Do you want kids?
This is the only kid I want to raise
I’m 33 and possibly in the best physical shape of my life. I’ve never felt healthier, or more vibrant. Emotionally and spiritually I’ve finally come into my own and all the uncertainty that I felt in my twenties, the stress of having to make something out of myself has tempered, and I’m more comfortable with who I am and my place on Earth.
How strange is it that as we age our minds evolve and strengthen, while our bodies begin to fail us? If I had the mind I have now ten years ago I would have been set for life. Perhaps the universe has greater plans, and the cosmic joke of aging will make sense to me at the point of its choosing.
One of the things that you feel when you enter your 30s is a sense of calm. I’ve never felt more relaxed and at ease with myself, and my friendships have never been stronger. I hope that if I’m lucky to make it to 40 and then 50 and then 60 things will continue to improve.
The caveat to all this is that I’m constantly asked if I want to have children. The answer to this is ambiguity. I don’t know if I want children. I know that I love animals and that I would make a good father to some extent but raising a child is a selfish endeavour. What makes any adult believe that they can raise a functioning child when evidence shows that there are few solid examples of how well it has turned out? Perhaps that’s a cynical perspective, but hear me out, if only for a minute.
The world is a scary place. The global economy is crashing, we all know it, and the end of capitalism is nigh with no suitable alternative. We’re no longer working for anything important except keeping the fat cats at the top making tons of money we’ll never see. We distract ourselves from this reality by buying things we don’t need, and spending endless hours in front of the television watching Keeping Up With the Kardashians when we should be reading a newspaper or contributing to the world in a more productive way. Our waistlines are growing and our minds are softening.
Our children are less literate each year, and their sense of entitlement is growing. Keep your ears open and you’ll hear the familiar phrase: “But I deserve this…” over and over again. I once supervised a woman who was 24-years-old who behaved like she deserved a medal for completing a full seven hour work day. Her favourite conversation topic was what she was going to buy to fill the empty void that was her shallow existence. Too rough? Oh well, I’m in the mood.
Animals are slaughtered everyday to feed our expanding bellies with little thought given to their plight. We think that if we can do it, we should, and to damn with anyone or anything else.
Now I know I’m only providing the dark side of the argument, and there are many other more positive perspectives, but I hear those from people all the time, and usually they’re the ones who I am speaking about, only they don’t know it.
Now just to appease my own ego I want to put it out there that I have worked in charitable organization my whole life, and not just as an administrator, but on the front lines. I was an educator for children with moderate to severe learning and physical difficulties, a social worker for a boy with cerebral palsy and I volunteered with adults who had brain injuries from automobile accidents. Given these experiences I’ve seen the very best and worst of our species.
What I have learned is that I don’t want to raise a child in this world, because I don’t believe that I have the capabilities at my disposal to make him or her a valuable member of our society. There are too many variables that will change the course of the life that I would want them to lead, and they’re not great alternatives.
Why would I want to raise a child to be just as fucked up and unaware as the plethora of adults I engage with on a daily basis? People who have put material objects and an unhealthy obsession with their image above treating people with compassion and respect. I would be too afraid that my child would end up like one of these individuals, or worse, be discouraged by one of them.
I also believe that introspection and self-awareness are rare characteristics for most adults, and it can’t be learned easily; you either have it or you don’t. Most don’t. Let’s face it, we’re not very understanding to what other people might be going through, and we don’t care, it’s probably why we experience so much conflict in our lives, because we can’t see anything through another perspective.
People are working harder, longer hours and for less pay, without giving much thought about why they’re doing it. If it’s to buy things, or to save money you’ll never be able to spend, I think that’s wrong. Kids are dropped off at expensive daycare centres because both parents need to work. They take out bank loans because they can’t afford their children, or the lifestyles they’re convinced they have to live to be accepted by their peers.
I don’t know if I’m properly articulating my position here. I do have many friends who have children and are fantastic parents, but they’re the ones who don’t compare themselves to other parents or profess to know everything about parenting. You’re not going to see them talking about their kids endlessly at dinners or competing for who has the best stroller. One of my friends threw a Christmas party a couple of years ago and made a few jokes about her child’s lack of abilities. Guess what happened? A woman in attendance who was vying for the mother-of-the-year award called the Children’s Aid Society on her and she was investigated for abusing and neglecting her child. My friend is the best mother I have ever known, and eventually the case was thrown out citing no merit to the claims levied against her.
