Some quick thoughts arising from this article.
1. I find it rather odd that "I don't want to have children" is not generally considered "enough" of a reason for not having children. Why would you want children being raised by parents who are anything less than completely thrilled with the idea of children?
2. A slightly flawed metaphor: For me, having children is like swallowing a live goldfish. People have done it, and I'm sure I could do it, but I really don't see the point. The flaw, of course, is that having children will affect every single day of the rest of your life, while any residual effects from swallowing a live golfish will likely be over in a week.
Actually, the live goldfish is a good metaphor for any number of things that I am not at all interested in doing.
3 comments:
I quickly learned after my one long-awaited child, that I would be nuts to have more. My kid is wonderful (as any parent will tell you), but being a mom is the hardest thing I've ever had to do. I can't ever take a break. I love being her mother in particular, but I don't think I would be a good mom to more than one. People are aghast when they hear I never wanted more than one. Same exact reasoning: "You'd feel different if you had another one." Hmmmmm. Yeah...
I hate the way people automatically assume that "you'll come around" when I talk about marriage and/or kids being an option not a forgone conclusion.
I don't know if it's general human nature or if it's cultural, but this seems to be representative of a broader trend of people thinking:
"1. I have/do/am X, and X makes me happy.
2. So I should encourage others to have/do/be X, so they will be happy."
Even if the rest of us don't like X or don't feel that the lack of X is leaving any big gap in our lives.
In other words, the same motivation that causes me to tell my grandmothers they should get on the internet causes my grandmothers to tell me I should have babies. Again though, the flaw in this analogy is that you can disconnect from the internet and turn off your computer and throw the whole setup in a dumpster if it displeases you for whatever reason.
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