uberreiniger | (no subject)

I keep trying to get up the energy to post something. I've got a lot of thoughts I'd like to say swirling around in my head but they don't feel like coming out. I would like to address something that's been going around in my mind for a while and has been building in intensity. I really hope I don't offend anyone with this question, but my mind won't leave it alone.

This one is for the parents or those thinking about becoming them at some point: what made you decide to have kids and why? I'm genuinely curious. It seems as more and more time passes that the very idea of it makes less and less sense to me and I can't understand why anyone else would willingly do it. Maybe it's because all my life I've always looked at having children as something you do when you're "older" and I definately don't feel "older" yet. I still feel like I'm a kid even though I'm almost thirty. But a certain misanthropy taints my view as well and I don't like it. My attitude ranges from puzzled bewilderment on the best days to, on the worst days, the rather bitter, hostile view that the absolute last thing this planet needs is another fucking human being living on it.

Either way, it's a view that's completely negative and unhealthy. I need some positive views to balance it. Of course, I'd like to hear others' thoughts on the more negative aspects of parenthood as well. I hope my request and my thoughts have made sense. Thanks in advance to anyone who wants to answer.

On to my real life, it's pretty much revolving around the play. Waiting For Godot, despite being one of the most respected and analyzed plays of the 20th century is woefully underappreciated and misunderstood. I think most people only half-understand it and take it too much at face value. It gets called Absurdism when really, it's not absurd at all. Reading it might make it seem that way, but when you begin to act it out it all makes perfect sense. *shrug* Tonight's rehearsal was bad. We got stuck on act 2 where the two main characters cannot remember their lines at all. We open in a week now, so it's stressful for all involved. It was an easy rehearsal for me since I lay on the stage for most of the act and have no lines in it at all. But laying on sheets of chipboard atop a concrete floor for two hours has disadvantages of its own too.

On the home front, Mel turned in her two week notice at her retail job since she has an opprotunity for full-time hours at the library. There's no guarantee those full-time hours will stay there, but after much discussion we decided it was worth the risk. It will be better for us both in the long run and make it easier for us to spend time together more, which is a good thing.

And... before I knew it I had a very long and rambling post on my hands where I basically wound up saying all the things i thought were too much trouble to go to the effort of saying. Way to go me! The end.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"This one is for the parents or those thinking about becoming them at some point: what made you decide to have kids and why? I'm genuinely curious. It seems as more and more time passes that the very idea of it makes less and less sense to me and I can't understand why anyone else would willingly do it. Maybe it's because all my life I've always looked at having children as something you do when you're "older" and I definately don't feel "older" yet. I still feel like I'm a kid even though I'm almost thirty. But a certain misanthropy taints my view as well and I don't like it. My attitude ranges from puzzled bewilderment on the best days to, on the worst days, the rather bitter, hostile view that the absolute last thing this planet needs is another fucking human being living on it."

Since I'm a parent, I'll take a swipe at this one. I always wanted to have children and honestly planned to have more than one. When I found out that I was pregnant, I was thrilled, my partner was not. We were already in the process of splitting up at the time and his father convinced him that I was just trying to get him to marry me. But I had no doubt in my mind that this was something I should do at the time I chose to do it. In fact, my partner and I discussed this seriously early on in our relationship and I told him what I would do in the event I should become pregnant. So when it happened (the odds get you sooner or later) I was 27 and my mother had been 32 when I was born. She was always saying that she was too old to do this or that and I didn't want that for my child/children.

After my daughter was born, I was too busy trying to keep my head above water financially to really consider having other children, but I don't regret it. She's a great kid and has brought a lot of peace and joy to my life as well as some well deserved and thoroughly enjoyed chaos, as much as I might bitch about it.

But its interesting to note that when I went to my college reunion last year, out of the twenty of us there, only four of us had children, I had one, one of us has six (he married a woman with two children, they had two of their own and adopted two, so he had two out of college and four under the age of six, two of whom are autistic [the adopted ones]), one of my other friends had two toddlers, my friend who is a college professor has two (at the time they were about 5-7) and the last had one then has two now. Of the group of us, two are not married at all, and have no intention of doing so. The rest of my friends have little to no interest in having children at all, one of my friends is very outspoken about it and frustrated that she cannot get the medical community to help her enforce her decision.

There are no right answers, just how life unfolds I think.

Well I'm going to keep fighting the odds every way I can! :) My mom had me in her 30's too. The only negative was her age contributed to her inability to have more children without risk to her life, hence I'm an only child. But being raised that way left me very open to the idea of having kids in my thirties, so if it happens it will happen then. I wouldn't want to go later than that though. I always think back to that joke by Bill Cosby: "By the time that child leaves home we will be ready to go to one!"

I'm glad being a parent brings you such happiness. It certainly shows in the way you speak about your child. Frankly I'd feel better about the whole thing if more parents showed as much joy as you do. As Ghandi might say, the reason I don't become a parent is because I have known too many parents.

"I'm glad being a parent brings you such happiness. It certainly shows in the way you speak about your child. Frankly I'd feel better about the whole thing if more parents showed as much joy as you do. As Ghandi might say, the reason I don't become a parent is because I have known too many parents."

It really does, even when she drives me up the wall and sometimes she does. But then she will turn around and simply amaze me with her insight or generousity.

There were things that I did, rules that I decided upon when I had my daughter that were delibrately different than how my parents raised me. So I know I made some mistakes, which we both survived intact, but at least they were MY mistakes and not the ones I felt my parents made with me.

I don't think you ever truly know how you are going to react to a situation until it happens, and many people told me that having my daughter would change my life in ways I couldn't imagine and I have found that to be turn. I think how a person handles those changes makes all the difference in the world.

I made career decisions based on the fact that I was a single parent, choosing to avoid a line of work I found interesting and was pasionate about, or by not accepting jobs that were too unyieldingly demanding of my time. I don't regret it, I can still chase that career if I want too when my daughter is older, but now I have other things that drive me which are perhaps a better path for me in the long run.

That said, I am not sure that there is any perfect time to have kids, I think they come when they do, often at the most inconvenent or inopportune time. In Europe it is very common to wait into your late thirties and early forties to have children, most of my friends did. I think its mostly about what works for you and only you truly know what that is.