Recently there was an article posted on Jezebel titled, "
Oops, I Must Have Been Too Busy Bitching About Not Getting Any Sleep to Mention How Great My Kid Is." by Tracy Moore. The piece (which is conversational, light-hearted and an easy read, so go munch on it for a minute) is largely a response to a conversation she had with a childless co-worker, who, upon listening to the writer complain about some truly heinous child-related sleep deprivation, commented,
"Whoa man, you make it sound like your baby ruined your life."
The article goes on to explain that she wishes all of us childless people could simply grasp the awesomeness of parenthood and how, while it's not always a ray of sunshine - in fact, far from it on some days -, that there's something just so marshmagically delicious about babies and being the proud maker of one, that we just can't possibly "get it" if we've never had a child of our own.
Uggghhhh.
You know, I get it.
I get it that I don't get it.
I can quite plainly observe friends and family members who find their social lives radically altered, are elbow-deep in the grossest of bodily fluids (some of which aren't even their own!), who come over for a little break and end up sitting on my couch uncontrollably crying (and that's the dads!), who are on the verge of losing their minds over a kid who refuses to sleep more than an hour at a time, who see money spraying out of their bank accounts - like the projectile vomit they have become so accustomed to - on new furniture, clothes and daycare, and who have confided in me that they have moments where they just want to lock their toddler in the room, leave the house, and get wasted in the middle of the afternoon.
But you know what I also observe? That many these same people go and
have another baby! Or
light up when they see a picture of their kid. Or sit there with a
truly enamoured smile long after they've finished telling you a story about their child.
So even though I am an ignorant, childless heifer (though I prefer "childfree" heifer),
I understand that there's something - something huge and verging on magical - that counters all the shitty, horrible things about having a kid. It is the "it". "It" is the thing that is more powerful than logic or memory. "It" is individual with each child, "it" is hard to describe, and for most parents, "it" is the best thing that has ever happened to them.
I get it, even if I've never personally experienced "it". You don't have to sell me on "it".
From Jezebel:
For us, it's not about whether a
baby is "special" enough to take on all the shit that comes with parenting, it's about whether
we are willing to deal with all that specialness, especially since we really like how our lives are now. Why the author thinks people who "get fucked up a lot" would make ideal parents is beyond me, but whatever. Do those people
want kids? Because we're personally unsure. Call us "Team Undecided But Sorta Leaning Toward No". Neither of us has felt a big yearning for kids that wasn't fleeting, so to just go ahead and have a child in the hopes that we'd experience "it" and "it" would be worth the risk, is a big leap of faith for us. And since I'm an agnostic and he's an atheist, "faith" isn't exactly our forte.
What's irritating, is that articles like the one on Jezebel presume that everyone who has a child experiences "it",
guaranteed, that "it" is what's missing in their lives, that "it" outweighs all other perks of a childfree lifestyle, and that once you experience "it", all those worries about whether you want a kid / would make a good parent / can stick with it until you're dead, will melt away.
And that's something I just don't buy.
I know, without a doubt, that
there are people who regret having children. It's hard for them to say this out loud because it goes against, oh,
everything, and people somehow derive great pleasure in pointing that out. Many of these people get called every name in the book for admitting what a "real parent" is never supposed to feel. But whether you like it or not, they're proof that "it" isn't universally appreciated. They're
selfish monsters adults who discover that they'd be happier without kids - and I don't mean
hypothetical children, but
their actual kids - healthy, well-behaved little people with faces and names that they have feelings for. Children they believe are more burdens than blessings when it comes to achieving happiness in life.
And there's another nagging regret to the issue; the fear of "but what if I figure out I want kids and it's too late!" It's something articles poke at, although subtly. If we're too ignorant to "get" the obvious amazingness that is being a parent, surely we're also incapable of knowing how we'll feel about this in the future. How could we possibly know we'll be ok with a decision to not have kids in five, ten, or twenty years from now if we're too [stupid, self-absorbed, immature, goofy] to realize how crazyballs fantastic it is to make a small human being who loves you unconditionally?
Articles on this topic weren't always as cutely presented as the one on Jezebel. From an article by a woman simply referred to as "The Country Contributor" in the April 1911
Ladies' Home Journal (100 years ago!), this awesome opinion was splayed out:
In case you can't read that, the snippet says (to be read aloud in a ridiculously regal voice that I like to call "Lady Boddemboddem"):
No Woman Should Ever Marry Unless She is Willing to have a child or children. If you are not willing to institute a family you should remain single. It not immoral to refrain from having a larger family than you can support, or from subjecting a wife to child-bearing until her strength is exhausted; but on general principles it is immoral to marry with the positive intention of having no children, and it is very vulgar, too, as you will certainly understand some day when you awake to the plain realities of life.
Epic, no?
But beyond the part about being vulgar, isn't the message that
"you will certainly understand [it] some day when you awake to the plain realities of life" all that different from
"sigh. It's hard to explain till it happens to you directly."?
I think Tracy Moore's article is fine and cheerfully-natured, but I wonder if she realizes that it comes across a touch belittling. What's funny about all this, is that no
real person in my life has ever tried to press me on the fact that I don't have a deep understanding of what it means to be a parent, nor the idea that having a child might not be for me. So maybe that's why I find it funny that articles like these keep getting churned out.
Do people really talk like that to one another, or did I win the friend lottery?
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