Some of my friends who are new mothers have confessed to leaving mommy playdates in tears because the other mothers have lost their individual identities and are vicious and judgmental to any mom who doesn’t adhere to specific parenting techniques or guidelines.
When I was the education director at a learning centre I was appalled at the schedule some parents had their young children on; it was concerning to me how little free time their children had to be kids. When I was a kid my mother gave me a stick and told me to go out in the backyard for seven hours and entertain myself. I did, and I’m a better person because of it. Sure I never learned how to play the piano or skate very well, but who cares? I can write because I have an excellent imagination, and all the dysfunction I witnessed has given me a wicked sense of humour.
There’s also the issue that children these days think they’re special. Every fucking kid is special. They’re not, they’re just like everybody else and we shouldn’t be rewarding them for failing at something, we should be teaching them lessons about perseverance and effort, and give them realistic impressions about their performance so that they can be free to choose something that they like and may be good at.
So these are the reasons that I don’t want to be a parent, at least not right now. Maybe when the dust settles on the problems we’re currently facing as a planet, I might have a change of heart, and if so, I’ll eat this computer I wrote this post on.
Chau! What do you think? Am I a horrible person!?
I possess great compassion and seek to be of service to others. 
No you’re not a horrible person – you sound very sane and literate – what a joy! I am going to reply more fully to your post later (work calls). We have very different life experiences and a vast different in ages and sex, but I think you may be interested in some of the comments from my perspective.
I welcome your thoughts very much!
First of all I see the note written in haste this morning has a mistake in it – and I’m a writer and an editor!! Sorry about that (as you would have seen the word should have been difference).
Soooo … I am an ex-pat Englishwoman who lived in Toronto (or near) and who has now lived in the Caribbean, mainly The Bahamas, for the past twenty years. I have been married twice, have two grown children who are older than you and who I raised as a single parent between marriages for many years in Toronto.
First of all, living in this amoral country, I am so impressed you even ask the question, as certainly no-one here ever does or ever would. Getting pregnant here is coinage, a means to an end usually money, maybe a man or just plain careless stupidity with no thoughts of the immediate or long term future. In other words, we literally have a preponderance of children having children with the resultant abuse, neglect and ever rising crime rate.
To be honest, I don’t think an awful lot of people spend much time thinking about it on an intellectual level in any society. As you can tell, I am 72 years old though neither my mind nor my body shows it – so I am lucky. But it does mean that I grew up in a very different time and society with different rules and different expectations. Personally, knowing that we were marrying young at the beginning of my doctor husband’s career, I knew we would be moving frequently and additionally I wanted time to settle into my marriage as a couple and took four years before I became pregnant.
I have had reason many times since to question whether I would have children again if I could roll back the clock for a myriad reasons and I have and still do question whether or not I was a good parent. In my eyes for the most part, I believe I was although I certainly would admit to making mistakes even with the best of intentions. That’s the thing I think, none of us are taught or can be taught how to be a parent. Yes, we can cover the basics of loving care, nurturing, feeding, clothing, schooling, responsibility to instill morals (although this one seems to be sadly lacking as you note these days) but aside from that it is such an individual character thing.
I think you would probably make an excellent parent given the thought you have already spent on the subject and the questioning – and I have to say that my own son who was a wild tearaway has made the best father ever!! Who would have thought it? Certainly not me. My daughter chose not to have children but has a super successful career in Toronto, is married and has an adorable, albeit very large, Newfoundland to mess up her house and keep her busy and happy. So again this is a very personal decision and either one is right as far as I am concerned as long as the decision has been mutually and freely made, with no coercion or obligation from either party.
Some of the questions you pose regarding today’s society are very real and relevant. On the other hand each era has its own challenges, traumas and fears. Just before I got married there was the Cuban Missile Crisis and the threat of a hydrogen bomb obliterating mankind – I can assure you very real and terrifying enough that my husband to be and I took off in our car to “hide” in the Welsh hillside. Sounds silly now but was very real. I am glad my children grew up before the drug culture really took hold but parents and family have limitations whichever decade we are talking about. I found the biggest influence in my children’s lives was peer pressure – understandable as they usually spent more time at school or with their friends than home. I simply hoped that the things I was teaching them resonated as much with them (although I certainly had to make allowances for teenage surliness or rebellion). All part of the usual family stories. However, I did not ‘spoil’ my children as I could have with things and toys or later, clothes and stuff, as my somewhat austere English upbringing wouldn’t countenance it even though we were living an otherwise, by comparison, affluent lifestyle in suburban Toronto. I wanted my children to know the value of work and waiting for things they wanted. I think it mostly worked with them and I do believe that parents have a responsibility to teach their children that society as a whole has expectations of them and that they have a part to play in the larger picture as well as the personal.
