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Saturday, Jul 4, 2009
News flash: "Author Falls Prey to Common Myths About Parenting"
Myth: you should have children when you're ready
Truth: you will never really be ready
Myth: you should have children when you know what you are getting into
Truth: you will never know until you have them. give up the search for forewarning.
Myth: children are expensive, messy and troublesome
Truth: OK, that's not just a myth. But it is easy to articulate and be understood about what PROBLEMS children present. It is hard to articulate and is very easy to sound hopelessly mushy and inane about the wonders and the benefits of children...but they are very real.
So I would tell Mr Smith, etc: Jump in the water or don't, but don't spend the rest of your life contemplating what the jump might feel like, because you will never know without jumping.
Your description of your situation sounds almost EXACTLY like where my husband and I were, 10 years ago. Mid-thirties, dual-income, awesome friends, great lifestyle... and not sure about having kids. Not sure at all.
So we performed an experiment. For 2 weeks, we acted as if we'd DEFINATELY decided not to have kids. We told our friends and family about this "decision," and our private discussions revolved around our lives together, sans kids.
Then, for the next 2 weeks, we reversed the choice, told everyone that we'd decided TO HAVE kids, and had numerous discussions about our lives together, with kids.
After this interesting, illuminating month of "acting," we
sat down and asked ourselves: during which two weeks did we feel happier?
The answer was clear. We immediately started trying to have a child, and a few years later we managed to procreate.
Something to try, if you're on the fence.
- Amy Jo Kim
If you were a male friend of mine, I would tell you to shut the hell up and shit or get off the pot. God, the whining and doubting and analysis.
Honestly, I don't even know why the hell I still subscribe to Salon. I give more to blogs in 3 months than my entire Salon subscription.
Just ugh.
It occurred to me, while reading Smith's story, which I found touching, that this dilemma might actually be a man's equivalent to a woman's dilemma of trying to "have it all..." i.e., satisfaction in career, marriage, children, etc., although most men consider the career a given.
The dilemma for a man seems to be discerning whether he cares more about keeping his wife, i.e., the girl/woman he married, or having children whose job it would be to change the girl/woman he married into their mother. Empirical evidence-- and just plain anecdotes-- says he can't have both.
Most of the comments from husbands/fathers and other men that I have read on Salon's Broadsheet have complained-- often bitterly-- about losing their wives when they gained children. I'm not sure who complained more... those men with both wife and children, or those with only one or neither, but either way, it should give more women pause before agreeing to have children with the guys they married.
Ironically, Smith does sound like he'd be a great father, and that any changes for him might be welcome...
but what seems even more ironic to me now, while writing this, is the degree to which so many men complain of the changes that motherhood wreaks upon their wives, from whom motherhood usually exacts a much greater cost. Sure, having children changes absolutely everything for a couple, but not as much as a husband's or boyfriend's disapproval of the mother his wife has become does. Smith doesn't sound like that kind of guy... but he seems worried about it.
A thoughtful article, by a funny guy, who seems like a really nice person.
My experience, after the same kind of angsting, and after deciding to have kids, is that on a bad-to-good scale of 0 to 10, being a parent is all 1s and 9s. Before kids, my life was a nice steady 7. Parenthood is fantastic and awful. Kids make you a better person, bring out your worst impulses, give you a foot in the future, let you reexperience childhood, connect you to a fundamental (truly, primal) human experience, and drain all your energy.
Thanks for such a great piece of writing, and good luck with whatever you decide.
Good grief, yet more navel-gazing from spoiled yuppies about that oh-so-difficult dilemma of whether to have kids at the risk of "losing yourself."
So don't do it. Here's a cold socio-biology argument for you. If you don't fully feel or can't intellectually understand the intrinsic personal and social value of procreation, don't do it. It's best for your genes to pass fom the pool, mother nature obviously didn't intend for them to move on. Have fun, take trips, fuck Piper during prime time on the living room floor, and turn out the light on your way out 40 years from now. You'll be happier until pretty close to the end, and society will be better off in the long run. Sounds kinda cold, but it's probably accurate.
is to realize that the urge to procreate is only that, an urge. It's simple biology that doesn't care for you or your happiness, just genes seeking to create more genes. It's mindless, meaningless, and amoral. It simply is. Seeing a child as a parasite is no more or less accurate than seeing it as bundle of joy from heaven.
Don't let reason be undermined by hormones and chemicals. If you don't want kids, don't have them. Once you view this decision from the evolutionary perspective, it's much easier to simply be rational, remain childfree, and enjoy your finite life before it's too late.
I know, now I'm turning into one of those people I bitch about.
But, really, yet another self-indulgent article about parenting YES OR NO?
Let me answer that one for you: no.
As soon as I got to the part about what the Vows section of the New York Times would say about the author's girlfriend... Snooze.
Really, Salon. No more excerpts from Rebecca Traister or Ayelet Waldman. Oh, so you've found the male version, eh? Feminism! Alive and well! Speaking as one of those twentysomething women you appear so desperate to attract, lay off the baby mama dramas and get back to political analysis and news.
You won't, though. So I'll stick to reading the AP Wire. Great.
The Wasilla soap opera just gets weirder as Palin complains critics are "picking apart a good point guard"
The media outlet's use of Bush euphemisms sparks a much-needed debate on journalistic standards.
And so are his Fox News pals, who lambasted Sen. Al Franken's "stolen election"
An inflexible right wing is allowing the Golden State to drown in debt. But it's not alone
Thanks for sharing, Governor. Now please take a cue from Norm Coleman, and go away
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