Would You Have A Baby Like My Son?

The question Should some people just not have kids due to their genes? was recently posted over at a BabyCenter forum. Multiple Personality asks:

I know some people IRL with 7 kids, all happy and well-cared for, but all with some degree of mental retardation. Their chromosomes just don't quite combine right. Do you think after the first couple kids and the drs telling them that it was likely due to their genes that they should have quit having kids?

I also wonder about it when I see people's siggys on here. All their kids have developmental delays, deady food allergies, or autism. Should those people take a hint that all their kids have serious problems, so quit bringing more kids that will most likely have serious problems into the world and focus your energy on helping the kids you already have?

Is it cruel to continue to have babies when you know that child will likely suffer and not lead a relatively normal life?

Plenty (100+ comments) have accrued in response to what are definitely bluntly put, provocative, questions. This is a loaded topic, to say that because you have "bad" genes, or "certain" genes, you either should minimize the number of children you have, or not have children at all.

One thing to keep in mind is that, as Sandra Ammodt and Sam Wang wrote in a March 24th guest column, Mugged By Our Genes? for the New York Times:

....you may wonder if your genes are ultimately to blame for your fortunes, good or ill. That’s hardly the case: only one-fourth of the variation in life events is heritable, which means that three-fourths is not. So you have plenty of opportunity to influence your circumstances. Whether that’s better than turning into your parents, we’ll leave to your judgment.

Aamodt and Wang write about the heritability of psychological traits including depression in considering the suicide last week of Nicholas Hughes, son of poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, "one of the world’s most famous suicides." They note that

"me of the effects that we call “genetic” (or “nature”) are the indirect result of people being drawn to particular environments because of their personality. Or to put it another way, some “environmental” (or “nurture”) effects are actually attributable to genetic tendencies.

While some disorders can be inherited from our parents, our genes don't necessarily "sentence" our children to having "something," and this notion has to be kept in mind in considering the questions raised at the BabyCenter forum.

My son Charlie is our first child and our only child. Between Jim's ADHD and my own "things" (OCD.....I have managed to blog blog blog every day for almost four years straight come June), we figured any kids of ours would have "something." Charlie's autism diagnosis, and the energies, efforts, and decisions we've had to make have changed, and transformed, our lives. I didn't really know when we'd have another child after Charlie was born and, by the time he was diagnosed shortly after his second birthday---and with Jim and me juggling jobs in two different states far away from both of our families----the idea of another child was pushed to the back burner. We saved all the baby stuff from the clothes to the crib and crib bumpers and the stroller and it was only when Charlie turned five and clearly still had a high level of needs, and I was getting deeper into my own job after having taken time off and working part-time, that Jim and I realized, he'd be our only child.

It's been the right decision for our family, though there are plenty of times when I see families with a child on the spectrum and other kids and note their interactions and wonder, what if. Knowing that Charlie will be very on "on his own" one day, after Jim and I are gone, I do wonder how things might be different if there were a sibling to look out for him, though I weigh this against the knowledge that a sibling of Charlie's might well also be on the spectrum. It wouldn't have been easy to have another child on the spectrum, though we could have managed.

Hence my answer to the BabyCenter forum. I'd hesitate to issue a blanket decree that people with children who have "something" should not, ought not, have other children. Families differ in the resources---financial, emotional, and more---that they have to draw on in raising a child with more needs than many. Asking whether "some people just not have kids due to their genes" is really almost the same as asking if "some people" should have kids at all; if people should have any kids at all.

Photo of DNA Bookstack Tech Museum in San Jose, California, by mrkathika.