In some ways, similar to you, I found out very quickly when I started and became the first Chairman of a Shelter for abused women and children, the first in the Region of Peel, that parenting had many forms and many forms of abuse.
I agree with you absolutely that the children, young adults and even older are unrealistic and demanding in their expectations of society and the absolute sense of entitlement – that a mysterious “someone’ or the state are supposed to acknowledge and provide for their every whim or demand. The work ethic is practically non-existent and I find particularly here I am praised frequently for doing something “wonderful” when in fact it is nothing much – simply being professional or using commonsense and just doing a job in a timely fashion with a good result. The bar continues to drop lower and lower for some it seems and I find it depressing. To revert to my comment about my being a reasonably able and sensible parent (and a fairly strict one) I wonder how it is that having instilled similar values in my children where their generation went wrong when raising children of their own. What happened?
To answer my own question and it is something I was saying or questioning back in the late 60′s and early 70′s – where will all the greed, emerging laziness or sense of entitlement lead us. Where will all the explicit sex, profanity in songs and in the media lead. Where will this incredible explosion of technology lead. Like everything else in life there is a positive and a negative and it seems that the majority of the human race will opt for the latter.
In all probability if I were younger in the here and now, I think I would make a conscious decision not to have children. Not just because of the reasons above but because loving someone, feeling so protective, so bound to them, so very responsible for them is painful knowing that you cannot, no matter how hard you wish or try, protect them from ever getting hurt. Whilst intellectually I know that we all grow from challenges and troubles as human beings and have certainly done that personally, it is not something I can separate from my personal fear of my children ever being hurt in any way or that I should somehow be able to protect them forever.
Follow you down path, it will eventually lead you where you are supposed to go.
Thank you so much for this thorough and well-thought response to my blog post. Regarding typing errors, don’t worry, we’re human, and I make plenty myself, and blush with embarrassment too. I agree with everything you have written here and have considered most of it myself. It is true that every generation has its societal crisis, and that’s not a good enough reason not to have children. It’s also true that good parents can raise bad adults, and vice versa. I wish I had a better experience being raised, and that I had a proper template to work from, I’m more afraid that I would take what I learned from my own upbringing and inflict it on my poor son or daughter, or both! I think when I turn 40 I might be ready to be a father. Hopefully then I will be more financially able to provide for them, and even more comfortable in my skin. Thank you so much for commenting, I really appreciate your perspective.
I too, had a difficult up-bringing, being in London during the War (World War !!) yikes am I really that old! A very abusive father and a very submissive mother. Unfortunately, I agree with your viewpoint – until we mature a lot (not necessarily chronologically although experience has a lot to do with it) we tend to repeat learned behavior patterns – mostly involuntarily and subconsciously but nevertheless they are there. It requires a lot of insight and awareness to break those habits.
I think you are very wise to wait and see what unfolds or how you feel.
By the way, I hated being thirty and found those years tough (single parent) and not really knowing what I wanted out of my life. 40 was great, fifty even better and 60 was pretty good too – in fact I like myself and my life better the older I get. I just don’t care for the sound of 72 – it bears no resemblance to how I think, look or feel!
My hope is that life will only get sweeter as I age. I’m really looking forward to my 40s and I pray for good health. I’ve been lucky so far. 72 doesn’t sound bad to me. It only makes you more interesting.
thanks for the last sentence -
Hi, we don’t know each other but I follow your blog which I find interesting, and what you wrote here confirmed definitively my opinion!
We have quite the same age, I’ve been married for five years and neither I nor my wife want children, and we share most of the reasons you listed above.
I think that we, as a species, are “devolving”, in the sense that we are not leading towards an improvement of our lives, but in fact the conditions of our everyday existences are day by day getting worse. I see people surrounding us more and more complicating their lives with useless activities and nonsense thoughts, and moreover their children are inheriting their frustrations: I always ask myself how a person can be parent to someone else if he or she has never become able to get a satisfying (for him/herself) life, and the more I do this question to me the more I see people that are the living proof that being able to give birth to a human doesn’t prove they’re able to raise him!
