The Absence of Children

It seems I have read more then one story which will involve a couple, either married, or simply in a relationship, in which they will be intimately involved with each other for a period of time, and yet there will be no mention of children. Because it is not part of the story, and not related to what the author wants to convey he will simply ignore the idea of childbirth all together without even offering an explanation for why there are no children, they are just written off completely.

And for the most part these are stories that were written in a time in which birth control was not exactly convenient or effective and so it would be highly improbable for a couple having regular relations to go without children.

While on the one hand I know it is fiction on the other hand, if an author is writing a realistic story, set in a real time and place, involving people that could very well be real, and in real life situations, can an author just choose which parts of reality to ignore if such is not convenient for him to address.

I know I am just nit-picking here and this issue will not make or break a story for me, and I can understand why it is easy to just skip over for the sake of the greater importance behind what the story is trying to convey. But there has just been more then one instance when I have been left wondering "Where all the children? And why has such not been mentioned or addressed at all?"

And for that matter, where is the mother in King Lear?!

Hehe, which novels were you thinking about?

Well it has happend a few times here and there, but the ones that most come to mind was it bothered me in the short story Two Bluebirds by D.H. Lawrence, that we discussed, the married couple without a child in sight when they had seemingly been together for sometime.

And in the book Thier Eyes Were Watching God, the woman has had like three different husbands, and never had any children, and it is not as if she was suppose to be baron, that was not part of the story, the idea or possiblity of children was just excluded completely.

Why should children be involved?

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Originally Posted by limajean

Why should children be involved?

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Why shouldn't they? :p

Personally, I like children in literature because I like children in general. But I was never concerned if there was an absence of children.

No but i mean, it seems as though the question of " why are there no children? " is a stand in for " there should be children "
And i'm asking why there should be.

Maybe there simply is no requirement for children. If the story doesn't require them then perhaps it was to the authors preference that they exclude them.

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Originally Posted by limajean

Why should children be involved?

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I don't think she's thinking whether the children have a choice. I think she's talking about the birds and the bees. :D Do you know about the birds and the bees, Lima? :p

Birds and the Bees Virgil, hah, you would hope that by my age i'd have an idea ;)

No I know what she's talking about. And i'm not talking about choice.
I'm talking about the author, why should the characters have children? If there is no requirement for them in the story.


There are many books where the characters have children, there are many where they don't. If there is no need for them, why should the characters have them?

Though I do agree with the point she makes about birth control.

Also the comment about the story being realistic, by Muse. How is it not realistic for a couple to NOT have children? And that's part of my point. On top of the fact it may add a completely knew dimension to the story, would mean writing in another set of characters and might overthrow an author's intentions. Why must they have children?

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Originally Posted by limajean

Birds and the Bees Virgil, hah, you would hope that by my age i'd have an idea ;)

No I know what she's talking about. And i'm not talking about choice.
I'm talking about the author, why should the characters have children? If there is no requirement for them in the story.

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I see your point. She would argue that it violates realism.

Does it? why?

If an author is writing a 'realistic' story and chooses to not give the couples any children, is that really violating realism? I ask that because if you're going to say that about a novel which has tried to be written in a realistic way, with realistic people and realistic happenings - wouldn't that also mean that people who choose to not have children, in real life, are also violating realism? If realistic couples who choose not to have children in real life are like those in a 'realistic' novel - I don't see any violation of realism. Unless you believe that it is a violation of realism to not have children. Understand what i'm saying?

Which leads me back to my original point. Why must there be children? especially if you're going to question realism itself in novels which are without children. If you find it unrealistic, a novel that is with couples who are without children, are you also saying that it is "unrealistic" in real life for couples to be without children? I think you are. Whether you realize that or not.

...Why is there a need for children in couples who have been together for years? I plan to get married, but I don't want kids. Is there something wrong with that?

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Originally Posted by limajean

Does it? why?

