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Friday, Nov 6, 2009
In my (limited) experience women who have had children screw a lot better than those who haven't. Since athletic and intellectual ability also improve after women have children it is not surprising. My brother, who is in his late sixties, has two teenagers. And is he glad he had them. Better late than never.
I am really at a loss. The author of the article cites a few:
1) Entertainment value
2) Carrying on the smith name
3) Curiosity
4) Afraid of not doing it
5) That's just what people do
Others cite
6) Who will take care of you when you get old
7) Loneliness
8) Fear of death
9) Investment opportunity
10) Biological clock
Piper seems on the mark -- the question is not "why not?" it's "why?" and all of the above seem pretty selfish ones. Does anyone know, and i'm not being sarcasitc, of a good reason to have kids? This is a real question.
This extraordinarily judgmental statement from a previous poster really raises my hackles.
Those who value the immediate and superficial rewards of careers and freedom over procreation are demonstrating the lower quality of their genes, and should and will be replaced by those who are of higher quality.
Considering what I see breeding nowadays (and the offspring that have resulted), I would strenuously disagree with the "quality" judgment. I would also point out that a LOT of children with serious genetic issues that would have been fatal fairly recently are being kept alive now--and adding those flawed genes to the gene pool. So I think choosing whether or not to have children doesn't exactly have much to do with the relative quality of one's genes.
If you decide you want kids and she still doesn't. I'd be more than happy to see if she and I are compatiblein other ways too. You're happy now, yes? You want kids, maybe 'cause you think you might regret not having them, maybe?
Worst
Reason
Ever
The last thing the world needs is more people. Hell, having kids when you're this ambivalent might split the two of you up. Why ruin a good thing over nonsense like your maybe maybe maybe?
I couldn't get past the middle of the second page. Don't have kids--they may want to be bad writers, too--and we have enough of those already
And that orange slice comment really says a lot about your superficiality. I realize it probably sounded amusing and was hard to resist including--but are you writing to express something you feel honestly or just to be cute?
Well, I remember being 36 and feeling like a combination of the writer and his girlfriend. I was 50% for having kids. We had been privileged DINKS for a long time and it was scary. We took the plunge (I actually can't remember now what the deciding factor was), had two beautiful children, and never looked back.
Yes, everything changes, yes, all hell breaks loose, yes, it's the hardest thing I've ever done. For me personally, two big things happened. 1) I matured into an adult. 2) I started having more fun than I'd ever had before in my pretty-damn-good life up to that point. When I thought of having children, I only imagined the drudgery, of which there is plenty. I was astounded--totally surprised--at the pure joy and great fun brought into my life by having kids in the house. They are now 13 and 16, and still give me lovely joy and fun every day, along with the required dose of teenaged angst.
Smarmy as its sounds, it is a humbling privilege to welcome another being into your heart and home and to do everything you know how to do (with plenty of mistakes and grief along the way) to help that being grow and learn.
This letter doesn't really fit into the discussion, but I related so much to the writer's dilemma and his girlfriend's doubts at 36 that I wanted to comment.
In response to LeCastor: It is just not possible to put into words what the rewards are of having children. It has to do with a fierce and unconditional love and a feeling of family and things like that. I will try to illuminate by telling a story:
A few months ago, my 7-year-old daughter and I were finishing paying for some groceries when a man walked up to his girlfriend, who worked there, and shot her in the head. Fearing that he might start shooting randomly (he didn't, thank God), I grabbed my daughter and ran to the closest hiding place, which was the produce store area, behind those ubiquitous swinging doors. Without stopping to think, I put her in a corner so that I could throw myself over her if the gunman entered.
Sounds dramatic but it's true. If you want to have that kind of feeling, that kind of love, toward another person, then parenthood is for you.
Part of it is guy posturing. Many of my pals talk a good game about how their wives finally put the clamp down and demanded they do the deed, but deep down they're all glad the women forced the issue. They knew the day was coming; most of us want it to come, even if few of us ever feel the time is exactly right.
I absolutely hate this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no one's ever completely prepared to be a parent and all that. But the conventional wisdom--"You really do want to be a parent! You just don't know it yet!" is wrong and dangerous and has destroyed marriages, sometimes after a woman, believing that her husband does, deep down, want nothing more than to be a daddy, "accidentally" gets pregnant. It's called the "oops."
Please don't perpetuate this myth. Yes, if I had children, maybe I would find that they were the best thing that ever happened to me. Or maybe not. Maybe I shoulda been a doctor or maybe an airline pilot, or taught basic literacy in some village school in Botswana. Who knows? We all have regrets about the life path we chose not to take, and sometimes I regret not having children.
But what I don't regret: that I decided not to do so because my husband, kind, funny, brilliant, who loves me more than anything, didn't want them, and I didn't want to force such a major life change on him, because marriage means that your partner's happiness means as much, or more to you, than your own. Oh, and it also means respect for your partner's wishes, and not patronizing second-guessing. Perhaps my husband would have been a great father. (As an uncle, he is fantastic.) Perhaps he would have been a merely dutiful one who, deep down, saw his children as an intrusion on his life's work. I would never do that either to him...or to the children. You'd be surprised at how often that happens. In the immortal words of Philip Larkin, they fuck you up, your mum and dad. They don't mean to, but they do.
I'm curious to see tomorrow's installment, and I'm hoping that either Smith did respect and love his wife enough not to force her to a choice she was reluctant to make, or that, if he insisted on having his own way, that she really, truly is glad that he did. In the case of the second scenario, though, we may never know the truth, because the human mind is so good at rationalizing the acceptance of what the heart rejects. And ten years down the road, the truth may come out--to the detriment of Smith's wife, their children, and their marriage.
Which may be an awfully heavy price to pay for not being the oldest guy handing out orange slices at a soccer game. But that's the way it is with the Kodak moments.
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