[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by MMM

If career is more important than parenthood, then why have babies?

I`m surprised to see no one has responded to this. I think it pretty much sums everything up... Or at least my feelings on the whole career vs children thing.

I think that dedicating life to a career is just as noble a pursuit as dedicating it to raising children. Obviously there is going to be a lot of variation between people... But what it comes down to in my eyes is basically what MMM has said. If your career is most important - then there is no need to have children. People don`t have to reproduce to find happiness. You don`t HAVE to pass your genes on. There is absolutely nothing wrong with never having a child and to dedicating your life to a career and building a lifestyle you are happy with.

There are too many children out there whose parents had because they felt they needed to have a child... Not because they really wanted a child. It was just the next step after getting married. A lot of families where career is number one and the child is sort of an inconvenience. I don`t really know many in Japan, but in the US there were plenty of kids around me who would wake up at 5AM and be skirted off to a care place so mom and dad could head to work at 6, go from the care center to school, head back to the care center after school, have a babysitter/nanny pick them up and put them to bed that night... To repeat the whole process the next day. Then when a school event was scheduled on a Saturday or Sunday so that more parents could attend - throw a fit because it was cutting into their scheduled "parent-child time".

Children are incredibly resilient. Some shocking environments can produce wonderfully well adjusted children (and later adults). But this doesn`t mean those are the optimal situations. It doesn`t mean that the majority of children are going to thrive in that situation. Some children require a higher level of attention and care than others - some are content to play alone or with strangers... Some become withdrawn and have emotional issues when put in the same circumstances.

I don`t think you can plan that sort of thing out. It is incredibly easy to say that you have it all planned out, are going to do this or that with your child to balance them with your career, etc... But it ignores the fact that children are individuals and that as with many things in life quite unpredictable.

Until you are prepared to give up anything and everything for the well being of your child, I do not believe it is at all responsible to have one.

---------------

A comment on disliking children - but first a disclaimer. I do NOT think that anyone who does not want children should have them for any reason. I am not writing this comment to try and push MissMisa into changing her mind and having a baby. I`m just stating my experience with the issue.

I don`t like children. I don`t think I`ve ever really liked children. I was pushed into being pretty much the sole caregiver for my two siblings for about 5 years of their early childhood (in my brother`s case, pretty much from birth on. His crib was in my room so that I could hear him and take care of him at night before he woke my mother and she threw a fit about her sleep being disturbed because I wasn`t quick enough...) I resented this as it basically destroyed a large part of my youth. I had to drop out of school as it was hard to make it any more than maybe one day a week as there was no one at home to take care of the baby... Or if my mother was home, she was getting over a binge (of some drug or another) and didn`t want to do any parenting so demanded I stay home to shut them up.

The actual actions of parenting became a chore-like process of repeated actions, and the unpredictability of children became an incredible annoyance. I pretty much vowed that I would NEVER have children of my own. I hated the entire endeavor, and it became just another incredibly frustrating source of stress in life at that time. (This eventually led to me up and running off to Japan, but that has been covered elsewhere.)

For some strange reason, I later decided on specializing my degree in language acquisition and took a large number of classes on early childhood development. Either way - I still dislike children.

That is, other than my own.

There is an incredible difference in the way it feels to have utter and complete control over the development of another individual than when dealing with someone else`s creation. Even when I was the main caregiver for my siblings, there was the looming presence of a mother who would blame me for anything they did wrong, for any habits she didn`t like... And the father of my brother who would come home from extended work trips, blame my mother, who would later blow up at me for my poor parenting getting her in trouble. (Talk about dysfunctional...) Not to mention the joy my siblings got from making a scene by lying about me - saying I didn`t feed them was a favorite and was guaranteed to get my (high) mother screaming at me and barring me from eating for days.

But my son is mine. Caring for him has been a series of experiments to achieve the type of child I am happy with. And on top of that, he loves and adores me. I only have to express disapproval at some behavior - and he stops. It`s amazing. I can use the knowledge I have of development to manipulate him into the type of child I enjoy being with. "Manipulate" sounds bad, but is really the best word - It isn`t implying that there is deception or unfairness, but rather that I know what to do to best get the result from him that I am looking for.

Children of the same age who are not mine still annoy and irritate me in most cases. I feel like I must walk on eggshells when dealing with them, and that really is not something I want to deal with. But I love my son as he truly is tweaked to be mine.