March of the Breeders

I didn't see "March of the Penguins" when it first came out; my rate of new-movie viewing has slowed to a crawl as life has grown more complicated. By the time I finally got to see it, it was on the small screen, a pan-and-scan "Network Television Premiere." This took away much of the grandeur of the Antarctic vistas, and left only the grueling facts: these penguins were barely making it, barely holding on in the most unforgiving environment in the world.

At the same time, I've been very much enjoying Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling On Happiness, which quotes study after study exploding the myth that "Having children makes you happy."

So with Gilbert's reality check in my head, and the miserable icy slog of the penguins in front of me, I realized: the one and only thing that makes these penguins' lives so hard is that they have offspring. If, through some miracle, a penguin decided, no thanks, I'll skip it, he or she could just waddle over to the feeding grounds and live there. No seventy-mile marches, no near-starvation. All you can eat, a penguin's garden of Eden.

Of course, penguins can't make that sort of choice, to the best of my knowledge. Can any animal make this choice? Are homo sapiens alone in this respect? Is this one of the few things that makes us special, our ability to choose a life without children? Hmmm.