On top of all this, I live in a country where the mainstream religion has told the people for centuries to become parent as soon as they can, and they fight every kind of birth control (especially the “mind type” of it), so that me and my wife are supposed to become parents right after our marriage: I got almost voiceless repeating that a family is first of all a couple, if not they better don’t raise children because it’s as a house is built with foundations.
In conclusion I think you’re not horrible, neither cynical, you’re only giving the right name to things and experiences that most of the people don’t even want to talk about.
Have a nice day!
Thank you for the support and for commenting on my blog. I think what you’re expressing is that you and your wife have actually given thought to whether or not you want to have children, and instead of following what everyone expects of you, you’re both making informed choices that are not only best for you, and the planet, but for a child you may or may not have. More parents should give more thought about procreating, in the end it will only benefit the world as a whole. I don’t want to have a child because I never had a good template and I can’t raise a child knowing everything that I do about the devastating effects humans inflict, and the lack of empathy they have for their fellow human beings.
I get your point, and although I don’t have the experience you do in assisting people I see too often the malice that use have towards other humans.
Besides, I think it’s not a coincidence that the more people are not involved in raising children the more they do in loving animals!
I agree with you. I mention my experience working with marginalized members of society because I think it’s important for parents to understand that not all children are born abled, and that their future could be more challenging as parents if they were to give birth to a baby with challenges.
I personally debated many times this point, because in Italy the problem is doubled: on one side we have the diffused “ignorance” that all children are God’s gift so we have to accept them as they are, possibly without even knowing the gender. On the other side, this belief is rather shared within the medical staff, so things are a bit complicated. I don’t understand how people can be so blind, I know families that almost got torn apart because of disabilities of their child but their friends and relatives seem to don’t understand.
Ahhhh…. I understand the Italian mentality all too well!
everything does not have to be perfect to have kids – let the dust settle and rethink this and find some pros and not just cons – I never expected to have kids–then I did–and they give a meaningful life even more meaning – you get to think about someone besides yourself and you will be surprised at your passion
This is a very common response I receive from my friends who are parents, and it’s clear that I still have some evolving to do on the subject. At the moment, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I might be too selfish to have children, and I’m not sure if I could provide them with the devotion and attention that they require. Thank you for commenting.
I can’t believe your timing with this post, Franco. I’ve been thinking about this very topic a lot lately, which isn’t surprising considering I spend my days with lots and lots of children. I think what it comes down to is questioning one’s personal motivation for being a parent: is it to bring up a good person and citizen who will contribute positively to society and reflect positively on his/her parents? Or is it to give a good life to another person?
The angle from which I have been approaching the parenting question lately is directed toward adoption. I work with parentless children every day who will probably be stuck in some state-run institution until they turn 18 or run away. I have fallen in love with so many of them, and I can’t help but wonder endlessly about what their futures hold. I want to help them and love them and give them a chance at a happy life.
There is never any assurance that they will turn out to be “good” people, or productive people. But I have to think they’d be better off in a loving home with (a) parent(s) than in an orphanage.
I think you would have a lot to give a child, Franco, based purely on the fact that you are actually asking these difficult questions and thinking through the consequences of bringing a child into the world. It’s a shame that more people like you aren’t the ones having children! So in conclusion, no, you are absolutely not a bad person. You’re a responsible and thoughtful one.
You should have written my post for me because you perfectly expressed what I was trying to convey!
At least you are a guy and you don’t have to make this decision right NOW. I don’t feel a ticking clock either but this month I’m turning 35 and soon the decision will be made for me.
In typical guy fashion, I didn’t even think about that!
Good post. You make some great points.
It’s alright to not want kids. Although I have a friend that often brings up the fact that he and his wife decided not to have kids and I wonder if he regrets the decision. Or maybe it is something that adults without children think about a lot because so many of their peers have kids. In any case, I agree with Meghan’s comments. If you are worried about bringing a child into the world, there are lots of kids who are already here who need homes. Adoption isn’t easy but it is rewarding. Heck, being a parent isn’t easy, but the good stuff never is.
Sounds like you’ll figure what you want. Your dog looks very sweet.
Thank you. With anything in life, having a child or not is a personal decision. I would like to give it more thought than what I observe in other people. My dog is super sweet, thanks!