Existentialism and parenting

(blatantly stolen from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comics, which is somehow both updated daily and consistently hilarious)

I expect that we existentialists make many lousy things, including parents. This is actually one of the reasons I never want to be have children: there would be far too many instances of me saying thinks like "Well, I don't think that I would like having my eye poked out, but of course there isn't anything inherently good or bad about it. There is no reason to prefer--say--the taste of ice cream over the experience of extreme pain. I do have that preference, but there is no reason for it. If you think you might prefer to poke out your eye over having two functional eyes then feel free to keep playing with that sharp object near your face." Or if asked if Santa Clause is real: "It is true for your friends that Santa exists but it is not true for me. I don't know whether or not it is true for you. It depends on whether the opinions of your friends outweigh my opinion on that issue."

The other philosophy-based problem I have with parenting is that as far as I am concerned parenting consists of conditioning your children, whether you are doing so purposefully or not. Thus I would want to have a plan in place as to what I wanted to condition them to believe and desire, but I have no idea. I wouldn't want them to share my values because my values are self-undermining, but people with radically different values from mine drive me crazy.

Update: