Partive Paternity

I remember how frightened I was when I knew I would meet Sjors' children. I worried that I would resent them - because their existence excluded me from Sjors' life. I thought about it for a long time, and I worried.
Sjors introduced us on Skype first. Later, on a trip to Alkmaar, he picked me up at the train station and they were in the backseat. We drove to a park and played together.

It was so interesting to me that none of my fears turned into anything. The truth was: the tremendous love I felt for Sjors simply extended and became big enough to cover them, as well. They looked like him: they were part of him. And because I loved him, I loved them too.

They were too little to speak English and so I spent several months focused on learning Dutch; this was the basis of my Dutch language skills (such as they are). I also considered that Sjors and I might not want to have children right away because I worried that these little boys would feel displaced. It was incredible to me to feel that, far from being resentful, I felt grateful for the opportunity to be a part of their lives. One of my great sorrows centers on this fear that I will never be able to have children of my own. How marvelous it would be to step into the opportunity for partial parenting, to extend love and caring of small people.

I've thought about this in the years since. And I've recently started reading a book that has begun to sort this experience for me into a framework that might make sense. The book is: "Sex at Dawn" by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha. In it, they challenge the standard narrative that Humans are (by nature) monogamous and adulterous. Such a narrative (which Matt Ridley does a nice job outlining in "The Red Queen") is based on a system of economic exchange where men own all property and power, and hold the cards to safety, wealth, and happiness. This is a zero-sum game where women exchange erotic pleasure for access to man's wealth, protection, status, and other treasures likely to benefit herself and her children. This dismal Hobbesian view of life and human nature (short, nasty, and brutish) where men and women enter into these monogamous contracts with one another because of economic and social benefit is the one I was raised on and believed (and, for the record, resented). But Ryan and Jetha argue that humans evolved in tribes of hunter-gatherers; where sharing was essential for tribe cohesiveness and survival of the group. This meant shared food, shared sexual partners, and shared parenting. In these groups, it is stinginess, not promiscuity, that is frowned upon. Apparently, there are plentiful examples of this in the animal kingdom, including our closest genetic cousins, the Bonobos. There are also many examples in human tribes who believe that the fetus is conceived through the accumulation of semen from multiple men. For a mother eager to give her child every advantage in life, she would seek out sex with an assortment of men with traits she liked, hoping that her baby would absorb the essence of each. The resultant child is then cared for by numerous adults in the tribe who have a special interest in its well-being. It is far more likely to survive and thrive. Similarly, the Kulina tribe in the Amazon believe that all women who breast feed an infant (or allow it to suckle even on a non-lactating nipple) are the child's mother.  This is called "Partive Paternity". The child is reared and cared for by many parents, not only the single pair of our modern world. I am, by evolution, programmed, to be the mother of children who are not my own. And this is a very lovely thought indeed.

I certainly feel a love and bonding for my nieces. As with the situation with Sjors, my love for Corinne spills over onto her children. I've loved Papouli since before she was born, and the same is true for Zadie. I fell in love with her almost immediately.

The name is still hard for me. I can't control this part. Corinne did her best to use nicknames. We called her Doodle 2, and Z-Bird, and the Zoodles. But her name is Zadie and I tried to use it enough so that I could strip it of its meaning. But it is still so hard. It is linked to the child I longed for with Sjors and never conceived. It was the bullied morning-after pill and all of the fear and lies. I wish I could un-hook the name from this pain.

But I won't force it. It will happen in its own time. In the meantime, I feel like Corinne's children are also mine. I don't know if it would be possible to love them more if they were my own. So I will un-hook from this zero-sum game that we've agreed to with our monogamous, jealous, self-involved nuclear families. I am opting out of that cultural bullshit. I am part of a tribe. And these are my children, too.