“Just Have Kids”

Photo by Ben Wicks on Unsplash

“Just have kids,” people say. “It’ll be the best decision you ever make. Kids are great!”

The blithe blandness with which so many people say this is diabolical. It’s an old mantra, passed down without thought or care.

When we married, my husband and I vowed to never have kids. Eight years into our marriage, I’m ashamed to say I went back on my word. My biological clock was ticking and I could feel my eggs drying up. Right around the time I got pregnant, the media was filling the news with medical research stories about the medical dangers of waiting to get pregnant after the age of 30, both for mom and the child.

I asked people around me if we should have kids. Most people’s response? An enthusiastic, “Of course you should! Why wouldn’t you?”

I received almost no honest feedback from people. I did receive some, but most folks tried to play down the realities of being a parent, especially a new parent. For me, being a new parent and a toddler parent was more difficult than parenting an older child. For other people, it’s the opposite — they loved being parents to babies and toddlers, but when their kid grew older and more independent, they struggled with parenting a teen. We were lucky in that our kid’s teen years weren’t too difficult — but that doesn’t mean my husband and I did everything right. We didn’t.

The truth is, being a new parent for the first time is tiring. If you’re someone who needs your sleep (I am one of these), that first year is going to be incredibly tough on you. Sleep deprivation turns me into a monster I don’t want to be, and even though I tried as hard as I could to stay rational and not become irritated or even angry with my own baby, there were times I failed. More than once I had conversations with new moms when we both agreed that though we’d never hurt our infants, there were times we were so tired and filled with so much despair we wanted to hurt ourselves.

As I said, we didn’t have much of an issue being parents to a teenager, but many, many friends of mine dealt with serious issues when their kids became teens. I had friends dealing with their teens’ drug abuse, self harm, wrecking cars, failing out of school, being accused of sexual assault, dealing with gender dysphoria, etc. If you think it can’t happen in your family, you’re wrong. If that doesn’t sound like something you want to sign up for, don’t. Because whatever your kid is going through, you have to be there for them, unconditionally and with love.

People also tend to not tell you that whatever mental and emotional baggage you’re carrying from your childhood is going to be drudged up and thrown in your face when you have a child. Not that the child is doing that to you, but sometimes we don’t recognize our own toxic family dynamics until we have kids ourselves. If your parents were lacking in their parenting of you, you’re probably going to be lacking when it comes to parenting your own child. Some of that will probably become painfully obvious, right away. (And when I say painful I mean it can be emotionally painful for you.) But you also will probably not figure out some of your own parental shortcomings until it’s too late to undo the damage. The only thing you can hope for in that case is to be mature enough to apologize to your kid once you figure it out, and talk with them about it.

Here’s another harsh truth about having kids: What works as “good parenting” for one kid may be horrible parenting for a different kid.

The truth is kids need patience. They need love. They need generosity. They need you to sit with them and play with them and listen to them and understand them and empathize with them, and usually the people who are best equipped to do that are people whose parents did that for them. If that wasn’t your childhood, and you haven’t worked through that crap, the truth is you may very well end up repeating the very parenting mistakes your parents made with you.

Here’s what having kids will not do for you: It will not fix your messed up childhood. It will not provide you with an unlimited source of unconditional love. Kids will not fix your broken heart or mean that you’ll somehow miraculously have the happy family you weren’t raised in. It’s not your kid’s job to be your therapist or your savior. It’s your job to be the safe person they can go to for anything. You don’t get to be selfish with kids. You have to be willing to sacrifice for them. If that doesn’t sound like something you want to commit to, don’t do it. Don’t do that to them.

In recent years, I’ve seen a few articles pop up here and there about the ethics of bringing kids into the world, a subject that wasn’t even a discussion just a few years ago. People just had kids. That’s just what they did. It didn’t matter if they didn’t really want kids, or if they were horrible, awful people. And of course, the environment and overpopulation have only become concerns when it comes to the question of having children in very modern times.

I fall firmly in the camp that questions the ethics of having kids at this time in history. Have there been worse times in history? Yes. But nowadays, we have birth control. There’s abortion. There’s no excuse to bring a child into the world without thought or consideration.

I’m going to give out the advice about having kids that wasn’t given to me. If you have any second-thoughts about having kids, my advice is DON’T. The stakes may simply be too high if you’re wrong. Plus, there are plenty of people on the planet. There are plenty of people who desperately want to have kids and desperately want to be great parents. Let those folks get on with keeping the species going. They will always exist, and the planet will thank you for not adding more people to the environmental disaster humans have created.

I am completely dumbfounded by the folks who still live by the mantra that everyone should have kids, no matter what, and no one should worry about having kids. Having kids is literally the most consequential decision any human being can make, and it’s one that should not be made lightly. Anyone who would view having a child as no more consequential than buying a new piece of furniture is precisely the kind of person who should not be having children.

Having kids should not be a flip decision, and it’s certainly not for the weak of heart or the immature.

Amber Fraley is the author of the hilarious college coming-of-age tale The Bug Diary, as well as the author of the viral essay Gen X Will Not Go Quietly. Now out is my new essay collection Kansas GenExistential!