The toughest question any parent can face is about kids. Why did you have children?
The opposite question is much easier to answer for childless couples and individuals. I didn't find the right partner and didn't want to go it alone, we didn't think we'd be good parents, we didn't have much money, we were both too focussed on our careers or we were unable to have our own and didn't want to adopt are the standard reasons. In other words, there are obvious valid reasons to avoid parenthood.
Those reasons aren't so apparent when it comes to explaining why people have children.
I wanted to complete myself. I wanted to feel closer to my partner. I wanted people to see me as an adult. I thought I would be a good parent. I wanted to pass down the family name and continue the family line. I wanted somebody to do the dishes and shovel snow in my middle age and someone who would mourn me when I die.
Under scrutiny, those sound less like reasons to have children and more like excuses to defend having had kids.
Parents are the harshest judges, even unintentionally, of those who don't become parents, applying intense social pressure on others to become parents like them. In the quiet moments, however, every parent has gazed longingly at the friend, relative or neighbour, especially if they're DINKs - double income, no kids - and wondered how much simpler and easier life would be without little ones.
Simpler and easier, no question, but happier?
Actually, yes.
Long-range studies of adults over the course of their lives show that the happiest days of our lives are before the kids are born and after they leave. Having and raising children doesn't make us happy, at least in the moment. It comes with a steep financial cost, it slows our career advancement, it adds stress to relationships and it's just hard, thankless work.
Parenthood is somewhat like training for and competing in marathons. The sense of accomplishment that comes with successfully completing a difficult and long-term task, especially one where we had to overcome serious and painful obstacles, is powerful. Those feelings of accomplishment, mixed with love and pride, wash over parents at graduation ceremonies, weddings and the arrival of grandchildren.
Yet that's still not a reason to have kids. "I want to feel really good about myself in 20 or 30 years" doesn't sound like a reason for a couple in their mid-20s or early-30s to devote themselves to parenthood. A mortgage for that length of time can be justified financially but where's the justification to have kids?
Gone are the days when children were free labourers on the farm and reliable caretakers when parents were too old or feeble to care for themselves. Gone are the days when children were used in arranged marriages to bring peace to warring clans, to solidify existing alliances or to increase the family's standing in the community.
Just because the reason to have kids is complicated and not necessarily logical, however, doesn't mean those reasons are invalid.
Parents may be less happy than adults without children but that doesn't mean they are unhappy. Furthermore, parents often have trouble expressing the happiness children bring into their lives. There's no obvious reason why the first steps taken by our babies are so important to us but they are. Parents even find happiness in their negative feelings, such as anxiety.
As a national survey done in January for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada shows, parents worry about the ability of their children to make good decisions, find great partners, work in satisfying careers, stay healthy, grow wealthy and fulfill their dreams. The joy parents feel out of that worry is when their concerns are misplaced and their children succeed to any degree, whether it's as small as that first step or as large as major public success in athletics, academics, politics, business or the arts.
Those victories, as well as the defeats, are at the heart of parenthood. It's the experience of parenting and the parts of the self that are unlocked and opened to engage as a parent that warrant the effort.
It's not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach but for most people, parenthood is the most significant undertaking of their lives, regardless of the reasons behind it.
