Every parent feels that way on occasion. If you don't, you should bottle your attitude and make a million selling it to the rest of us. Absent that bottle of pixie dust, we just get through the low points and find new reasons to adore our children on the other side. This has been the primary parenting strategy since Adam and Eve, I suspect.
But here's what is different with our generation: we have a choice. I once (rudely) asked my grandma why she had two children just 10 months a part. "We didn't have all the same options back then," she told me.
At the time I assumed she meant birth control - which is true. The pill didn't hit the market until the early 1960s, and condoms and other methods were less reliable and less available in previous generations. Not to mention religious restrictions that were imposed with a heavier hand.
But now I realize she could have meant something else as well: society didn't offer her other choices either. Young people got married and had kids as a rite of passage to adulthood. Children made marriage legitimate. People who made alternative choices were looked on with suspicion.
Times have changed, and the stats back me up on this: "fewer people believe that kids are 'very important' to a successful marriage, according to a 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center. About 65 percent of us believed they were back in 1990, but just 41 percent of us believe that now." (I was reminded of that stat in this article by Vicki Larson.)
There's some research that points to the possibility that childless couples are happier. There's even more solid research showing that marital happiness dips in the first years after children (though it usually rebounds). On the flip side, there's also a recent set of research that indicates childless couples are more likely to divorce, perhaps because parents are more likely to stay married "for the kids." Larson covers some of this research in the link above.
So here's the bottom line: you don't have to be a parent if you don't want kids. You're a legitimate adult all by yourself. Permission granted.
If you think kids are in the future for your marriage, then it's time to start talking about it. (Even if you think the future is still 10 years away.) Google "questions to ask before having kids" and you'll find conversation starters from Forbes (clearly the definitive source on parenting), Dr. Phil, and just about every mommy blogger around.
I found one link with a few questions I particularly liked:
1) Do both people want children?
2) Do you both agree on how to raise the child and respect each other as parents?
3) Have you considered your reasons for having a child?
See the source, Parenting Diva, for more questions and commentary.
If you don't like the way you or your spouse answers any of the above questions, well, then be glad you live in this generation. You have a choice, and most of us will support you in it.
Permission Granted indeed!! In my day, I saw plenty of parents who seemed to lose interest in their kids after a certain point. Babies and preschoolers are darling and fun to watch as they explore the world, rather as puppies or kittens are. And so some people seem to have children because all their friends are having children: they want in on the fun. They want in on the attention parents get when everyone around them beams at a beautiful baby. But no one beams at a seven year-old, who is, furthermore, starting to challenge in pointed ways and furthermore needing help memorizing the multiplication tables. And then puberty hits, and this ex-baby suddenly needs the psychological equivalent of feedings every two hours night after night. I've seen parents get sullen and resentful right back at their sullen and resentful adolescents, especially when the kids start struggling with identity issues that the parents never completely resolved themselves. Parenting is a creative endeavor sustained across decades. Not everyone has the specific variety of creative drive that demands. Not everyone has the particular kind of emotional energy that demands--and furthermore the core psychological desire to grow and change and adapt in response to all these particular challenges. Not everyone is engaged by the challenge of playing a musical instrument either, or mastering a sport, or mastering the ever-changing complexity of tax law, or teaching calculus. We all admire the grace of athletes or dancers, just as we all find babies cute. But not everyone is cut out to be a parent just as not everyone is cut out to dance with the Joffrey. we need to know who we are and what we want in life before committing ourselves to the specific decades-long challenge of parenthood. Is parenthood rewarding? Of course: stunningly so. But that means it is also, equally, unrelentingly difficult, and tedious, and frustrating, and exhausting. Every deeply rewarding endeavor is by the very same measure deeply challenging. Our deepest joy is our best guide to the presence of God, and the abundant sources of joy in life ought to assure everyone that there are many kinds of good life. But real joy never comes cheap. We need to know what sacrifices we can sustain because the joy--when it comes--is so compelling.
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