If an author is writing a 'realistic' story and chooses to not give the couples any children, is that really violating realism? I ask that because if you're going to say that about a novel which has tried to be written in a realistic way, with realistic people and realistic happenings - wouldn't that also mean that people who choose to not have children, in real life, are also violating realism? If realistic couples who choose not to have children in real life are like those in a 'realistic' novel - I don't see any violation of realism. Unless you believe that it is a violation of realism to not have children. Understand what i'm saying?

Which leads me back to my original point. Why must there be children? especially if you're going to question realism itself in novels which are without children. If you find it unrealistic, a novel that is with couples who are without children, are you also saying that it is "unrealistic" in real life for couples to be without children? I think you are. Whether you realize that or not.

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Well, I guess I'm wishy-washy on this. You both made good points and I can't make up my mind. :lol: But you're right, it's up to the author. Not having children may be unlikely but it is not improbable.

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Originally Posted by Infinitefox

...Why is there a need for children in couples who have been together for years? I plan to get married, but I don't want kids. Is there something wrong with that?

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That's my point.

But the thing is, you really did not have a choice if you were going to have children or not before effective birth control was invented. Pretty much before the pill, if you were married or intimately involved with someone you got pregnant, that is just the way it worked.

Sure since the Middle Ages there were always some form of birth control and abortion, but they frankly did not tend to be very reliable. So realistically if you were having sex you were going to end up getting pregnant.

Trust me Virgil can tell you how I feel about children, this has nothing to do with my personal views on the issue, but on the pure biology of it.

You cannot look at this from a modern perspective if you are talking about a story that was not written in modern times. Today it would be perfectly natural and realistic for a couple not to have children. In the 1800s and early 1900's it would not be so likely.

Good topic, Dark Muse. :nod:
D.H. Lawrence seems a prime example, as you mentioned. I doubt I have encountered one novel or short story of his that does not contain sex, with little mention of children - the exceptions: The Rainbow and Sons and Lovers, but, in the latter, the parents already bore the children; Women in Love, perhaps Lawrence's most sexually-saturated novel, contains no children, but only elements of lust, envy, and jealousy.
The blunt truth: maybe it seems an instinctive thing; seeing that the majority of authors, especially in classic literature, are male, in addition to the majority of characters, men seem to concern themselves less with children. Particularly in the times we address in this thread, from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, while men dominated the literary world, even in real life, with children, they concerned themselves little with their offspring. Other greats that involved sex without children: The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio and almost anything by Ernest Hemingway.
In some areas of literature, children function as an object of shame, punishment, and abandonment. Some worthy mentions: Sorrow in Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, Pip in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Philip in Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham, nearly all children in Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, and, even in the oldest literature, we see Icarus as a burden upon Daedalus for his curiosity in Metamorphoses by Ovid. I find no irony that men wrote all of these works.
Though I do not want to carry this bias so far, as we can say a lot of the children in Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, very involved, well-kept, funny children, but in certain womens' works, I see variations, depending on the time period written, especially if written in Kate Chopin's time of the Women's Rights Movement, as opposed to the period of either of the Bronte sisters or Jane Austen.
In fiction, sex for reproduction, or sex for sex? Of course, it all seems within the limits of the author's brain, but not to sound too piggish, as a male who types this, I have definitely noticed a different trend between male and female authors.

That is some very interesting and thoughtful insight. I did not even consider the fact that many of the books are written by men. Really I just assumed that the auther simply left children out becasue they did not figure into the story he or she was trying to tell, and it was easier not to deal with them at all then try and include them within the story in some way.

But you have brought up some interesting points upon the subject which do make a lot of since.

