Little Labors

A modern anxiety

Paternal ambiguity is age-old. Maternal ambiguity is pretty new. Of course babies could be switched, and stories of changelings were useful ways of understanding strange children, but still, carrying a child in one’s body meant that even the most magical thoughts were alloyed with maternal certainty. In vitro fertilization has altered this.

Or, at least, I found myself, starting when the baby was about eleven days old, and then for months afterward, thinking in detail through the following problem: If it turned out I had carried someone else’s child, what should I do? (The doctor had seemed a hasty, careless type.) What would constitute ethical behavior? Would it be wrong to flee the country with the baby, in order to stay together? We were already so in love — wasn’t love its own validity? If I gave the baby over to her “real” mother, was I allowed to stay in touch, or was I required to let her go entirely? It was so obvious what the right thing to do was, and so obvious, also, that I would not do it. This was distressing even though I also knew that I would never be so called upon.

One could argue that this is a straightforward prefiguration of the difficulties of allowing a child to grow up and away. Or that it’s evidence that even with insufficient sleep and no free time, a certain kind of mind will find its way toward an excess of immaterial quandaries. Or maybe I was just working through my problematic inability to hand the child over to another caretaker, even for just a few hours.