Do not read this at work unless your boss doesn't mind hiccuping, gasping, gurgling sobs from over the wall of your cube.
But this isn't only sad. I don't make you read things that are only sad. You know that by now.
"You hope the answer is going to be about slaying ten men and Satan, because you’re capable of that. But the answer is, you are going to go home and do the best you can to make a life out of what you've been given."
{ link }
words: finding your voice
image: luis argerich
Sent in by Laura.
3 comments:
This woman's story is definitely heartbreaking, but wow. The academics ARE totally getting the point. It's just not a point that is relevant to her life at all. It's a point that is relevant to the lives of people who aren't yet parents, many of whom decide to have a baby thinking about the same kinds of things we think about when deciding to get a kitten, instead of reading blog posts like these, or considering that (even if their children are healthy) they will probably not be happier with children, and might very well be less happy. Because many people do think they will be happier, and that is why many people choose to have children. This is important news to most people.
Her story is a great example of the kind of thing you have to consider could happen to you if you have children. And you have to be prepared for that. You have to be prepared for autism, for Down's Syndrome, for your teenager dying in a car wreck. Unlikely scenarios? How about for your kid being bullied and coming home crying. For your little girl to hate her body and start dieting at 12. Basically for re-living every hurt you remember from your own childhood, only worse, because it's happening to the person you love most in the world and desperately want to protect but can't.
Reading stuff like this, coupled with the "silly" academic findings, and thinking I can (probably) prevent that world of hurt with a pill or a piece of rubber? Yeah, it's pretty obvious what I'm going to choose. For people with kids already, more power to you for living those soaring joys and universes of agony. For those who still have a choice to make, though, don't fault us if we opt out.
Parents and non-parents have two different kinds of brains, and they can't understand us any more than we can understand them. This is the message that always gets lost in all the "you just can't possibly understand if you don't have kids." Yes, and once you DO have kids, you can't possibly understand the other side, either.
[Ahem, thanks for letting me rant on a tangent irrelevant to the emotional movingness of this piece.]
-Michelle W.
"... many of whom decide to have a baby thinking about the same kinds of things we think about when deciding to get a kitten."
I couldn't agree with you more. Unfortunately, this is about the level of thought most of us give to most the Great Big Decisions of our lives: the decision to marry, the decision to buy a house, the decision to go to grad school. A lot of it is based on assumed Next Steps and fuzzy feelings that are not positively correlated with the choice we're about the make.
I don't think people should not have kids. I don't think people should have kids. I think people should recognize that having children is a huge, huge, huge decision, and a sacrifice. In the world in which most people I know currently live, having children should not be the default. It should be a very carefully made choice, realizing the vast sacrifices and risks you are taking on in exchange.
p.s. I don't think people should decide to get a kitten based on such cozy feelings either, but that is a rant for another day.
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