Fear Death? Make More Babies!

Procreation as a Defense Against Terror

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All humans (indeed, all organisms) share a set of bookends that mark their very existence on this planet – birth and death. The in-between is all about survival knowing that at some moment along that trajectory, we are going to fail at that task. Once born, death is just a matter of time. There is a healthy literature as to how unique humans are in awareness that life is finite (see my post on comparative thanatology, “Dead Reckoning” in Wonders, coming soon); but we are very likely the only species that has created a robust panoply of ritual around each of these bookends (as well as particular transitional moments along the way, collectively referred to as rites of passage). The interesting question is, how can we possibly function in the day-to-day knowing that it is all ephemeral, temporary, and transient? How is it that we are not, figuratively, continuously scared to death at the prospect of that very thing? Enter terror management theory (TMT).

Developed in the 1980s by American social psychologists Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Pyszczynski, TMT is a model helping us understand the inherent conflict between our natural drive for self-preservation and the inevitability, and at times unpredictability, of death. Such conflict is a source of existential terror, and TMT argues that individuals mitigate this terror by adhering to cultural worldviews that offer pathways to symbolic immortality. Sounds pretty heavy, right? These pathways could be any number of things – cultural or national identity, religion, filial connection and self-esteem – that give meaning and purpose to our lives. Such worldviews provide opportunities for each of us to partake in, and contribute to, something significant, enduring and larger than ourselves. In so doing, we ‘deny death’ by achieving symbolic immortality. In effect, who and what we are goes on (and on...) even when our mortal remains do not.

So, what’s all of this have to do with making babies? Well, if the aim is to achieve symbolic immortality to manage the terror of seeing death in the rearview mirror, what better way to realize that than by procreation? Indeed, babies are not just symbolic of immortality, they are literally 50% of your genes appearing in the next generation! In his 1973 book Denial of Death [see footnote 1], cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker aptly wrote: “Nature conquers death not by creating eternal organisms but by making it possible for ephemeral ones to procreate (p. 163)”.

The idea that reminders of our impermanence, termed ‘mortality salience’, should prompt a desire to have children was examined by two social psychologists, Arnaud Wiseman and Jamie Goldenberg. They proposed that children not only bring purpose and meaning into a parent’s life, they also – as noted above – create a credible link to immortality. However, to test their hypothesis, Wiseman and Goldenberg had to address one stark biocultural reality: men and women are not equally invested in procreation. There are these two little biological facts underlying this inequality: gestation and lactation. Beyond that there is the additional sociocultural reality that direct caregiving (in the sense of energy and time) has been the purview of women more than men. Certainly, this has been true historically in the West, and currently still so in many cultures around the world. Wiseman and Goldenberg framed this reality as a choice for women between having babies or having a life (i.e., pursuing the ‘culturally valued’ roles of independent career development and advancement). Their challenge was to find a way to test if this latter choice would dampen the effect of procreation – for women – as an arbiter of terror management in the face of mortality salience.

The authors undertook separate studies to examine first, whether mortality salience acted on men but not women in provoking a desire to have children; secondly, if career ambition for women inhibited the desire for children in the context of mortality salience; and finally, if this inhibition were removed, could women be convinced that successful careers and babies were in fact compatible and not in conflict – a ‘you can have your cake and eat it too’ scenario?! Each of these studies involved separate samples of young undergraduate students from the Free University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, randomly assigned to the experimental group (exposed to mortality salience) or a control group. In study 1, there were 76 participants (36 F, 40 M); in study 2, 127 students took part (73 F, 54 M), and the last study surveyed 80 F (no males were required to examine this final question). In each study the students were ‘blinded’ as to the purpose of the research by being told that that they were taking part in studies investigating personality traits, not on death and baby-making.

The different studies used a variety of ‘test instruments’ (questionnaires; psychometric scales) to assess varying attitudes and beliefs around mortality salience, death accessibility [see footnote 2], desire for children, and career strivings (for studies 2 and 3). In the experimental group, following several ‘filler’ questions related to general personality in keeping with the 'blinding' ruse, mortality salience was measured by asking two additional questions “(a) Describe the emotions you feel while you are thinking about your own death, and (b) Describe what you think will happen to you when you physically die.” (p. 50). The control group's final two questions related to simply watching television. Similarly, ‘career striving’ was assessed using a set of questions such as “I would never give up my career for my family,” and “If I had to choose between a career and having children, I would choose having children.” (p. 53), among others.

Study 3, involving women only, examined the question of motherhood and career compatibility (experimental group) or incompatibility (control group) in the context of mortality salience. Each group was asked to read two versions of an article purportedly written by real scientists discussing results of a large study looking at how women viewed having children versus career opportunities / success. The version of the article the experimental group read argued that children benefitted career-oriented women: they were happier in their jobs, made more money, and achieved greater success. The control group read essentially the same article, however, the outcomes were reversed: children led to less career satisfaction, lower earning potential and so forth.

Whew! That was a lot! So, what did they find out?

In the first instance (study 1), men – but not women – in the mortality salience group were more likely to desire more children; also both men and women had higher scores on ‘death accessibility’, meaning that mortality salience led to higher levels of ‘death-related thinking'. This result suggests, as predicted, that women factor other aspects of their worldview as being as important as children in contributing to their sense of meaning, purpose and legacy. This finding was borne out by the results of study 2, which corroborated the results of study 1, but also showed that women with high scores for career-striving had lower scores for desiring children – a finding not seen in their male counterparts. But could that outcome be contingent on a women’s perception of the impact of children on career success – the aim of the 3^rd study? Indeed, it was! Women led to believe by the fake news story that children were compatible with career success desired family as much as career when confronted with mortality salience. In other words, when the "children-career conflict" was removed, women as much as men desired children when presented with the fact of their own mortality.

What does this all mean? It appears, as suggested at the outset, that procreation can play a defensive role in the management of terror – in this case, the knowledge that death is a fact of life. We invest in children not only in the real-world context of cultural expectations as to the role of parents, but also in the existential sense that children represent symbolic immortality. As the well-known saying goes: “Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.”

Footnote 1: Becker’s thesis in Denial of Death is that much of civilization is structured as a defense against the knowledge of our own mortality, and that creating meaning (symbolic) manages the fact that we are biological creatures that inevitably die (reality). Becker’s thesis would form the basis for what would later become Terror Management Theory.

Footnote 2: ‘Death accessibility’ gauges how likely someone will lean towards ‘death-related thinking’. Each group, experimental and control, was given 14 different word fragments and asked to complete the word. Four fragments could be completed with a death-related word or a nondeath-related word (the example given was: DEA could lead to either DEAD or DEAL), while the remaining 10 fragments could only be completed with a nondeath related word.

Where to Find the Science:

Wisman, A and Goldenberg, JL (2005) From the grave to the cradle: evidence that mortality salience engenders a desire for offspring. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 89(1): 46–61. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.89.1.46   

Related Posts:

Terror in the Womb (coming soon)

Of Further Interest:

Chen, L et al. (2025) Managing the terror of publication bias: a systematic review of the mortality salience hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition 129(1): 20–41. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000438