lumpkin
Ideal_Rock
- Joined
- May 24, 2005
- Messages
- 2,491
This is pretty much where I was at your age, Mara. It is a very scary time to raise children. When I was a teenager, you could smoke pot, get pregnant, and drink. Not that that isn''t scary, but now there''s violence in schools, drugs that completely mess a kid up with just one use, STDs that cannot be cured, Internet preditors, and a myriad of things that were no concern when I was growing up.Date: 4/10/2007 1:19:41 AM
Author: Mara
I already posted my thoughts in the other thread (WWT) but we are torn on having kids. Greg is 39 this August and I am 32. So we have a few more years to figure things out, but really sometimes we both go ''Hmmm do we really want to embark on this?'' and WHY? I often think about Why. Because we want to have a child or because it seems like what you are supposed to do? Because our parents are dying for grandkids? Because people keep asking us when we are having kids?
We really often remark on how we love our lives the way they are now...we can do whatever we want but we also sometimes wonder...is there supposed to be more to our lives? I have seen how people do change when they have kids, and how other things become so less important...so sometimes it does seem selfish to me to not want to have kids because we like our lifestyles. But on the other hand why do people have kids nowadays? It''s not the same as our parents generation when they just did and then thought about it later and kind of made up the rules as they went along. I said in the other thread that our generation is almost TOO educated on the positives and negatives of parenthood and child-rearing and it can make it really hard to say YES I want to sign up for that because it is really scary to me...to have a human being you are totally responsible for...to raise them and be the best parents possible, there are no guarantees on their health or even how they turn out even though you may put heart and soul into raising them. But then we also think gosh it would be so amazing to have this small person that is part me and part him and see how they will turn out. What will they look like, how will they act?
So yeah we think about all the things that have been mentioned here and I also talk about it with other girlfriends and we talk about it with other couples too...couples our age or getting there kinda thing. One other thing we think about is that we''ll be ''older'' parents which will not be unheard of in today''s day and age as it seems so many have their kids older, but will we be cheating the children somehow by not being the young spring chickens we once were....and what about our retirement. We''d be potentially sending the kids off to college as we should be thinking of retirement. We are starting late so we have all of these things to think about. And sometimes you just wish...gosh why do I have to make an actual DECISION. And that''s when you realize you might be overthinking it. lol!
Also, I was a latch key kid. I vowed that my children would not come home to an empty house. We used to have so much money. OMG! Want a new car just because we''re bored with the one we had? Shoot, go trade it. Want a $100 pair of jeans? Go for it! And we still had money to save. I worked and we had only our house payment and car payments. When we had our first child, it was fairly easy to be a stay at home mom. We had our second child and then 9-11. We lost money in the stock market. Not to mention the horror of what happened. The world has forever changed. The USA has lost its innocence, we now know we are targets, and that the threat of terrorism is constantly with us. And even if all that had not happened, kids are expensive, and now we live on one income.
But still, I would not trade my children. My main worry is what will be left of the world for them when we are gone and they have their own families. It is a very daunting choice, and I''m really glad that I am not at the point where I''m considering more kids.