Personally, I like children and someday I hope to have one or two. However, children are not romantic. They are very opposite of romantic. As my father is wont to say, children are the enemy of gracious dining. I think this could be extended to most activities.
And yet, children populate the epilogues and indeed, the logues of romance novels. Why is this? The heteronormative imperative to procreate? Mmmmmm, maybe but I think not so much. I think it may be a genre standard which is to say that the romance genre is in a certain respect the opposite of tragedy in two ways:
1. It postulates a worldview in which the ultimate reality is happiness not grief and
2. It reifies the domestic. Epic and tragedy deal with Great Matters, matters of state, matters of God, and while romance does this, too, it does it on a more mundane level.
Thus the proliferation of babies is a symbolic measure of both of these standards. First, babies represent the continuity of generations as birth is the opposite of death. Second, babies represent the joy of the domestic. I say joy and not pleasure or happiness because children bring all of these things but when they are throwing a tantrum in the shoe department of the Nordstroms one rarely feels pleasure. Joy connotes a certain spike of pain along with the happiness, at least in my mind.
Despite this symbolic measure of babies, they aren't romantic. Babies cry and shit and throw tantrums. They do not care if you are tired or hungry or horny. They rarely if ever negotiate. Oh sure, the baby is funny and adorable and says awesome things that you only wish you could still say, but that doesn't take away the fact that the baby got some sort of sticky goop all over the couch . . . which you sat in. Not romantic.
So when novels end with the hero and heroine smooching over the sleeping head of a toddler all I can think to myself is, yeah right! One party would be off trying to do the following: laundry, the dishes, take a shower, sleep or watch something other than Caillou or Handy Manny.
"Quick Henry!" the heroine ought to say in low panicked tones. "While Charles is asleep, I'm going to take a shower."
"I'll move him to the crib."
"No, don't do that. You'll wake him up. Just let him sleep right there."
"I need to vacuum up these cheerios. If I leave him here, he'll wake up at the sound."
"So don't vacuum."
"But I can't vacuum when he's awake, because he yanks the cord."
"Ssshhhhhh, you're gonna wake him up."
"Can't I do anything in this house?"
Well, at least that's the way it goes in my family. My point is that children don't necessarily strengthen a relationship or offer convenient moments for making out. I would like to see less babies and births in epilogues. I like the concept of an epilogue but maybe authors could just jog it down the road a few years to the vow renewal or a toast a child's wedding. That would be better than babies.
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4 comments:
While I do agree that babies are frequently not romantic, I have to disagree that children don't necessarily strengthen the relationship - though it is true that they can weaken it. Children, especially in scenarios like the one you describe, can put enormous stress on a relationship, and showing how a couple works and develops through stress in one of the key elements of the genre. Especially in a genre that celebrates the everyday practice of romantic love, to have a domestic stress like children makes complete sense. My problem with so many of the epilogues and baby scenarios is the underlying assumption that they are a necessity to complete joy and the relationship isn't fully developed without them. That is what I would like to see less of.
That's true. I agree with you that the underlying assumption that children are necessary for happiness is troubling. I also dislike the fact that children are often used as plot conveniences rather than portrayed as characters with any depth or feeling. Even when children bring joy they can be frustrating an difficult.
I'm a big Susan E Phillips fan, but I would take a pitchfork any day to the secondary heroine of Breathing Room, the one who just can't stop having babies for the stupidest reason imaginable. (I am blanking on just what that reason is; must have forgotten it to spare myself further vexation.)
And I totally agree with you on the excess of babies in epilogues. Having children is no guarantee of greater, or even equal, happiness. And I know for sure my neighbor's marriage would have survived had they had half the number of children they did.
I've never read that book, so duly warned.
I'm surprised by parents decided to have anymore children after me. I had colic the first year of my life and cried all the time. Why and how they managed to have another child, I don't know. I think it is one of those short-hands that at this point in my romance reading career just makes me irritated. I really like epilogues (I think I might be one of the few people who like both the epilogue in Harry Potter and Crime and Punishment), but I don't like short hand. I want the children to have characters. And more importantly, I think I want to see characters able to be happy when nothing is perfect or when things are irritating.
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