The only baby I have ever interacted with in more than passing is my own. She'll be one year old soon. Growing up, my sister and I were the youngest in our not-very-large extended family, but not by so much that our cousins had kids of their own. After college and later on, even as a new parent, there were/are no situations where I would be interacting with other people's kids. My wife and I don't even live in the same time zone as our own parents. I think our situation is pretty common for upper middle class people our age.
The result of all of the above is that before my daughter was born, we were only exposed to the negative aspects of parenting. When you're a teenager it's "don't have a baby, it'll ruin your life." When you're a bit older it's "once you have a baby, you'll be constantly deep in a well of tiredness and suffering." That's it, that's all the context you have for having children. Little wonder fewer and fewer people do it!
Never once did anyone tell me about the joy I'd feel when I hold my daughter. I don't come home from work dreading having to take care of her. I look forward to seeing her all day. Lately she has started reaching out her finger to boop my nose and saying "ooooooop" as she does it. Yes, it's tiring and there are parts that aren't fun but those things feel so insignificant. When I talk to people about how it has been having a baby I only even find myself bringing up the horror stories you hear to try to tell people that's not what parenting is all about.
The point is, my wife and I took the plunge despite hearing nothing but negative messaging about what to expect. I wish people talked more about the upsides; I would've been a lot less worried about whether I was, at 30, getting myself into something I wasn't prepared for. The pronatal discourse space seems to be dominated by weird far-right types who not-so-secretly just want women back in the kitchen, which is pretty off-putting to me as a liberal, and I think to a lot of normal conservatives too. I don't want those guys to own parenting as an issue and if they do, it's a real loss.
I married pretty late in life (40-ish) and when we had a child our son turned out to be autistic.
My wife and I sometimes joke to ourselves that we should have bought a dog instead, and as much as we're joking, I don't know if we would have agreed to do this knowing the challenges and turmoil that has marked our life since our son was born.
But I wouldn't change it. For all of the difficulties, for all of the sleepless nights, looking at our now 19-year-old, seeing him take his first college class and becoming a man is the most satisfying thing I've ever done.
A couple of weeks ago I won a journalism award. And I mention that not as a humblebrag. But because I pushed off things I wanted to do in my career to focus on helping my son be everything he could be. And while it's hard not to wonder what might have been, I truly believe parenthood - with this child - is where I was meant to be.
Parenthood has made me become a better person. And while it's not perfect and it's not for everyone, putting yourself second sometimes can be a satisfying choice.
I'm sorry I won't have a more direct point to this comment but I am currently on the wrong end of the concern about raising an autistic kid. I can tell you, if parenting destroys your old sense of self, parenting a kid with serious behavior difficulties can demolish your entire sense of self. Now, it doesn't *have* to, but it is a danger of having kids and there is nothing you can do to prevent it if it's baked in the genetic cake. We have two kids. The older child has autism, but we didn't know until the younger one was born (it is level one or "high functioning" autism but that does not mean at all that he responds normally to everyday challenges). It's possible that the younger one is also autistic, but it's hard to know because he's three. So much of my life is spent helping my kids regulate that I don't know who I am any more. The stories I read on the autism parenting Reddit group are even more extreme. And the truth is that when your kids need a lot of help, even having family nearby does almost nothing -- my mom and dad aren't going to come over and hold my kid while he's screaming and kicking at us because we said it's time to go to bed. There's no moral to my story because statistically your odds of having a kid with autism are pretty low, but if I had a crystal ball I'm not sure I would have set my current life in motion. I love my kids. Truly. But it's also an awful kind of prison, one that could get better (but hasn't despite countless hours spent navigating therapy, psychiatry, and medication), and might never end or might end in my child being institutionalized or worse.
EDIT: While I was writing this Rick Ellis wrote a much better version of it from the other end of the journey. I don't feel ashamed for feeling despair right now but a childhood is a long time. I sure hope ours comes out the way his has. Right now we're in the thick of it and it's just really crushing.
As someone who is intentionally childless, I appreciate this. Especially the part about how parenting can look odd and kind of mean. I do look with alarm at some trends in modern parenting, but I try never to critique any individual parent for them, because I can see just how hard parenting is, and I am all too aware that I might very well fall into the same traps myself if I had to actually do it.
My life experience was that I wasn’t ready to have kids or be a parent, and then my daughter was born, and then I was ready. It didn’t turn out to be difficult at all, it turned out to be incredibly fun and rewarding!
I think the truth is we are biological creatures who have subconscious skills and capabilities, and some of those things are unlocked by our physical experience. This is obvious for mothers who have the physical transformation of pregnancy first, but I think it is true for fathers as well. Holding your baby for the first time unlocks some stuff, and expands what you know how to do.
