Sometimes a mother doesn't immediately feel love for the child and instead feels an intense guilt for being so unmotherly in a world that talks so highly about the immediate connection between mother and child.
Sometimes a father won't feel the weight of responsibility and will rely on the mother completely to take care of the child.
Please excuse the genders, it also happens the other way around. Your mileage may vary with parenting. Don't have kids simply because you expect to feel this way... or do it, I am not your keeper.
That said, I absolutely love being a parent. So if you ever are considering it, just know that 3 year old is _much_ easier than a 1 year old. And then before you know it your 7 year old will out-build you in Minecraft and it’s even more fun :)
As a parent of a planned 2 year old I can most assuredly say I never thought "I want kids", it's difficult to even say any decision was made at all, beyond an unexpected awareness the environment for it was perfect and there was no friction. Everything else naturally flows from this and it really didn't require much discussion beyond that.
> It’s not that I want to help a new human being for the rest of their life by sacrificing myself; no, I want something for myself, someone in this case. I want kids.
This part is the smoking gun.
> However, that selfish aspect of the planning phase goes away very soon.
There's nothing selfish about planning. If your plans don't hold up, that's a sign.
And what’s the sign you’re talking about? It sounds ominous but I didn’t get it.
I also don’t understand what smoking gun you’re seeing. IMO selfish is used too carelessly by the author. It’s not selfish, it’s just a want. Wants aren’t inherently selfish. And in that frame, I’d agree with the author. In typical western nuclear family setups, choice of children is usually a decision coming out of an individual want.
The transition he talks of is also typical in that stakes go up very quickly when the process kicks in. A human life is given a lot of value (in all sustainable cultures), and dealing with that can be really intense…if you’re allowed to feel it while trying to keep the children and yourself alive, which is typically very resource intensive. But the joy the author is talking about is very real.
There’s a pro-natalist group that described the joy as being able to appreciate the world from your children’s eyes, along with all their enthusiasm for it. The world anew.
And in that frame I can see a case of someone can do it too early. But nothing the author said indicated that to me.
I don't think there's a specific age. It's different for everyone. There should be a point in life when you have it good and know how to keep it that way. You need to have been through enough ups and downs yourself that kids are no longer a "sacrifice".
> the joy as being able to appreciate the world from your children’s eyes, along with all their enthusiasm for it. The world anew.
Yeah don't take this the wrong way, but I think this sentimental thinking might be part of the problem. The parent can find all the joy they want in raising their kids, but that's not really the task at hand. The locus of control needs to be internal especially if you're a parent.
As someone who doesn’t have children and likely never will, I can think of few things more upsetting than reckoning with the judgmental attitudes of the “I made a baby” crowd. If making a baby is what it took for you to become a human being, that says way more about you than it does about birthing a child.
Yet it’s people who think like this who will be coming with pitchforks for those of us who wouldn’t — or, imagine it, couldn’t - feed the meat grinder. De-humanizing language is a requirement for such a movement.
I’m sorry this article felt that way. My intention was not so much saying that you cannot be in touch with that human side if you’re not a parent. It was more about celebrating the good parts of parenting when it comes to how they change you.
That said, I can understand how this could be seen how you shared it, thank you for your thoughts!
And why is your baby's health so much more important than that of the other hundred million babies in the world? Because it's (half) yours. Your selfish genes made you for this moment; all the bloodlines that didn't sacrifice for their babies died off. You can claim to be less solipsistic; but not a whit less selfish.
Is this vacuous clickbait written by AI?
No, it's not AI-generated. I write for fun, and I don't see the point of using AI to do it.
The image, like many others I use to illustrate my articles, was obtained from pexels.com.
Thank you for the feedback!
