Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My wife, “Irena,” and I have been married for four years and are ready to start a family. However, Irena just announced the condition she wants to put on it: She wants to use a sperm donor! The problem isn’t that I’m shooting blanks or concerns over hereditary diseases. It’s because she doesn’t want any potential kid of ours to get my nose.
I inherited my dad’s nose, which I admit was a monstrosity of a honker and the source of many years of torment when I was growing up. I got a nose job during my freshman year of college. Irena and I met after the fact, but she’s seen old pictures of me and has obviously met my parents and sister (who got dad’s nose as well and also had a nose job), so she knows what the “before” was like. She also used to be chubby as a kid and was teased mercilessly over it until she got into dieting and fitness big time just prior to starting high school. She says there’s no way she’d want to risk putting a kid through what we suffered.
I’m finding myself conflicted. Part of me feels insulted, but another part can see where she’s coming from. Does my wife have a point?
—Bad Genes
Dear Bad Genes,
It’s not wrong to want to give your child the best life possible; it is real dicey when we start talking about eugenics. I do not want to discount the toll of the years of taunting you endured over your nose, but it should be your decision only to decide if that is something you think is worth taking a drastic step to avoid for your future child. The fact that your wife married you when she was likely planning to ask you this all along is a betrayal.
There is a big difference between you making this decision for yourself and your wife telling you she plans on cutting off your branch of your genetic family tree in order to prevent a child from looking like you. And please remember the possibility that, even with donor sperm, your kid still may have something else “wrong” with them! How do you think your wife would handle that?
As someone who has had a couple of plastic surgeries to address what I considered to be issues, I would also support my child in choosing to make the same decision when she is old enough (I’d also feel inclined to help pay for it, if not pay for it outright, especially if I suspected that my post-surgery appearance had contributed to insecurities about her own.) I would not, however, consider not having a baby of my own blood to avoid making someone who looks like me. Only you can answer this question: would you?
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Dear Care and Feeding,
Not long ago, my wife and I bought our 4-year-old son, “Jacob,” his first pet in the form of a goldfish. We explained to him about feeding and care (we were doing the cleaning of the bowl), but also prepared him for when the fish would die by explaining that goldfish don’t live nearly as long as people. Jacob seemed to understand this, but yesterday we found the goldfish frozen solid in a ziploc bag in the freezer.
When we asked Jacob what happened, he said he saw a show with his older cousin on people being frozen “so they could live forever.” Apparently it was one of those science shows on cryonics and he applied the same concept to his fish thinking he was saving it. Obviously the fish isn’t coming back to life, and now we have a situation where our son unwittingly killed his pet. My wife thinks we should replace the fish with an identical one while Jacob is at daycare and tell him it “woke up.” I don’t think deception is the correct answer. How do we deal with this without upsetting him?
—Frozen Fish Fuck Up
Michelle Herman
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Dear Frozen,
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My Family Has Always Been Cagey About My Estranged Older Siblings. I Just Discovered the Shocking Reason Why.
Your wife’s idea is not great and kills the value of having goldfish, which I’m convinced exist largely to teach small children about death. If you tell your son that the fish woke up, he will be shattered the first time something, or someone, dies and cannot come back to life somehow. It’s important that he understands that there are no living creatures that he can safely freeze.
You can preserve a little childlike wonder by explaining that the fish has gone off to the great ocean in the sky, or to the “rainbow pond” or wherever you’d like him to believe pets go when they die. But you gotta tell him the fish is dead. Give him space to grieve, encourage him to share his feelings and have a little memorial service, if you feel inclined (you may save this for the fish who lives long enough for him to get a little more attached.)
You can offer your son a trip to go and purchase a new goldfish. Or ,if you think it will soften the blow, come to the “we gotta tell Jacob the fish died” meeting with the new ones–but do prepare yourself for the possibility that he’s too sad to engage with it immediately. Talk to him about proper fish care and give him a clear list of “no-nos,” which should include anything a 4-year-old might think to do with a small, wet pet.
—Jamilah
More Parenting Advice From Slate
Three months ago, my dad asked me (in a non-pressuring way) if I could move out so there was room for his girlfriend and her daughter who I had never met. I gladly agreed, as I am 22 and had been looking to move out for a while. I moved into a nice one-bedroom apartment and am loving it so far! Only one problem: My stepmom (“Lauren”) and my stepsister (“Elisa,” 15) continue to make demands.
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