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Originally Posted by mono

The blunt truth: maybe it seems an instinctive thing; seeing that the majority of authors, especially in classic literature, are male, in addition to the majority of characters, men seem to concern themselves less with children. Particularly in the times we address in this thread, from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, while men dominated the literary world, even in real life, with children, they concerned themselves little with their offspring. Other greats that involved sex without children: The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio and almost anything by Ernest Hemingway.
In some areas of literature, children function as an object of shame, punishment, and abandonment. Some worthy mentions: Sorrow in Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, Pip in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Philip in Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham, nearly all children in Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, and, even in the oldest literature, we see Icarus as a burden upon Daedalus for his curiosity in Metamorphoses by Ovid. I find no irony that men wrote all of these works.
Though I do not want to carry this bias so far, as we can say a lot of the children in Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, very involved, well-kept, funny children, but in certain womens' works, I see variations, depending on the time period written, especially if written in Kate Chopin's time of the Women's Rights Movement, as opposed to the period of either of the Bronte sisters or Jane Austen.
In fiction, sex for reproduction, or sex for sex? Of course, it all seems within the limits of the author's brain, but not to sound too piggish, as a male who types this, I have definitely noticed a different trend between male and female authors.

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Well, it's true that male authors dominate the classical literature world, but consider what literary women have done recently. College literature departments are dominated by women who have disposed of the Classics, turning books like the New Testament into a critical commentary on sex and sexuality known as queer theory and masculinity studies---and such women now inform us that the Iliad is not really about war, it's about homoeroticism. And Little Red Riding Hood is not an innocent tale about a young girl's escape from a bad wolf, it's about penis envy! And take a guess what little red riding hood symbolizes in the new interpretation, folks? :idea:

Oh I don't know about you, but I'll take the Classics, thank you very much. :D

Well Little Red Ridding Hood was traditionally told as a saucy story in taverns. Most fairy tales were not originally meant for children. They come from the oral tradition and were told for adult entertainment. It was those who put the tales into print that gave them moral lessons and made them for the child audience.

Well I'm reading a lot of Dickens at the moment, so 'why are there so many bl**dy children!'

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Originally Posted by jon1jt

Well, it's true that male authors dominate the classical literature world, but consider what literary women have done recently. College literature departments are dominated by women who have disposed of the Classics, turning books like the New Testament into a critical commentary on sex and sexuality known as queer theory and masculinity studies---and such women now inform us that the Iliad is not really about war, it's about homoeroticism. And Little Red Riding Hood is not an innocent tale about a young girl's escape from a bad wolf, it's about penis envy! And take a guess what little red riding hood symbolizes in the new interpretation, folks? :idea:

Oh I don't know about you, but I'll take the Classics, thank you very much. :D

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Bah! And they dare call Sigmund Freud sex-obsessed! :lol:

The last ten books that I have read are close to hand and only one of them doesn't mention children and that's Hemmingway's The Sun Also Rises.

I think in the Sun Also Rises the abscence of children acutally works with the story, since impotence is one of the themes presented.

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Originally Posted by Dark Muse

I think in the Sun Also Rises the abscence of children acutally works with the story, since impotence is one of the themes presented.

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I agree, and since only one of the characters is married and awaiting a divorce, children would add nothing to the obviously adult theme of the story.

Odd, I thought about this thread this morning, while staring at my bookshelves, half-asleep, waiting for the coffee to brew.
What sort of significance can we say of books that revolve around children (who eventually grow), reproduction, and, even more so, having families for survival. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez came to mind, especially; I had trouble reading this book due to the high number of characters and similar names, but the responsibility to keep the village from burning with poverty, and a need for everyone to 'pull their weight' around the village nearly impelled them to reproduction.
Not only did this novel demonstrate the essence of responsibility, but also how to keep a culture rich with authenticity, warmth, and purity, almost in a 'eugenic' manner to maintain the strongest culture for a population living in the worst poverty. As some novels may lack children, but not sex, as Dark Muse said in her first post, novels like One Hundred Years of Solitude show an importance for a generation to live on for another hundred years.

I hear that book is suppose to be quite good. I have it, but have not yet gotton to reading it.