I agree it’s unfortunate that young adults aren’t routinely around young parents and children anymore. I think that proximity would demystify most of this and help people not feel so anxious. But as you say, once the chain is broken and the environment we live in has changed, it’s not easily restored.
"Remember that you were born" points us to the marvel and messiness of human generation. We meet the reality of our existence in the word "born." We do not exist as mere abstraction or emoji or idealization. C.S. Lewis wrote about the reality that meets us in words: "A single image, a break in the rhythm, a 'Prithee undo this button' becomes the key to a whole situation. But these things can have no meaning to us separable, even in idea, from our knowledge of what they would mean in the real world" (Lewis, Image and Imagination, page 52).
Enjoy the current stage of your life. When you're ready to have kids, you'll know it. You're a smart guy, you'll figure it out but don't overthink it. It's honestly that easy, even though there will be hard parts. I really had no interest in kids in my 20s and even my early 30s and was sure I'd be happy either way, but once my bit flipped, I can't imagine life without my two girls (now grown and off the payroll!). My wife described the way life changes this way "it was our turn, then it was their turn, now it's our turn again", and I think it's all been awesome. That pretty much sums up about 35 years...
"A pet owner never really has to inflict real emotional pain on a pet for its own good, in a way that it cannot understand but which it needs nonetheless" is not correct. We often have to inflict real emotional pain in form of fear on a pet when it needs vet care, for example.
That being said, yes, it's awful enough with a pet, so how much more awful having to do it to a small uncomprehending human. Interestingly though, most of the younger people I know who have children had pets first. So they either didn't think through the similarities, or knew exactly what they were getting into and decided they were up for it.
In contrast to me, who never wanted children (I'm much older than you but agree that babies might as well be Martians!), and raising my first puppy definitely proved that was the right decision - that was without question all the nurturing I had in me. At least with a puppy you can put it in a crate for a few hours and leave the house and no one will call the county on you :)
A fabulous article. I (a mother of two preschoolers) regularly reflect on the gift it was that my parents had their (unplanned and quite dangerous) menopause baby when I was 12. I cannot fully comprehend how deeply it shaped me to be exposed daily—hourly!—to an infant, and a toddler, and a pre-schooler. So much of caring for my own children has felt like remembering and not discovering because I was an adolescent when my brother was my kids’ age. (And, in perfect poetry, he was when my eldest was born the age that I was when he was born, and we spend quite a lot of time with him. I hope that exposure to my children will do him the same service down the road.)
The only baby I have ever interacted with in more than passing is my own. She'll be one year old soon. Growing up, my sister and I were the youngest in our not-very-large extended family, but not by so much that our cousins had kids of their own. After college and later on, even as a new parent, there were/are no situations where I would be interacting with other people's kids. My wife and I don't even live in the same time zone as our own parents. I think our situation is pretty common for upper middle class people our age.
The result of all of the above is that before my daughter was born, we were only exposed to the negative aspects of parenting. When you're a teenager it's "don't have a baby, it'll ruin your life." When you're a bit older it's "once you have a baby, you'll be constantly deep in a well of tiredness and suffering." That's it, that's all the context you have for having children. Little wonder fewer and fewer people do it!
Never once did anyone tell me about the joy I'd feel when I hold my daughter. I don't come home from work dreading having to take care of her. I look forward to seeing her all day. Lately she has started reaching out her finger to boop my nose and saying "ooooooop" as she does it. Yes, it's tiring and there are parts that aren't fun but those things feel so insignificant. When I talk to people about how it has been having a baby I only even find myself bringing up the horror stories you hear to try to tell people that's not what parenting is all about.
The point is, my wife and I took the plunge despite hearing nothing but negative messaging about what to expect. I wish people talked more about the upsides; I would've been a lot less worried about whether I was, at 30, getting myself into something I wasn't prepared for. The pronatal discourse space seems to be dominated by weird far-right types who not-so-secretly just want women back in the kitchen, which is pretty off-putting to me as a liberal, and I think to a lot of normal conservatives too. I don't want those guys to own parenting as an issue and if they do, it's a real loss.
100% comment
I married pretty late in life (40-ish) and when we had a child our son turned out to be autistic.
My wife and I sometimes joke to ourselves that we should have bought a dog instead, and as much as we're joking, I don't know if we would have agreed to do this knowing the challenges and turmoil that has marked our life since our son was born.
But I wouldn't change it. For all of the difficulties, for all of the sleepless nights, looking at our now 19-year-old, seeing him take his first college class and becoming a man is the most satisfying thing I've ever done.
A couple of weeks ago I won a journalism award. And I mention that not as a humblebrag. But because I pushed off things I wanted to do in my career to focus on helping my son be everything he could be. And while it's hard not to wonder what might have been, I truly believe parenthood - with this child - is where I was meant to be.
