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THE FAMILY GROOVE’S RESIDENT MOM-ENTATOR, SASHA WHY HAVE KIDS?
A close friend of mine is contemplating having her first child, and while I
selfishly am dying for her to jump into the parenting deep end with me,
I
don’t want to push her.
Besides, I would be lying if I did not tell her that there are days I want to run away—to Venezuela; to Belize; to the Cineplex, where I could spend all day eating popcorn and Jujubes and not have to hire a babysitter.
Maybe I am not the person to ask. We are in a tough spot right now. My husband’s company tanked, and he has been out of work for three weeks. Thanks to a generous severance, we are not panicked. Yet. But we are stressed, possibly more than we have ever been before. And the kids are not making it any easier.
We have been sick for weeks—all of us. Ear infections, pinkeye, middle-of-the-night 103-degree fevers—this is all the stuff of parenting nightmares. I feel like we have been buried alive and every time we claw our way toward the surface, the ground collapses around us again.
We snap, we fight, we exist on little to no sleep. We watch our ornery daughter throw fits at her preschool and try to attack other toddlers with play hammers at our Passover seder. Our son wails because his ears are infected, and he has a chest cough so deep, we wake several times a night sure that he has choked on his phlegm.
In short, life pretty much sucks right now.
So, when my friend asked me why she should have children, I was stumped. And when I am stumped, I usually write a pro/con list. For example:
Cons to having children:
1. They are sick all the time.
2. You become beholden to another’s schedule/wants/needs constantly.
3. When they hit 2, everything is a fight.
4. You will lose the ability to shower, much less get dressed in anything resembling low fashion.
5. You will never be able to eat a meal sitting down.
6. “Me time” becomes “them time” almost all the time.
7. Even if you can leave the house, they are never out of your thoughts.
8. You will do more laundry than you ever thought possible.
9. Poop. Lots of it.
10. Gone are trips to Morocco, Paris and Iceland. Traveling becomes a once-a-month weekend to the grandparents’ lake house.
11. You must watch the same movies 532 times a day.
12. Toddlers eat your food, and when they like it, you don’t get it back.
13. They get into everything.
14. Your house will look like a tornado hit it. Every. Day.
15. They embarrass you in public by demanding diaper changes, screaming or announcing that boys have penises and girls have vaginas—a concept they just learned because they kept pointing at their brother’s penis during diaper changes and screaming, “Why don’t I have one??”
16. You will never make it past 10 p.m. again. Or wake up after 6.
17. All your grand plans for “I will be like this as a parent” and how “I will do it so much better” will disappear as you struggle just to survive each day.
18. You will walk around all day, every day with a pit of fear in your stomach about everything from whether your child will choke and die to whether he will actually be able to sit through a seder. You will have days where everything works and days where it doesn’t. Hence, the irrational, constant fear.
19. You lose the ability to predict anything about your life.
I could go on, but I won’t. The cons are obvious and plentiful. The pros are harder to explain; after all, how can I possibly express the way my daughter’s laughter makes me happier than anything before it to someone who has never experienced that connection?
I miss traveling. I miss my freedom. I miss having hours to myself and quiet in the house. And I miss being able to choose when I want to have sex, watch a movie or go to sleep without having to wait for a nap, find a babysitter or nurse for an hour.
The fact is, on paper, kids are a terrible decision. They wreck your finances and drain your energy. But if I had it to do over again, I would not change a thing. Am I just a masochist? Or is there something else, something too impossible to explain?
Two weeks after Sam was born, when my breasts were sore, I was exhausted and I was spending hours each day wondering if I had wrecked my life, my friend Kristen came to my rescue with this: “Having children is like the best party in college. It totally wrecks you, but you would not miss it for the world.”
At first, her words made me crave some Natural Light and the freedom I had at 19, but they also did something else. They reminded me that the pain of the next day was always worth the fun.
I will never regret my children. In spite of a con list that made it to number 19. In spite of the times I envy my friends’ freedom. And despite my inability to articulate to her just what she would miss by not having them.
Trust me, I told her, the hangover is worth it.
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