Immortality

Today in class we discussed the reasons why people have children.  These went beyond happiness into practical and spiritual reasons, but I later thought of another reason for children which is immortality.  Writers (the one I think of is Shakespeare) are always addressing the theme that their writing will make them immortal as their thoughts will live on beyond their physical death.  The book becomes their child because children are also allowing their parent's immortality.  Although I've never felt pressure from my own family to have children (because my sister has already satisfied that need) my boyfriend would be the first to produce great-grandchildren for his elderly grandparents.  Whenever I am in town the subject of future plans and pregnancy are awkwardly brought up in  my presence and the pressure is obviously present.  I feel for this man who desperately wants to live on and wants proof of this and the ability to form a new life before its too late for him.  I've heard of couples being called selfish for not providing this next generation in a timely manner for the rest of their family.  It seems to be an essential part of life to want to preserve it forever.  As long as there is a future generation who will remember the parents that raised them with the sensibility passed to them by their parents and there is someone to read the dead writer's book then the original creators and authors can live on.

This brings a question to my mind of mother writers.  Are they taking to much immortality and does it conflict?  When the writer is writing about their own child it adds another level of immortal complexity.  As David was saying about Christopher Robin, the child who let his father live on was in conflict with the book that immortalized both of them.  Cusk memorializes the motherhood of infants as well as herself and her daughter.  The conflict for her comes from the idea that both of these projects (her child and her book) take time to create, but once they have been created they may still conflict.  Her child will not only understand that a book about her infancy exists but she will also know that there was so much negative response to the story of her life.  Her childhood will last forever in the words of her mother and her mother's critics.  

Children and books have this similarity in prolonging the lifework of their author and parent and they conflict logistically with the time to be both a mother and a writer.  With each child and book we hope for a progression in society and evolution as ideas are developed with each new thinker and each contribution to the discussion.  I don't have an argument about this idea yet, but it did seem like an interesting similarity to me and I plan on being aware of this concept when reading future parent-writer's works.