to spawn or not to spawn?
ah. the question.
my husband and i are, i think, the last of our college friends who are not yet parents or soon-to-be parents. being married as long as we have, without having yet spawned, sometimes raises eyebrows. people want to know why. do we hate kids? are we just selfish? what are we waiting for? don’t we want to help raise the next generation of world-changers? (or for the overly religious, “don’t you want to raise warriors for Christ?” um, no. i don’t.)
ugh.
i don’t think people always stop to think that those people who may be sans kiddos may not always have a choice in the matter. i realize that by the time you hit your 30s the opportunities to have kids significantly diminishes. again, not necessarily something everyone has a choice of in the matter.
sure you could get all stephen covey “be proactive everything’s a choice” on my ass, but i would politely give you the finger, ignore what you have to say, and turn and walk away. because, you see, i’ve spent the last several years of my life battling a medical condition that while not life-threatening, can certainly lead to things of that nature if not taken care of and definitely affects the having children thing.
so while several of my friends would get pregnant if they were in the same room as their husband it seemed like (read - didn’t even have to try), or spent months or years paying for a drug to keep them from getting pregnant, i on the the other hand am just damned unlucky.
it wasn’t until recently that this bothered me. i think when i hit my 30s i realized i was on a time crunch. i realized i didn’t necessarily want to live my life without children. i wanted the joys of hearing kids laughter or get hugs from my own kids. i wanted someone be there for my husband if something were to happen to me, or vice versa. i realized i DO give a shit about the future of this planet, and sure, i want to raise a kid or two who will also care, and who will exhibit integrity and compassion in a world where both seem void all too often.
so in the meantime, the past decade has been an evaluative study of how everyone we know parents their kids. there are things we appreciate about each one of our friends and family members in how they love, discipline, and build up their kids. we’ve also seen a hell of a lot of stuff we don’t so much agree with. but we don’t judge, because we’ve not yet experienced life in their shoes. we just kind of take notes, realizing that there’s probably no way in hell we’ll remember any of it by the time we have kids, or adopt kids.
so share! what’s your parenting advice/story? or your non-parenting story?
Kevini said,
April 2, 2008 at 7:48 am
Well, we fall into the “soon to be parents” category and I have a lot to say about this.
First of all, to the people who judge someone for not becoming a parent, whether you choose that or not, screw you. What right do you have to decide what is right or wrong for someone else’s life? And you have no idea what that non-parent has been going through.
Granted, life in the church tends to be teeming with baby making couples, which can add a lot of pressure. But either way, having children is such a personal decision.
For us, before we got married, we had to talk about the idea of having vs. not having and at the time nothing was definite. The most important thing was that we had to be okay with that. Within a few years we had decided that we did want to have at least one child. But life doesn’t always make that decision so simple. After a pretty painful, disappointing, and finally happy year and a half, we are expecting a perfect little girl in August. It was probably the most difficult experience of my life, but I learned so much about myself through it and now feel so much more prepared to be a parent.
So, don’t let anyone tell you what you should or shouldn’t do, you will know what’s right for you and Life will guide you there.