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Originally Posted by mono

Good topic, Dark Muse. :nod:
D.H. Lawrence seems a prime example, as you mentioned. I doubt I have encountered one novel or short story of his that does not contain sex, with little mention of children - the exceptions: The Rainbow and Sons and Lovers, but, in the latter, the parents already bore the children; Women in Love, perhaps Lawrence's most sexually-saturated novel, contains no children, but only elements of lust, envy, and jealousy.

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mono, only addressing this part for now and the earlier remark about Two Bluebirds by Lawrence from Dark Muse.

For one Lawrence was married when he wrote these books and he never fathered a child himself; obviously he and his wife Frieda could not have children biologically speaking. She already had had several with husband #1. I think birth control was available at this time and probably they choose not to have them early in their marriage; later when he did vaguely entertained the thought, physically it was not possible for them to conceive. I don't find it at all strange that people did not have children in some of the novels mentioned and others I have read during those periods. Personally, I have never really thought about it before, or even noticed the absense of children. Oddly enough, in Lawrence's many short stories there is often mention of children and Lady Chatterly easily conceives - this book being a later work. I think that the lack of children being seen in "Women is Love" is obvious...the couples involved are 'modern' thinking for the times and they would definitely have access to some form of birth control at that time (early part of the century). As the author and artist of the novel, to give either women a pregnancy would totally distract the reader from the entire focus and point of the book; the book goes way further than the simplistic words you have reduced it to, Mono: "only elements of lust, envy, and jealousy"...that I totally disagree with. I even find it rather ridiculous, if you read the book and truly analysised it in depth. The book has a lot more layering than three simple words.

I think in the story "Two Bluebirds", the main characters (husband and wife) do not have much to do with each other, in a sexual way; perhaps this is the way in which they avoided conception; to say that methods of birth control were totally ineffective back then is a oversight. They may not be as effective as they are now, but not every woman in that time period gave birth to children either, nor could men father them, even if they were sexually active. I know of relatives of that time who only had one or two children, some had none, others had as many as 12. I don't think if we can generalize about that era. I would be interested to see statistics on just how many people in the 1800's, early 1900's did have no biological children at all; then I would like to know if it was by choice or by biology.

Considering particuarly in the 1800's as well as part of the early 1900's there were women whom choose to simply not get married at all becasue they did not want to be burdoned with children, these primiarly being creative women, authors and such it is farily safe to presume, that it was the standard that if you got married you were going to give birth. I really do not think there were a lot of women back then who were married without children at least not do to the personal choice to not have children. That is not how things worked back then. Both becasue of the way soceity and religion was structured, as well as the biology. There may be have been methods to prevent childbirth, but the "The Pill" was not such a big deal for no reason. It was the most accurate and most effective method. Past methods would be bound to fail over an extended period or sexual intimacy.

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Originally Posted by Dark Muse

Considering particuarly in the 1800's as well as part of the early 1900's there were women whom choose to simply not get married at all becasue they did not want to be burdoned with children, these primiarly being creative women, authors and such it is farily safe to presume, that it was the standard that if you got married you were going to give birth. I really do not think there were a lot of women back then who were married without children at least not do to the personal choice to not have children. That is not how things worked back then. Both becasue of the way soceity and religion was structured, as well as the biology. There may be have been methods to prevent childbirth, but the "The Pill" was not such a big deal for no reason. It was the most accurate and most effective method. Past methods would be bound to fail over an extended period or sexual intimacy.

