could make me proud too. It is a strange feeling.

However, I have never been obsessed with the idea of having children or starting a family, or even aspired to marriage. Perhaps I have witnessed too many false starts, too many broken hearts and souls. Perhaps I detached myself from the expectations that saddled many a heterosexual family a long while ago.

I should also say that children are beautiful. Witnessing my siblings and friends and relatives with children, it seems to provide parents with added vigour for life, impetus. It gives them a sense of purpose. But I have also learned that children and marriage impose pressure on couples and individuals. What I actually wanted to ask my aunt was: "For whom will I be having these children?"

I have recently discovered renowned psychotherapist Esther Perel's new podcast, Where Shall We Begin, in which she sits in a room with couples and lets them have it out. The conversations are uncensored and only the couples' identities are hidden. Listening in on these 45 minute-long conversations is peculiar. It is voyeuristic. But what it is showing - as has Metro FM's daily #AskAMan segment, the #HurtBae video which went viral on social media, and even The Tim Ferriss Show on iTunes - is that while infidelity isn't as unfamiliar as we would like to believe, what it takes to make relationships work is a foreign concept.

The first episode of Where Shall We Begin, released on Perel's Soundcloud page (and soon to be on iTunes), is titled I've Had Better, and features a married couple with three children. The man has strayed and their marriage and sex life has degenerated into soul-sapping monotony.

The conversation went something like this:

Man: "I felt like you were not into it [sex]. I felt like you wanted me to do everything. I felt like everything was forced. To be crude, you thought that just because I come it meant that I was satisfied. Because you didn't and I did, it meant that it was great for me and terrible for you. It was terrible for me too. It was like having sex with a dead body."

Woman: "I'm not like that. I'm very far from a dead body. Maybe we are not sexually compatible."

She added that her husband "would take me, come in five minutes and leave me. This is our sex life."

They both hated having sex with each other- the wife admitted she had had "better" elsewhere, before they got married.

It appears that many couples see starting a family as a good way to grow closer. Yet, I regularly notice the opposite.

Author and psychology professor Matthew D Johnson says researchers have found that the rate of the decline in relationship satisfaction is almost twice as steep for couples who have kids than for those who don't. He also found that in the event of an unplanned pregnancy, the lovers experience even greater negative impacts on their relationship.

In an article for CNN.com, Johnson cited Thomas Hansen, who authored Parenthood and Happiness: A Review of Folk Theories Versus Empirical Evidence, and who found that people tend to believe that parenthood is central to a fulfilling life, and that people like myself (childless) are living meaningless lives.

If, then, the purpose of life is procreation, I want to be counted out of the foolishness. We should also eschew the idea that children can fix relationships or marriages in ruin.