Parenthood has made me become a better person. And while it's not perfect and it's not for everyone, putting yourself second sometimes can be a satisfying choice.
I'm sorry I won't have a more direct point to this comment but I am currently on the wrong end of the concern about raising an autistic kid. I can tell you, if parenting destroys your old sense of self, parenting a kid with serious behavior difficulties can demolish your entire sense of self. Now, it doesn't *have* to, but it is a danger of having kids and there is nothing you can do to prevent it if it's baked in the genetic cake. We have two kids. The older child has autism, but we didn't know until the younger one was born (it is level one or "high functioning" autism but that does not mean at all that he responds normally to everyday challenges). It's possible that the younger one is also autistic, but it's hard to know because he's three. So much of my life is spent helping my kids regulate that I don't know who I am any more. The stories I read on the autism parenting Reddit group are even more extreme. And the truth is that when your kids need a lot of help, even having family nearby does almost nothing -- my mom and dad aren't going to come over and hold my kid while he's screaming and kicking at us because we said it's time to go to bed. There's no moral to my story because statistically your odds of having a kid with autism are pretty low, but if I had a crystal ball I'm not sure I would have set my current life in motion. I love my kids. Truly. But it's also an awful kind of prison, one that could get better (but hasn't despite countless hours spent navigating therapy, psychiatry, and medication), and might never end or might end in my child being institutionalized or worse.
EDIT: While I was writing this Rick Ellis wrote a much better version of it from the other end of the journey. I don't feel ashamed for feeling despair right now but a childhood is a long time. I sure hope ours comes out the way his has. Right now we're in the thick of it and it's just really crushing.
As someone who is intentionally childless, I appreciate this. Especially the part about how parenting can look odd and kind of mean. I do look with alarm at some trends in modern parenting, but I try never to critique any individual parent for them, because I can see just how hard parenting is, and I am all too aware that I might very well fall into the same traps myself if I had to actually do it.
My life experience was that I wasn’t ready to have kids or be a parent, and then my daughter was born, and then I was ready. It didn’t turn out to be difficult at all, it turned out to be incredibly fun and rewarding!
I think the truth is we are biological creatures who have subconscious skills and capabilities, and some of those things are unlocked by our physical experience. This is obvious for mothers who have the physical transformation of pregnancy first, but I think it is true for fathers as well. Holding your baby for the first time unlocks some stuff, and expands what you know how to do.
I agree it’s unfortunate that young adults aren’t routinely around young parents and children anymore. I think that proximity would demystify most of this and help people not feel so anxious. But as you say, once the chain is broken and the environment we live in has changed, it’s not easily restored.
"Remember that you were born" points us to the marvel and messiness of human generation. We meet the reality of our existence in the word "born." We do not exist as mere abstraction or emoji or idealization. C.S. Lewis wrote about the reality that meets us in words: "A single image, a break in the rhythm, a 'Prithee undo this button' becomes the key to a whole situation. But these things can have no meaning to us separable, even in idea, from our knowledge of what they would mean in the real world" (Lewis, Image and Imagination, page 52).
Enjoy the current stage of your life. When you're ready to have kids, you'll know it. You're a smart guy, you'll figure it out but don't overthink it. It's honestly that easy, even though there will be hard parts. I really had no interest in kids in my 20s and even my early 30s and was sure I'd be happy either way, but once my bit flipped, I can't imagine life without my two girls (now grown and off the payroll!). My wife described the way life changes this way "it was our turn, then it was their turn, now it's our turn again", and I think it's all been awesome. That pretty much sums up about 35 years...
"A pet owner never really has to inflict real emotional pain on a pet for its own good, in a way that it cannot understand but which it needs nonetheless" is not correct. We often have to inflict real emotional pain in form of fear on a pet when it needs vet care, for example.
That being said, yes, it's awful enough with a pet, so how much more awful having to do it to a small uncomprehending human. Interestingly though, most of the younger people I know who have children had pets first. So they either didn't think through the similarities, or knew exactly what they were getting into and decided they were up for it.
In contrast to me, who never wanted children (I'm much older than you but agree that babies might as well be Martians!), and raising my first puppy definitely proved that was the right decision - that was without question all the nurturing I had in me. At least with a puppy you can put it in a crate for a few hours and leave the house and no one will call the county on you :)
A fabulous article. I (a mother of two preschoolers) regularly reflect on the gift it was that my parents had their (unplanned and quite dangerous) menopause baby when I was 12. I cannot fully comprehend how deeply it shaped me to be exposed daily—hourly!—to an infant, and a toddler, and a pre-schooler. So much of caring for my own children has felt like remembering and not discovering because I was an adolescent when my brother was my kids’ age. (And, in perfect poetry, he was when my eldest was born the age that I was when he was born, and we spend quite a lot of time with him. I hope that exposure to my children will do him the same service down the road.)