Life and Children

(first published Jun 22 2004)

Why do people have children?

Making the decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body. - Elizabeth Stone

A very pregnant friend told her 4 year old daughter, "You are going to have a baby brother or sister."
Prompt and pat came the reply, "Why?"
My friend did not have a clue what made the girl say that. Maybe she had heard something in school about how older siblings are left to fend for themselves when the 'bundle of joy' arrives. Maybe it was just a curious remark.

Couples without children can be categorized as "childless by choice" or "childless by fate". There is such a contrast between these two groups of people, that were they to sit down, it would be like an inter-planetary meeting.

One group is shattered and has felt the extreme sorrow that only they can feel. They, most likely, have tried everything - reproductive drugs to InVitro Fertilization. They could also be thinking of adoption. Why this urge, this passion, this obsession to bear a child? Is it at all possible for anyone to fathom the intensity of this sorrow?

The childless by choice are independent. They work hard, they play hard and they are brave. Brave because they have to keep defending their choice to a million people who will insist on questioning their ideas of a childless life. They regard a child as something that can easily be avoided by practicing safe sex. It provides them with a chance to live life to the fullest; to improve their life. They can do more because they don't have to worry about arranging for a baby-sitter when they want a night-out; they don't have to worry about day care; they don't have to worry about pleading with the boss for a couple of days off because their child has come down with flu; they dont have to save for college and on and on. Whoa! Why would anyone want a child?

People wonder how some can calculate the cost of having children. According to them, what has this world come to if children need to be thought of as an expense. If a person's instinct is to think of kids as a budgeting decision, I say, it is a practical move. Why burden someone with an unwanted child? Taking care of a child that you want is in itself a big task. The burden issue will only complicate the parenting equation.

"Everyone ages and ultimately dies..so what use is material stuff. Children are your gift to humankind."
How pretentious and pompous an argument is this! You want to leave a part of you behind for posterity sake!!! Hmmm. Why should we subject a soul to 80+ years of life on this earth?
Is it not selfish to have children just so we will have someone to take care of us in our old age. In any case, do we honestly believe they are going to keep us in their homes and nurse us in our twilight years? Dream on!
Going by the trend, the coming generation will be busier than the present and will not have time to sit at home with aging parents. So forget this idea of spending the last few years of your life anywhere but in a nursing home. Infact, you may yourselves decide that is what you want to do. There are many American senior citizens who refuse to live with their children. They want to lead an independent life. When they can no longer live alone, they move to a senior citizen community complex, and from there on to nursing homes.

"Oh that child is so cute, I wish I had one of my own!"
Such people should be forced to spend time with an adapted version of the computerized doll that is used to give teens a taste of parenting. Except in this version, the doll would be programmed to mirror the needs of a child from 0-21 years - a heavily condensed primer on babies, toddlers, adolescents, the teenage years and beyond.

Having kids is not a chore. It is not something you should have on your to-do list. It is not something that you should impose on anyone. It is an extremely personal choice. Even more personal than the choice of who to have sex with and how. So, people should not feel pressured to have children just because a relative refuses to quit interrogating or because a sibling is having a child.

All said and done, having kids is not a game. Its not play. Its not a competition. Its not anything that you have ever done before or will ever do.

If you are fortunate enough to have a child, enjoy it.

If you think you will not be able to give your every waking minute and every deep breath to a child - please do not condemn it to a life on this planet.

If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do well matters very much.
- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist.
- Michael Levine