MAKING WAVES COLUMN

The Cons of Having Children Far Outweighed the Pros, and Still Do

Ideal circumstances in which I would bear and raise children never happened, but I doubt I would have changed my mind

Deep dive into the reality of children: Sunday, February 4, 2024, 18:39

Me and My Muse was right when she said that this is a hot topic. I didn’t realize when I wrote about my decision not to have children, that it would strike a chord with so many.

There is more to the story than what I shared. Angela responded with a couple of questions that I thought would be good to answer here, for others to read as well.

What were the pros and cons in your mind? What was the ideal way you would have liked to raise a child?

One of the things I didn’t mention before, is that I wanted children since I was a child. I used to walk around pretending to be pregnant as young as eight years old.

I had older cousins whom I saw pregnant and imitated pregnant women on television. It was hilarious and heart-warming to me. I had four Cabbage Patch dolls, and was extremely invested in naming, adopting, and caring for them…until I wasn’t.

It wasn’t a matter of IF I was having a child, but when

As a fifteen-year-old, I used to tell people that I planned to have twin girls, Nicole and Victoria, Nicky and Vicky for short, when I was twenty-four-years old.

My son, Christopher, would be born two years later, because that was ideal for them to grow up together as siblings and for me to raise them. I don’t know where I got that from, but I’ve since heard mothers echo similar sentiments for reasons such as sibling camaraderie, and hand-me-downs.

I had already started helping my older brother raise two of his kids at that point. At fifteen or sixteen-years- old, one of my friends from elementary school had a baby.

I saw how much she struggled. It was hard on her, her boyfriend, and both of their families. This, of course, also affected the baby.

That’s when I began to think about having babies later in life, around twenty-six and twenty-eight , but my dream of having twin girls and one boy was still intact.

It was after my brother had his third child by a different woman, and I had dropped out of college at twenty that I began to re-evaluate everything.

College was expensive, and that was in the mid-nineties!?

I had no clue what I wanted to do professionally, and had to take out loans to continue classes, so I stopped in order to figure my shit out first.

What were the pros and cons in your mind? What was the ideal way you would have liked to raise a child?

This was the beginning of a deep dive that led me to realize that:

• I need to be able to care for myself well, before I commit to bringing a life into this world and agree to raise it responsibly.
• Like my mother and other mothers I knew, I could raise a child by myself, but I really did not want to do that.
• There were no guys I was remotely interested in whom I could see having a child.
• Kids cost a lot more money than I thought, and I didn’t want to be on welfare to raise them. I had plenty of examples of it in my family.
• I traveled very little up to that point and longed to explore the world.
• Overpopulation is a real problem. Perhaps adoption could be an option.
• My main motivation for wanting a child was curiosity. I wondered if he or she would look or act like me, and what features it would have with my mixed ethnic heritage.

My ideal way to raise a child would have been to have a village of people for financial, emotional, mental, and physical help

I knew that simply being pregnant and carrying a child to term would be a lot for me to handle, not to mention the delivery process.

When I was twenty-two-years old, I was in the delivery room when a close friend of mine gave birth.

I filmed it.

I saw it all up close and personal: the blood, the poop, the urine, the hemorrhoids, as well as the baby’s head. My friend and I still have a copy. She has shown it to her now-grown daughter. I haven’t watched it since.

Shall I get into maternity and paternity leave?

One of my family members is about to have her first child. She works at a law firm and has just eight weeks of maternity leave. She is almost forty weeks pregnant, and is still working so that she has as much time off as possible once the baby arrives.

Where I currently live in Germany, it is illegal for a woman to work past a certain time, somewhere during month eight. The government also gives 200 euros a month to parents from the time their child is born, until he or she finishes university if he or she attends.

Daycare is much cheaper in Germany, but it is also hard to get a slot. In the U.S., it’s ridiculously expensive.

The last stat I read said that it costs $180,000 for poor people to raise a child, from birth to eighteen-years-old.

I feel as though I have saved myself $180+ by choosing not to have children. However, I am a generous person and pass these savings on to the many people of all ages who are a part of my life.

It’s a complicated issue that is not black and white.

At one point, I considered having children in my early 30s, if I met someone whom I could see being a good father and if I thought we could realistically provide well for them.

That never happened, and I have no regrets about it.

I’ve seen so much heartache and betrayal of self and each other in families.

It’s a complicated issue that is not black and white.

To me, love is thicker than blood. Once I learned to recognize what real love looks like, I knew that I never needed or wanted to birth children.

There are plenty of people already here on earth to love and to give my time, energy, and money.

Do you have any pros or cons to add to this list?

What are your ideal circumstances in which you would raise a child?

Are men given more leeway when it comes to deciding not to have children?

Feel free to email me or leave questions in the responses.

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