Babies are a miracle. Children are magical. Family can be light, love, salvation. None of this originates from me, but rather, is long observed, and verbalized, and written about by many before me. And, if the human spirit continues to prove resilient as it has throughout time and circumstance, others down the line will too, putting words to the paper/screen/media of their generations. To me, a child is a tangible culmination of the love between two people brought to fruition. That child may spring from your loins and the one you love, or be the result of some other union. Either way, biological or no, a child is still the result, still the product of the parents — again, any combination here — that love and raise him or her, any one that can say: this is my child, and through her/his existence, life, behavior, and so forth, is a product — partially direct, partially indirect — of how I feel about my significant other and vice versa.
That said, I personally do not feel that humanity is currently in need of boosting population. Our world is plenty numerated. It’s common knowledge that China, for example, traditionally limits couples to bearing only one child per household. Wikipedia states that this one-child policy was “created by the Chinese government to alleviate social, economic, and environmental problems in China.” I suspect lack of space falls into the latter category. Space. There just isn’t enough of it. At least not in this modern day.
I often think about what influences us to have children. I think about it when I am having a particularly tough day as a parent myself. I think about it when I observe familial situations where all of the members are in over their heads with responsibility, lack of time, energy, money, patience, space, and all the other things that could be listed. I think about it when the sheer fragility of life occurs to me once again.
Before I proceed, I want to clearly state that my intent is to present this topic with sensitivity and intelligence. Please consider this paragraph my disclaimer, as I am not pointing at any specific group(s) or individual(s), and have not chosen this topic to be controversial, but simply because I felt a pull to write about it. If it gets dialog going, so be that, as long as verbal attacks are not made on anyone by anyone.
Surely, there are individuals who would present judgement upon others due to the amount of children born, due to parents skills, due to just about anything. I cringe imagining what type of statements that would be put forth. I am not doing that. Rather, I am trying to explore in a scholarly manner and out of curiosity the why behind my question: why do people have children, especially as many as three or more?
My pondering generated a short outline:
What influences us to have children
-history? Points in time where large portions of human race were wiped out by disease, famine, war
-religious ideals? The idea in some religions that one reason to be married is to produce children
-lineage/carrying on family surname & bloodline
-rite of passage as a man or woman
-the love of family
-other feelings of “should”?
-poor planning/ “accidents”
-promiscuity
-sad situations: rape/incest
Humanity suffered severe blows throughout history, whether dealt by disease, famine, and/or war. In Europe, the Black Plague claimed 25 million lives in just five years during the mid-1300s, according to themiddleages.net. By 1850, a million people perished in Ireland during the Great Irish Potato Famine (irishpotatofamine.net). (Incidentally, this was a silver lining states voices.yahoo.com, as it ended the middleman system, thusly elevating overcrowding.) Those are just the first two easily thought of examples that come to my mind. Wikipedia lists 65,000,00 deaths worldwide during World War I and 72,000,000 deaths worldwide during World War II. Massive wipe-outs with just a few key examples from different eras and parts of the world, examples that probably rise quickly to the surface of your mind, as well. I wonder: Does some of this still resound some how? Do we carry the past in our blood? In our reproductive systems?
Religion is not, for some, just religion, but also the way that one is meant to live. This includes marriage and reproduction. In some religions, there is an expectation that a marital union will result in offspring. I feel that this is particularly true for Catholics.
For some, the idea of their bloodline dying out, of their lineage ending with them, doesn’t sit right. Carrying the family surname forward is of great import, and plenty reason enough to bear children. Either under this or as a separate motivator is the rite of passage of being a man or a woman which produces the desire to and in turn, the result of offspring. Hopefully, the love of family ties in with the above, as to me, even if a family is created through other means, such as adoption, this is the most beautiful reason to bring about new life. Of course, there are always others reasons, sometimes just one being the feeling that one “should” experience having children.
At the other end of the spectrum, the general population expands due to poor or improper planning, possibly including but not limited to promiscuity, and of course the saddest, darkest, most base situations of rape or incest, creating not only babies, but pain, confusion and a plethora of other issues, for a different day, different post, possibly even different writer.
What are my reasons for exploring all of this? Overall, in complete simplicity: because I am a parent, and I imagine other parents find themselves not only caught up in similar thoughts, but caught up in those same thoughts over and over again, just because they happen to turn and churn over in the mind, begging analysis. Nevertheless, here is a second, smaller outline, born of my worries, complaints, observations during my parental journey, thus far:
My reasons for exploring this topic
-expense
-space
-risk
-time required
-energy required
-patience required
Like most significant occurrences in life, to have children, to provide for them, to bring them up through all the stages of their lives into adulthood (hopefully successfully), requires much of the parents. Money, space, time, energy, and patience are several of the major ones, but that hardly covers it.
Space though, is one thing I both struggle with in our household, and find myself wondering how other people deal with. My neighborhood is comprised of tiny starter townhouses. Our area, like pretty much everywhere else, is a mixing bowl of cultures and ethnic backgrounds. This has always been fascinating to me ever since I first learned about it in a late middle school/early high school history class. Some of the other families that live near and around us arrive with several children already. Whenever an additional child is born to any family living in one of these compact homes, the family ends up having to move. Surely, this happens everywhere, as again, our world contains plenty of people.
Life is risk. Having children is certainly added risk. The different variables that present it contrast from one generation to the next, as well as from family to family. Whether it be medical, financial, environmental, or any negative outside interference, creating life presents huge question marks. But, if all matters were not weighed against one another, humanity and the world as it is now might look very different were we to allow risk to make us fearful, and in result, see a dip in population.
As a parent, I feel that time, energy, and patience are an ever-overlapping trinity. Such great amounts of this trio are required that being both a parent and a person are challenged daily. The frustration over it makes this mother feel that she has to choose to be one or the other, but that a simultaneous duel status is not an option.
Even though I have already previously thought about this general umbrella topic at length, what made it stick in my mind a little more concretely and to the point that I felt a need, a pull, a tug to expound in words was the result of a conversation with a woman riding the bus to the mall on the same late August afternoon as myself and my little daughter. She sat across from us, older than myself probably by 20 years and upwards, alone, attached to a few shopping bags, glancing at us from moment to various moment. I wondered what observations or judgments she might be postulating, when I decided to catch her eye and smile at her. Too often, we (people in general) grimace, sneer, frown at strangers taking a visual interest in us, in who we are, what we and our lives are about. Why? Why not show kindness? So, I did, which started a conversation.
After inquiring “How old is your daughter? Where did her beautiful strawberry blond hair come from?” my exchange with this woman soon turned to how much it really involves to take on parenthood, so much in fact, that even though I’ve only one child, my husband and I decided that we’ll not have another, realizing our own personal limits. (While pregnant though, I was certain I’d have as many as four babies!)
She shared that in spite of two miscarriages, she has two children — a daughter that has given birth four times; and a son that has chosen to not have children, probably for many reasons, but beginning with the knowledge about himself that he is not cut of the parental cloth.
Aside from all the reasons why we have children, I believe that limitations are a strong reason for some to either not ever take on parenthood, or, like me, not overextend ourselves with more children. Bringing a life into the world is delicate, as is to the best of one’s ability supporting and raising that person. If I were to ever become mother to a second child, I would be outside of my capabilities to be an effective parent, and moreover, would be presenting a huge disservice to both (or all) of my children.
Opposing this, I have and always will have tons of respect for those individuals who are aware of what they can and can not handle, having the insight about themselves to see that the skills required to raise a child or several children is not present within, without embarking on the journey by choosing wisely to have none.
iloveyoumorethanicecream 