Regret having children?

It was the hardest thing I've ever done. But it was the best thing I've ever done.

Now I can't even imagine how empty my life would be without my son. I never knew how deeply I could love. Or how life could make so much sense. I never knew how much I had to give. Or that by giving, I would get it all back tenfold.

I'm a mom, and I've never regretted it. But I was ready, and it was something I had always wanted.
Actually, I shudder to think where my life would have gone, otherwise!
Nothing else I ever do will mean quite as much or be as satisfying.

Can I ask why you're asking, tcis?

I've been asking something very similar, as I have been thinking long and hard about having a second child. I planned my life pretty carefully up to kid #1; an only child myself, I only planned that far and then thought I'd figure things out when the time came. Well, my kid's 3 and a half and I still have no idea. Or, my default mode is "absolutely not!!" and I spend a fair amount of time trying to figure out if I should override it.

So I ask a lot of people about what they think about having a second child -- it's a rare and extreme circumstance to find someone who says they regret it, and when that happens there have usually been other major problems going on. (Depression, abuse, substance abuse, whatever). With most people you can read between the lines about how exhausted they were, if it's a good friend they may open up about how they felt they cheated the second child because they had to pay so much attention to the first, etc., but they won't say "I regret it", because that's wishing away their child. Parents almost never wish away their children, no matter how difficult parenthood may be.

I certainly feel immeasurably enriched for having mine. I just read a group of three stories by Alice Munro in the New Yorker, the last about an adult child rejecting her mother, and disappearing never to be seen again -- I was gripped by the most awful feeling, reading it. I was in the backyard reading while my daughter played -- it's a big backyard, and when I looked up from the last line of the story, I couldn't see her anywhere. I looked in the usual places, but she wasn't there. I finally rounded the peony bushes at a near-sprint and she was crouched down making mudpies -- she is still so small -- and I just stood there looking at her little vulnerable back and cried until I got ahold of myself enough to go and give her a hug and a kiss. Then she grinned at me and said, "Hi there mama, I missed you!" and gave me a big hug and a kiss back. And there are few things so elementally rewarding as that. I mean, it's hard-wired, it's primordal.

BUT -- and this is big -- that does not translate to saying all people should have kids. Which brings me back to my original question. If you are asking in any way to figure out whether YOU should have kids, it's just too individual of a decision. I adore it, and adoring it I recommend it highly, but I know it's not for everyone.

I can understand Eva's emotions.

I feel the same way about tic-tac-toe.

I'm a father. My wife and I have three children, 21, 18 and 16. I've always thought one of the most important jobs a parent could do was to raise their kids to be independent and take care of themselves. Now that we've accomplished this, it's the most bittersweet thing I've ever felt. Our kids have all left the nest, they have lives of their own, and I'm on the outside looking in. It hurts, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Do I regret having them? Not for a second.

Craven-----pfffffffffffft!

What would you know about it anyway? Go back to playing tic-tac-toe. We'll call you when SpongeBob comes on.

That's mean Eva. Just because I have no emotions is no reason to treat me that way. It makes me very sad.

Impossible, Craven. You can't be very sad.

You have no emotions.
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Having children has been my favorite thing about life.

tcis,

I decided not to have children based on the possibility of passing on a "bad" gene. Several of the men on my Dad's side, including my Dad, had a genetically linked condition which caused brain atrophy and accelerated ageing. When my Dad died, He was craniologically 60, but physiologically 90. He spent the last 6 years of his life in the VA Hospital at St Cloud Minnesota. He had no idea who either my Mom or I were.
When he was diagnosed with this condition, I had a tubal ligation. I did not want to chance passing "it" on to anyone else. The Dr. told me that I could not pass on the defective gene. With my weird physiology I was not going to take any chances.
I have been a step Mom and would do it again if I ever saw the need.
Having or adopting children is a gamble. You never know how a child will turn out, no matter what you do as a parent. Oh, you also don't know what kind of parent you will be until you are one.

Sam

Jim,
I can relate, being an empty-nester now myself.

The other thing is, nobody can hurt you quite like your children can.
probably because nobody else matters as much, I don't know.

Your remark about my being "emotional" was very mean, considering that this is a subject about which I am very passionate.

You get what you give, Craven.

Eva,

I was kidding about mean, but no, the "emotional" remark was not mean.

You just say you are passionate about it, do you think "emotion" is a slur? Or that passion is devoid of "emotion"?



I'm going to put the remark you are calling "very mean" here, just in case people don't look up to see that you're being uptight about what was, at worst, an unfunny joke:



There's a difference between wearing one's ovaries on one's shoulder and others being mean to you. I made an innocuous joke about tic-tac-toe and won't be made to feel guilty just because you have a chip on your shoulder.

I don't have a chip or an ovary on my shoulder, Craven, so back off.

