The Rental Family
The New Yorker has an article about a Japanese service that allows you to rent missing family members. You may use the service to replace an actual person — a wife dies and the rental wife steps into her place to pretend to be your wife for a few hours — but it can also be used when a person hasn’t entered or exited your life at all.
A rental boyfriend or girlfriend.
A rental best-friend.
A rental baby.
The article gives the reason for why the creator started the service: “A lot of problems, it seemed, were caused by some missing person, and often the simplest solution was to find a substitute.”
It’s brilliant, actually, because comfort given by an actor is still comfort.
While this is about emotional comfort and emotional connection, the service isn’t that far from other forms of caretaking: “What are babysitters, nurses, and cooks if not rental relatives, filling some of the roles traditionally performed by mothers, daughters, and wives?” Or, I would argue humans, since, you know, people with penises can fill those roles, too.
The article points out that sometimes the fantasy family ends up being better than the real thing. One woman says that the husband she divorced had been abusive. The rental father-of-her-child that she got in his place makes her happy; makes her laugh. The fake ex-husband says after she leaves: “It proves a possibility that—even if we’re not a real family, even if it’s a rental family—the way we interact with each other makes this a form of a family.”
There was a part of this that appealed to me in the same way that helping out with babies sometimes appeals to me. During those times, I get to experience the cuddles without having to go through any injections to get there. There is no crying, no two week wait, no expensive bills from the clinic. Just a moment of imagination while I change a diaper, give a bottle, rock in the chair.
I don’t pay for the service, but it seems like I take it anyway.
What do you think?
4 comments
I dunno. Holding babies of friends or helping those in CPS or foster care is a lot different than someone renting out a baby. Who are these babies being rented out? Seems icky.
I have really mixed feelings about this. A large part of being healthy is understanding what reality is, and adjusting to it. These services seem like a way to help keep people from acknowledging reality. It’s dangerous enough for a person to ‘rent’ for themselves, but I have seen worse examples. For example, a situation where a child did not know the ‘rental father’ was not really her dad. What experience is she going to have when she finds out? What damage will that do to her?
I am all for emotional connections and healing, but I think this could too easily cross the line over into damaging, rather than healing.
Ok, I didn’t read the whole thing, but what I did read was equal parts tragic, hilarious and absurd. I can understand the situations where an actor might be expedient (the fake husband for school interview) or helpful (real relationship firms where actor becomes a sort of counsellor.) It could be fun or therapeutic as a sort of role play or improv, at least in the short term. But when you get to the level of staging entire fake weddings? Sending a client to a fake manager? Seriously when actual relationships and trust erode to that level, I don’t see how anyone can live authentically. And I don’t see how a society can function with fake relationships. That’s not a solution to anything.
I feel like I’ve seen something like this before. There are people you can pay to hug you, too. Somehow, buying it feels wrong. Don’t relationships feel better when they’re freely given? I don’t know how I’d feel about a rented child…