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Greetings from your polar opposite. My casual perspective:
It's harder to be invited to family get-togethers yet never get to actually interact with your family because:
Your in a bedroom breastfeeding. Changing diapers. Doing the "walk-the-babywalk-the-babywalk-the-baby". Chasing toddlers through an un-baby-proofed house with 10 million knick-knacks, exercise equipment, home theatres, huge potted plant/trees, aquariums, 4 flights of stairs, 3 dogs, 2 litter boxes ... out the door into the unfenced backyard with a deck with 4 flights of stairs, ponds, waterfalls, hot-tubs ...Time to Eat!:
Fix their plates. Cut the meat. Pour their drinks; 10 one-half filled cups of lemonade per every bite taken (so you can stop 10 times on drive home for potty). No peas touching the mashed potatoes. No gravy ever. No yams ever. No stuffing ever. In fact; just skip the entire meal altogether & hand them a tub of Cool-Whip. The obligatory dumped plate. Obligatory "fed-it-to-the-dog", Obligatory spilled drink. Obligatory puking child. Obligatory puking dog.
So true. On my side, there are four of us siblings between 34 and 40. Between us, there are eight children, between the ages of five months and ten years old. Which means that it has been approximately ten years since we, as siblings, have been able to have a meaningful, uninterrupted adult conversation of more than about ten seconds in length at a family holiday gathering in around a decade. Maybe when the kids are older.
Society makes you feel as though you're failing somehow.
"Society", as you put it, doesn't care if you have children or not. Your parents likely do if they desire grandchildren, but that's it. You and your wife should do what you believe is best. It's better to be a non-parent than a reluctant or mediocre one.
"Society", as you put it, doesn't care if you have children or not. Your parents likely do if they desire grandchildren, but that's it. You and your wife should do what you believe is best. It's better to be a non-parent than a reluctant or mediocre one.
Very well put.
The truth is that I'm excited at the thought of having a child with my wife.
I'd be lying if I said that seeing pics of my friends with their kids hasn't helped pull me in the other direction.
I'm convinced that if we don't try to have any, I will regret it someday. That "what if" feeling will probably eat away at me as I get older, and I really don't want that to happen.
My parents already have two grandchildren and aren't putting any pressure on me. Neither are my two sisters. It's my wife's side of the family -- my mother-in-law and brothers-in-law -- who are applying some pressure on my wife.
The truth is that I'm excited at the thought of having a child with my wife.
I'd be lying if I said that seeing pics of my friends with their kids hasn't helped pull me in the other direction.
I'm convinced that if we don't try to have any, I will regret it someday. That "what if" feeling will probably eat away at me as I get older, and I really don't want that to happen.
My parents already have two grandchildren and aren't putting any pressure on me. Neither are my two sisters. It's my wife's side of the family -- my mother-in-law and brothers-in-law -- who are applying some pressure on my wife.
But that can cut the other way too.
There's no guarantee that you will have a "good" kid. You may have a kid with significant disabilities. You may have a kid that just can't stay out of trouble with the law and makes life hell.
I'd be lying if I said that seeing pics of my friends with their kids hasn't helped pull me in the other direction.
I'm convinced that if we don't try to have any, I will regret it someday. That "what if" feeling will probably eat away at me as I get older, and I really don't want that to happen.
Regret is probably inevitable, regardless of what one chooses. Though there is something barbarous and vile, in looking at one’s children and regretting that one has had them, can such sentiment always be avoided, and can it be dismissed as being merely fleeting and silly? And even those who are happily child-free, often wonder how their lives would have been as parents, and how they’d have made different choices regarding career and finances and whatever else, had parenthood altered the boundary-conditions of their lives.
My impression is, that we can’t escape regret, and there is no perfect choice, such that one would never wonder about alternatives, and never come to feel that one wasn’t too impetuous, or swayed by pressure, or otherwise less than fully logical. This is why I find merit in a kind of strategic indolence, where one abstains from making either the one or the other decision, gathering more data and waiting to see what happens, even if by waiting some opportunities are foresworn, and some bystanders are thrown into exasperation. This is less “paralysis by analysis”, than a kind of self-confidence, where one does not feel defined by one’s choices, and instead asserts the privilege of not yet having to make a choice.
The truth is that I'm excited at the thought of having a child with my wife.
I'd be lying if I said that seeing pics of my friends with their kids hasn't helped pull me in the other direction.
I'm convinced that if we don't try to have any, I will regret it someday. That "what if" feeling will probably eat away at me as I get older, and I really don't want that to happen.
My parents already have two grandchildren and aren't putting any pressure on me. Neither are my two sisters. It's my wife's side of the family -- my mother-in-law and brothers-in-law -- who are applying some pressure on my wife.
Since when did you get excited about having children? Two weeks ago? Come on!! Reading your other threads....holy cow. I feel for your wife.
Seeing photos makes you want children? Go buy some frames at Target....Happy families come with them.
Your wife's health is the #1 priority here!!!! She has several issues that may lead to difficulty conceiving and she may have serious health issues. Are you ready for her to be bedridden for 8 months? Hospitalized 6 months? It DOES happen with women who have blood pressure troubles.
Eclampsia is no joke. My cousin and her baby came within minutes of dying from it. My cousin literally would have died within the hour and the baby had even less time. My cousin was hospitalized for over a week AFTER having an emergency c-section. Her baby stayed in the hospital for months and struggle for the first month. Now, she's 7 years old and healthy, but it took YEARS for her to become a healthy child.
Are you really prepared for that nightmare? And it was an absolute nightmare. It was so awful that they NEVER wanted to try to ever have another child. They've NEVER tried to be the Jones'. They were always thankful for the outcome they had because it could have gone in so many other directions.
And for the folks who apply pressure about having children.....when they're the ones pregnant, up all night feeding a baby, changing the explosions, then they have can an opinion. Until then - SHUT UP. And yes I have told people to shut up and it's none of their business. If they don't like it, oh well. I didn't like being drilled about having children. Not everyone can. Not everyone wants children. Some people are happy in life without them. There's no shortage of people on the planet.
You should at least be practicing having kids. No less than 4 times a day. If you need to know the process, just google "how to have kids"
When our five kids were all little, my wife's best friend would come visit whenever she had kid cravings. She would ask us to leave her with them and go out (which we were happy to oblige). When we came back her kid cravings were gone for another year or two at least. Kind of like magic. She called us the Jensen family birth control method.
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