Dear PiePie,
At some point in your life, you might be faced with a decision on whether to have a baby (or two, or three, or many more!) There are many considerations and the prevailing societal sentiments when you’re at that crossroad might be so very different from now, but this was what your mom and I considered when we thought about having a child (you!).
We were hesitant. Having a child is an irreversible, life-changing decision (and I am appreciative that in our day and age, it actually is a decision as opposed to something that just happens). We were comfortable with the life we had, and there was no reason why that had to change. But deep within, I was quite excited to try new things and experience “childrearing”. It seemed like a fun thing to do, taking the plunge into the unknown. Your mom, having lived with sisters that had multiple children, knew the experience better and was more reticent. Ultimately though, she was ambivalent enough that my insistence won out. And voila, hello Piepie! That was not very exciting, isn’t it? It basically came down to me yolo-ing.
Because having a child has become an active decision, more couples now require compelling reasons to make that leapt. Otherwise, the flow of life will simply carry them along past the point of no return. By most rational calculus, having a kid just isn’t attractive. Raising a child takes time, money, and energy. Lots of it. It’s a 24/7 job with no weekends and no holidays. You can’t just take a “me” day. Parenting is tough, this is common knowledge.
And that is why for some, out of self-love, they decide to remain childless – the parents are either content with their current lives and don’t wish to have that change by having children, or their life aspirations might be incompatible with having a child. Another slightly different set of reasons stem from love for the unborn child – the parents might feel that they don’t have the socioeconomic resources to provide adequately for the child, or they worry about the climate future that the child will eventually inherit (this is probably a smaller yet increasingly prominent viewpoint).
I was well-aware of these arguments, and utterly ignorant of reasons “for” having a child. All I could muster was, “But maybe it’ll be interesting…?”. I guess you’re really lucky you got here?
I still don’t know really know the arguments for having children. But I do know that even after all those sleepless nights, even after saying goodbye to weekends, even after reading you the same storybook for the 5th time, I’d choose to have a child like you again in a heartbeat. “Like you” is probably the operative phrase there.
I am reminded of my “thesis” on happiness from An Expressionless Happiness, where I wrote that new 10/10 life experiences expand our horizon of happiness, allowing us to reach higher peaks that we were previously unaware of. Having a child is like opening up a can of 10/10 experiences, where emotional peaks are reached with surprising regularity. Simply staring at you sleep is a 10/10 experience. Or sitting beside you as you watch TV. Or spending Sunday mornings taking you around, even if I have to wake up early. The happiness and contentment that comes from having a child is unspeakable, which might be why it doesn’t make for a very effective rational argument.
All I know is, I’m glad we decided to have you. It did change our lives, and I am so grateful.
Love, Dad