This post was prompted by Reflections:Age and Kids.
I am 32, Claudia is 31. I don’t want kids, neither does she. Why? I can’t imagine spending so much time with them. What about Aikido? Free Software? Dancing? Teaching? Eating out? Long walks in the sun? The very few people I actually asked were not randomly selected. I like them, I like their kids, they seem happy, we can talk. They love their kids and would not never want to go back. I never asked the people that seemed unhappy with their kids.
Now, if some people are so happy with their kids, the reward seems to be incredibly large. Of course, the sacrifice is there as well. And not having the kids, the sacrifice looms larger than the benefits. The sacrifice seems to be guaranteed, but the benefits seem to be uncertain.
A question of probabilities? Something to decide with math? Certainly not. Specially if you already have kids, to approach the issue using statistics must seem ludicrous. How can you measure anything that means something to you in numbers? You cannot. We’ll abandon numbers and reason, therefore.
What remains is the lingering fear of missing out on some really basic human experience: Being a parent and raising a child. And the fear of having to change my life, to change our lives in unpredictable ways. A fear of the future, maybe.
And yet, time is running out. How old do you want to be when you have kids. Certainly here in Switzerland it is rare to have kids below the age of 25. To have your first child a bit before 30 is the norm, maybe. To have your first child around 40 feels weird.
Another thing: When I read the Cairo Trilogy (2004-08-09 Books) by Naguib Mahfouz, I realized how the trilogy was about youth and rebellion, love, repression, getting a life, growing old, and loosing it, having kids, seeing them grow up, and the closing your eyes and sleep the long sleep of death. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure about about not having kids.
Suddenly some of the music I was listening to turned into the voices of parents – songs of mothers to their fathers, fathers about their sons. There was a strange echo to everything I heard. It spoke of life and death, of growing old, and seeing your kids carrying the torch of life into the next generation.
But then it passed. The dream passed and I remembered my parents and my grandparents. What love there was remained hidden behind mundane phrases and rare visits. When life and death came together, maybe a few honest words of longing and love were exchanged. I am sure those moments were intense. But were they enough to compensate for the sacrifice?
My father said to my sister the other day: “Don’t expect your kids to be grateful for what you did for them. They’ll show their gratitude when they raise their own kids.”
So, is the miracle of life worth it?
I must assume it.
But I’m affraid to do the next step.
And in the age of readily available contraceptices, there’s no taking the next step unless we really want it.
#Reflections