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:lol:I have never known abstinence to fail. I have known people with large families of kids who stopped sleeping in the same room, just so as not to have any more; I would assume that meant they no longer did as the 'birds and bees' do....;) that one is for Virgil.:lol: Also, I have read a ton of books from the 1800's in which the husband and wife seem to sleep in separate rooms; in fact, it seemed to be the norm at that time. Men were definitely very frustrated this time in history and that is why a lot of them had affairs. It might also be said the same in reverse for women, but I think they would refrain for fear of pregnancy, also it was ingrained in them from their mothers that sex was a bad thing. Maybe we should research birth control and see just how far back it dates. Also, there still remains the factor, that many people in that century, just plain could not conceive or give birth physically speaking. There also was a larger infant mortality rate back then, combine that with the birth of the mother's mortality and one can easily see why woman might shy away from having children. Many women died during childbirth. It was quite a dangerous undetaking. There still may be the tiny fraction of the lot who just plain did not desire any children, but most likely that was not the case, although entirely possible. I think the odds are the other reasons I gave would have been more prevalent.

I understood the argument to be that, in stories in which the characters regularly engage in sexual intercourse, why do the women not end up pregnant? I don't think Dark Muse was suggesting that all married couples need to have children. limajean, I agree with the necessities of the plot as you described (if the story does not require children thematically, they should not be there). However, I think Muse was questioning that, in a realistic story in which birth control is not utilized, but a couple constantly puts themselves in situations where pregnancy could be a result, why it results in no children.

Muse, I would suggest that, basically, it is due to story constrictions of plot, page numbers, and theme. Introducing a child into a relationship may provide new directions for the story that an author may not want to explore (perhaps favoring the other themese being explored). Of course, when such things do happen in literature, at least you will be plesantly surprised!

EDIT: I apologize! I hadn't noticed there was a second page! Basically ignore my comments until I figure out how to delete my post...

Well in the books in question I do not think that we are to presume that the couples are being abstienent, in fact in many of the books it is quite clear that they are not. The idea of a married couple choosing not to have children, though might have occured in some couples was just not a common everday and accepted idea of that time period.

As I said many women simply refraiend from marraige to aviod having to be tied down with children, suggusting that they knew if they got married they were likely going to have children, if they wanted to or not. Not to mention the fact particuarly more so in the 1800's men wanted male heirs, becasue with the laws back then it was the only way in which thier property could stay in thier family name.

The fact that childbirth being dangerous and difficult back then, well that only suggests further the lack of real choice in the matter that women had, while perhaps not everyone, but many women tended to have a considerable amount of children, this was not done becasue they enjoyed it so much, but rather becasue they really did not have much say or choice in the matter.

The truth is the amount of married couples between the 1800's - early 1900's that would have no children is just very very few. Not saying it could never happen, but it would not be a normal or regular occurance. It would be a very slim exeception. For the most part, people back then just were not thinking. "oh we could get married and just not have children"

Really I do not think the reason why children are left out of books because the authors were trying to make some social statement about not having children. I do not think it is part of what Mono said about many of the books being written by men and men not having to really deal with the children, and part of it, becasue particuarly in the 20th century authors were writing with something very sepceific in mind they wanted to reveal, and so they simply left children out if children did not play into what they were trying to convey.

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Originally Posted by QuestingScholar

I understood the argument to be that, in stories in which the characters regularly engage in sexual intercourse, why do the women not end up pregnant? I don't think Dark Muse was suggesting that all married couples need to have children. limajean, I agree with the necessities of the plot as you described (if the story does not require children thematically, they should not be there). However, I think Muse was questioning that, in a realistic story in which birth control is not utilized, but a couple constantly puts themselves in situations where pregnancy could be a result, why it results in no children.

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Yes, that is exzactly what I was getting at. For me this was not a question of any sort of ideology about having children. It was the pure biology of it.

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Originally Posted by QuestingScholar

Muse, I would suggest that, basically, it is due to story constrictions of plot, page numbers, and theme. Introducing a child into a relationship may provide new directions for the story that an author may not want to explore (perhaps favoring the other themese being explored). Of course, when such things do happen in literature, at least you will be plesantly surprised!

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I would tend to agree with this. I think that would be the main reason for why children would not be introduced in a situation where it should seem like they would naturally occur.