This thread was not directed at you. The answer I gave to tcis was from my heart, and for some unknown reason you felt the need to make fun of it. It wasn't funny, and I was offended that you'd be so flippant about it. I can't imagine that any mother would take it any other way.

You're WAY off base here.

Eva,

I'm sorry if you feel offended by it, I really am. But for you to say it was "very mean" has meaning beyond you taking offense at it.

I think it's beautiful that you have such emotion for your kid, reading many of these comments here, including yours, are touching.

But that doesn't magically make my attempt at humour mean. There was absolutely nothing mean about it.

I can both respect and admire that you feel said passion but that doesn't mean anything short of reverie on my part is "very mean" and "WAY off base".

You do seem to have a chip on your shoulder, I respectfully suggest you take your own advice about backing off.

Having not planned either of my girls, allow me to say that it is sometimes hard - sometimes even harder, and I would not, could not, give that up - not ever. There is something about looking at the child you've given birth to (or maybe in the case of the father, you've helped to create) and just feeling such a wealth of love, protection, emotion in general - there's no way I regret it.

I am not, by nature, a "kid-lover", however, I can't think of a single moment when I don't love these that are mine - not even when I have to spank them.

Having children, I think, is the greatest decision you can make, great being used as measure, not as pleasantness. It's the decision to be responsible for another person's life for virtually the rest of yours. It's the decision to put someone else's needs & desires before yours or those of your partner.

Regret it? Never.

And by the way - we're not born natural parents, you get that way through practice. If you'll notice the # of "help me with my kid" threads on these message boards, you'll see that we all have sitches that we either respond to differently, or don't know how to respond to at all - those are not times of regret however, but times of parental growth. You will look back on them and laugh or smile or cry - but you'll back on them having gained a little more knowledge toward your "Parental Degree" (don't look for this to be presented in a paper form lol)

Craven -- I DO consider it very mean to make fun of someone else's deep emotions. Likening a mother's love to feelings about a trivial game is not only not funny, but it borders on demeaning, whether you meant it that way or not. It hurt.

You often hide behind logic when challenged, Craven. I'm not going to debate about an emotional subject...there is no point in it. These kinds of issues are not logical. There is such a thing as emotional intelligence, you know, and I think you crossed the line this time.

I agree Eva, but I will say yet again that I wasn't trying to make fun of you at all. I was trying to riff on myself. You had a very meaningful passion you stated and I tried to contrast it with an (invented) empty passion for tic-tac-toe.

Like I said, I'm sorry if that offended you but you continue to assert that I was being mean about it and that's not true, you assert that I was making fun of you, and that's not true.



Eva, as I have said and repeated, I am sorry if it hurt. But I did not liken it to feelings about a trivial game, the "comparison" was absurd on it's face and that would have been the "punchline" of the joke.

Now it obviously wasn't funny to you and for any hurt it has caused I apologize. But I also have to maintain that trying to portray it as mean spirited mocking of you is absurd.



Eva, you are starting to piss me off. I'm not "hiding behind logic" I am responding to what I consider an unwarranted and malicious accusation against me on your part. You are calling me mean and I am trying to explain why I don't think that's fair of you. I've said that I'm sorry if your feeling were hurt but you don't seem to care about being mean yourself.

I think you are being quite rude Eva, and do in fact have a chip on your shoulder. My silly joke was not ill-intentioned.

With that in mind, you are probably right. There's no point in discussing your attacks with you if only your feelings matter and my intentions and feelings don't. <shrugs>

The apology stands, I was not being mean and I am sorry if it came across that way to you.

I was gonna send this as a PM to you Eva, but I hate PMs (avoid em) and figured it might be appropriate here:

Eva,

There seems to be an issue between us that I'd like to address. I'm reasonably certain that you'd not like to but if that's the case then I'll just get this off my chest.

At times when you and I are playfully going back and forth I suspect there is an underlying, though occasionally not unspoken, issue.

At times I thought it was my age, as if my age coupled with my smart-alec attitude was off-putting enough to you that you felt a need to "put me in my place" as I'd put it to you before.

Other times I though it was, perhaps, just my tone and copious ego that your own ego had objections to.

Well, there's nothing I can do about my age. And if it's my ego, then well, I can but try but I fear my own efforts would not minimize any distaste you have for it anyway.

If it's the "tone" I use or simply the way I write (stuffy?) that irritates you then I suspect that despite any effort I could make I will not be able to resolve that either.

Whatever it is, I am pretty sure there are simply elements about my very personality that you dislike. Hell, I can't blame you, I'm sure there are many things about me that are to dislike. But if so I'd like to know, you alternate between expressing enjoyment at being playful with each other and throwing a jab or two about my personality (even at times at which I had not even been addressing you). I don't know if it is the ambiguity of the medium (the internet) coupled with some valid criticisms you have against my character or if it's consistent misinterpretation or what. I'd like to avoid guessing and perhaps projecting misinterpretations onto you so I decided to ask as it's becoming plain to me that, well, you just don't like me (which is cool, whether or not someone likes me is something I try not to factor into my own feelings about them) or something.

