First off I want to say that I am not aiming this towards people who can not have children. It is everyone's right to decide, but I think our philosophies towards parenthood and children have become skewed and that some of these "childfree by choice" folks are causing problems for the rest of us by their judgmental attitudes towards parents. We know what it's like to live like them, but they have no idea what it's like to be us. Even babysitting and taking care of siblings (which I did quite often before becoming a mother) does not in any way give you a decent picture of what it's like to raise a child. I'm really ashamed for all the things I spouted that I *thought* I knew about parenting before I ever had a child. Seriously, it's humiliating.
Yet somehow, the less children you have, the more you know (or think you know) about raising them.
Now I am going to say something that is almost never said, and is certainly never said in my circle of friends: children won't bring you happiness. If your notion of happiness is being able to do what you want whenever you want, having lots of leisure time, vacations, a perfect body, lots of time with friends or an immaculately clean house, children will not bring you any closer to this idea of happiness. If these are your main goals, you will indeed be better off child-free.
But here is the thing: I believe life is more than just about you having pleasures and avoiding stress. Long-term happiness sometimes means temporary discomfort and even sacrifice. Family, in the end, is a huge part of what life is all about, people in your life who enrich you as a person and deepen your experience of life and the world. Children cause you to grow as a person - if you are willing to grow as a person (not that all parents are)!
Having children means someone else's life and happiness becomes more important than your own. So you make sacrifices in order to give your children what they need. There is a huge lesson in this, and it's a lesson every single person on this planet needs to learn: life is not always about YOUR wants and needs.
Having children is not always a pleasure. If you're going into parenthood thinking your child is going to be some well-dressed, neat, anal-retentive-genius from a Brittany Murphy film, keep dreaming. Your child will write on your walls in permanent marker, have soul-shattering tantrums, cry for candy in the middle of the grocery store, and (probably more than once) take off a poopy diaper and have "art time" while your back is turned. There will be 2 am feedings, teething, puking, sassy-mouthed adolescence, and isolated days. But there will also be laughter, first steps, dancing, silly words, dandelion bouquets and stick figure drawings on the fridge. There will be someone to pass things down to and share memories with. There will be many I love yous. Ultimately, having a child is falling in love, but in the hurried business of parenthood, we don't always take the time stop and appreciate that.
We owe it to our future to have and raise children, or at the very least support those who do. It is not a small job, it's the most important job in the world! It is this job upon which all other jobs rest. A teacher can not teach a child who has not first learned how to speak, listen, and behave from their parents! No one can sell anything, construct anything, or invent anything if there is no populace to support it. There would be no one to care for anyone else, no one to invent, solve problems, cure some diseases, no one to help knit communities together. Parenting done right reduces crime of all kinds and adds to the economy.
But what does "parenting done right" look like? I think this needs some explaining because our world has become simultaneously too uncaring and too pampering with children. Some people think you need to have a huge house, a college fund, and all your "wild oats" sown before you can ever think of having children, but these people are what I like to call WRONG. Kids don't care if they have name brand clothing, and they shouldn't care. Kids don't need 3 after school activities each week to become well-rounded people. They don't need your undivided attention every single minute. They don't even need a ton of toys - the best playground is the imagination!
You don't have to be perfect to be a parent, and you certainly don't have to be rich. You just have to be a decent, kind, loving person. If you are and you choose not to have kids, that's a darn shame because you'd be exactly the kind of parent we need more of. If you aren't and you choose not to have kids, well, I hope you reform yourself anyway, that's all I'm going to say, because being an unkind and unloving person hurts no one more than it hurts yourself. No one like that can ever be truly happy, no matter how much money or free time they have. I find it rather hard-hearted when people say they don't like children. After all, we can't expect children to act like adults, but they are valuable people nonetheless and when given allowances for their stage of development, they are pretty great folks.
If you aren't going to have kids, at least be kind to those who do. Help out your siblings, friends and neighbors who have kids (I know that many people without kids already do this). Do something to make the childhoods of the young people around you a little bit easier, better or more productive, and try to be understanding with parents and children. You are still part of our village, and our children's experience of life depends partly on you. Understand that we are tired, stressed, sometimes overwhelmed, and all of us yell at our kids from time to time, but we are happy. Children may not bring the kind of happiness many people are looking for, but they do bring joy into our lives because THEIR happiness becomes our happiness, their triumphs our triumphs, and their future more important to us than our own - out of love. What parent would not rip out their beating heart and lay it down as a gift if their child needed a heart?
And stop judging how we parent, because seriously, you don't know what you're talking about.
