Choose Children Only if You Choose to Care for Them

For years I have studied and written about the Victorians, and being the dyed-in-the-wool feminist that I am, have shuddered with indignation at the burdensome existence endured by the middle-class Victorian housewife.

She stayed home.

It was her primary responsibility to look after the physical, mental and emotional well-being of the family members. She was the moral center of the household, the keeper of the hearth.

“How horribly oppressive!” I thought and sighed with relief at the freedoms my generation of women enjoys. And I do come from a generation of women that is quite historic itself.

Post-pill and pre-AIDS, we witnessed the Summer of Love and somehow managed to get college degrees while embracing the lifestyle of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. We then launched careers, moved in with boyfriends, padded our resumes. Our mothers, seemingly reborn from the Victorian era into 1950s America, looked on with concern, amazement, envy.

But then the biological clock started ticking, so we married and worked and bought mutual funds. The ticking got louder and we thought, “What would happen if I stopped taking the pill . . . . “

Then motherhood became so chic. And it afforded us so many wonderful opportunities to shop! The Baby Gaps, the Gymborees, the John Lennon design baby gear.

We left work early to make our Lamaze classes, to meet our breast-feeding coaches. Now that our children are older, we shop for good after-school programs, all-day summer camps, affordable child-care, relatively nutritious takeout food, gyms that offer baby-sitting. And our 40-something frames begin to stoop despite our yoga workouts.

We have been offered it all. We have been given choices no other generation of women has been given. But we can’t do it all. We have to make better choices.

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To aid this, prospective mothers should head over to their local middle school and stand in the cafeteria for 15 minutes. They should walk the halls between classes at a public high school and, better yet, visit the girls’ bathroom. They would find kids who are a lot like we were: silly, loud, moody, creative, vulgar, romantic, irresponsible, unresponsive and sometimes even smelly.

But there are important differences. Because when I was a fat, nerdy kid subjected to the merciless taunts inherent to teen life, I could come home and find someone there. Someone who spoke the same language as I did. Someone who knew my developmental tendencies and had some familiarity with my gene pool.

Mom was there. She was there if I wanted to talk. She was there if I didn’t. She recognized that just because I was old enough to do my own shopping, that didn’t mean she wasn’t needed anymore. Her reliable presence was an unchanging testament to the fact that she loved me despite the fact that I was pimply, bossy and often morose.

Maybe it was her constant presence that kept my father from ever locking the gun cabinet--or the fact that Mom had never left it to the schools to teach us to value human life. She recognized that it was her job to teach us right from wrong, to punish us when we were bad and reward us when we were good, and that it was a day-to-day, lifelong process. This brilliant, talented woman stayed home and raised her children, primarily because society at that time expected her to. This entailed great personal sacrifices on her part, ones that made much better people of my brothers and me.

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Women of the 1950s, like women of the 1850s, found that marrying and having children provided social acceptance and the opportunity for legitimized sex. That was not the case for my generation or, probably, those that follow. But my generation has very little experience with sacrifice--true sacrifice. We embrace “no pain, no gain” while in the weight room, but will we leave the boardroom to play on the floor of the living room?

This is a problem that the shootings at Santana High School--the aftershock of Columbine--throw into high relief. A new social ethos is needed: Do not choose to have children unless you plan to stay home and take care of them.

Women who want to work full time should do that. Period. But don’t let advertisements and the media brainwash you into thinking that you can do it all. You can’t.

Make better choices. If Dad is willing and able to take on the role of “Mr. Mom”--a concept still greatly challenged by current constructs of masculinity--great.

Stay married to increase your economic options. If both parents have to work to survive financially, consider having only one child so that what little time you have doesn’t get spread so thin. Also, think about owning less so you do not have to work so much.

And try this: Write down your annual salary after taxes. Then list all the expenses that you incur because of working (wardrobe, transportation, child care) and figure the difference. Are you really making that much? Then ask yourself how much money you would be willing to spend to keep your child from killing someone.

We need to recognize that being a parent is an incredibly demanding, important job that should not be entered into unthinkingly or unwillingly. For parenthood can often be rewarding, but is not always.

An author recently pointed out that some kids will kill regardless of how nurturing we are, and the best we can do is hide the ammo. But we can’t recognize the clues of a troubled soul if we aren’t around to see them.

Choose to know your children because you have been with them from the beginning, you are there now, and you plan to be there for a long, long time. Otherwise, don’t have them. You don’t have to anymore. There are already 6 billion of us, and the planet groans under our weight and waste. It’s time to make the choice of quality rather than quantity.