When choosing an elective course in high school, I happened upon the following sentence in a "marriage and family" course description: "Every student ought to take this course because all of you will become parents."
It sounded like a command. You must reproduce, or else. No doubt, a majority of my former classmates have become parents, and many of my current ones will someday, but I have no intention of doing the same. The fact is, there just aren't that many reasons to have children I find terribly convincing or personally relevant.
Of course there are good, sensible reasons people have children +â-¡- such as when two people decide they are financially and emotionally stable enough to give an enriching home to a child they both want and both love.
And then there are the asinine reasons that make no sense.
Unplanned pregnancies are not included in either of these categories, since most of the time neither party is expecting the child. Having children due to religious tenets is also not in my area of interest. Most interesting to me are the pregnancies resulting from two people sitting down, having a talk and deciding to become parents on an absolutely silly premise.
"I just love babies!" was one friend's justification. The statement struck me as uncomfortably familiar to the reason people adopt kittens and puppies.
Everyone loves cute little kittens and puppies, but not everyone loves grown-up cats and dogs that get sick, old and boring and need their excrement scooped. But a puppy or kitten will inevitably transform into a dog or cat someday.
It's the same with babies; they will only be babies for a year or so, and then they become tantrum-throwing toddlers. Likewise, toddlers eventually become awkward middle schoolers, who become moody teenagers, who might become mischievous college students. If one loves each of those ages of children as much as one loves cute little babies, then by all means go ahead and reproduce - just realize what's coming.
"My parents keep bugging me for grandchildren." Of all the terrible reasons people procreate, this is one of the worst. Of course, it would be a joy for them to be grandparents, but they're responsible for their own happiness in life. It should not be up to an adult child to make sure his or her parents have something to do on the weekends. Children are much too time consuming and expensive to have for the sake of others. Grandparents aren't the ones who have to do the real dirty work and incur the real financial cost of child care.
"All of our friends have done it, and we feel left out." This reduces a child to a fad or trend and reflects the parents' shallow desperation to keep up with the Joneses. It's understandable to want to have something in common with one's friends, but if the sole reason for having a child is to be like other people, then the child is obviously not the most important thing to the parents. And in my eyes, children should always be their parents' first priority.
"We just figured it was time." This is most likely a simple way to sum up a complex answer, but since it was the reason given by my own parents, I would have liked a little more detail.
Write to Marie at
mmzatezalo@bsu.edu
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