We butted heads over what I'd considered to be a misunderstood joke. You've said it was aimed at making fun of you but it wasn't. I hope you'll consider my own mindset when I'd posted it.

I'd read the comments by parents and was touched by the deep feelings and existential meaning children represent for their parents. Hell, I've had "womb envy" since I was a kid and grew up caring for children so I can relate to that, if only in somewhat of a spectatorial manner.

I've played parent a couple of times in my life in long stories I'll not trouble you with but I can imagine that being a parent has deeper meaning that I can only imagine.

ebrown had started a thread about his kid, and I had been on the berge of frivolity there but avoided it knowing that such passion and frivolity can be bad bedfellows. On the other thread the initial tone was, well kinda "anti-kid" and I did not restrain my playful urges.

Obviously that was a decision that did not bode well for me.

Look, I can really understand that some passions are intense to a degree that frivolity that would otherwise be fine is off-putting and I can understand that it can really be irritating if it comes off the wrong way. Perhaps I should have given more consideration unto that and your admonitions are duly noted in that regard but I also think there is another side to the coin in which it can be very difficult to forsee when playfullness will, in fact, rub someone the wrong way.

I mean, it's damn easy to see some, they are like headlights bearing down on you. You make a joke about crippled people and well there might just be a loved one of one of the listeners who.. you get the idea.

I usually avoid those pretty well, and rarely walk into them. I suspect you think I am insensitive to others, you may be right but at least to some degree I think you are basing this off of a tone that you perceive and not the efforts to avoid hurt that you can't see.

When I joked about tic-tac-toe I was in no means even comparing it with being a parent. It's so obscene a comparison that it didn't even dawn on me that it could be taken that way.

Let me offer a comparable joke to the type I had attempted:

Person A: "I got a job today and my boyfriend proposed to me."

Person B: "I had a good day too, I saw a pidgeon."

The joke centers on the absence of a comparison at all, person B's day was just a wee bit inadequate in comparison and any humor derived would be from the akwardness of the great disparity between the degree to which each day was meaningfull.

And it was in that spirit that I offered the joke, in my mind it was self-depreciating humor.

You expressed a meaning for your life that is the driving force of our nature. You have kids. I, in my ill-fortuned joke, have tic-tac-toe.

I could not have imagined that it'd be taken as a form of diminishing the meaning and emotion you feel about parenthood, I avoid parenthood topics for the most part but for many reasons it is a subject that I both appreciate and have immense respect for.

The joke was supposed to have a self-depreciating punch line. Heck I even changed my first choice (Chess) to tic-tac-toe to even lessen the self-depreciation. I do in fact love chess but only play tic-tac-toe a couple dozen times an hour.

As I have said, perhaps more times than is wanted warranted or even in good taste, I am truley sorry that it came across to you as a comparison of parenthood and tic-tac-toe. I can only offer my assurances that I do not hold them to be comparable at all.

Drat, I am back to being a couple of things inherent to my personality that I suspect you dislike, long-winded, inable to divest myself of some humor, and failing in an attempt to communicate more colloquially (my background is such that in writing my language can come across far less colloquial than in speech) but I do want to address whatever differences we may have before wrapping this up.

I've no qualm with you except in that I suspect you have a qualm with something about me. If I had to guess it would be some of my more obvious charachter flaws and probably most centering on real pride and perceived pride coupled with what I suspect might be age issues.

But so that I don't make any mistakes and misinterpretations myself, I wanted to simply ask you directly what it is.

I fear it's going to be something about which I can do nothing and that I'll have to simply live with your scorn but at least I'll know what you say it is and some of the ambiguity will have been removed.

Hell, I can't make everyone like me, but I can ask why they don't.

Similarly, I can't avoid unintended offense but I can apologize once again for any I have caused inadvertently.

I didn't intend to piss you off, but I guess that makes two of us. You don't seem to be able to apologize without getting in another jab at me. You've done it three times now. The first time, you accused me of being uptight, "wearing my ovaries on my shoulder" (an extremely inflammatory remark for someone who wants to end an argument), and having a chip on my shoulder. The second time you apologized, you again accused me of having a chip on my shoulder. This time, you said it again, plus you accused me of being rude!! A simple apology for hurting my feelings would have put an end to this entire disagreement, but you just couldn't leave it at that. So the fight has continued, and the hurt has now doubled or tripled. And I am feeling very defensive, which I really do not like.

I never wanted to fight with you. Let's put an end to this. You made an unfunny joke about a post of mine. I was offended. You apologized. I accept. I think it's best that we drop this entire subject now before either of us gets any more pissed off than we already are.

Okay?