To Have Children or Not? That is the Question of the Day
Today I want to explore the area of love regarding bringing children into this world as this is a question that was just posed to me — the uncertainty around it on both sides in that situation.
Having a family is a great responsibility that few people really think about before having a baby. I have a client currently who is in her early 40s and would really like to have a child, but she is financially unable to even take care of herself much less another person. And, yet her clock is running down. I get it, but one needs to think a lot more seriously about what one is doing by bringing a new life into this world.
There are many reasons why people want to have kids, which I have written about on a few occasions on Quora which have received quite a few views and upvotes because I speak into the realities of what it means to make this decision. Because having a good time for a few minutes or maybe an hour and then 9 months later pop a new human being out of the body has many more ramifications attached to it than most people ever consider.
There are many reasons that people give for having kids none of which have a thing to do with the selfless endeavor that bringing kids into this world requires, especially these days with the incidence of autistic spectrum kids rising every year. Here is what the CDC had to say:
“In 2020, the CDC reported that approximately 1 in 54 children in the U.S. is diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to 2016 data. Boys are four times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than girls.”
The CDC has some sad facts on mental health conditions in US kids as well:
ADHD, behavior problems, anxiety, and depression are the most commonly diagnosed mental disorders in children
9.4% of children aged 2–17 years (approximately 6.1 million) have received an ADHD diagnosis.2 Read more information on ADHD here.
7.4% of children aged 3–17 years (approximately 4.5 million) have a diagnosed behavior problem.3
7.1% of children aged 3–17 years (approximately 4.4 million) have diagnosed anxiety.3
3.2% of children aged 3–17 years (approximately 1.9 million) have diagnosed depression. 3
Some of these conditions commonly occur together. For example:
Having another disorder is most common in children with depression: about 3 in 4 children aged 3–17 years with depression also have anxiety (73.8%) and almost 1 in 2 have behavior problems (47.2%).3
For children aged 3–17 years with anxiety, more than 1 in 3 also have behavior problems (37.9%) and about 1 in 3 also have depression (32.3%).3
For children aged 3–17 years with behavior problems, more than 1 in 3 also have anxiety (36.6%) and about 1 in 5 also have depression (20.3%).3
Depression and anxiety have increased over time
“Ever having been diagnosed with either anxiety or depression” among children aged 6–17 years increased from 5.4% in 2003 to 8% in 2007 and to 8.4% in 2011–2012.4
“Ever having been diagnosed with anxiety” increased from 5.5% in 2007 to 6.4% in 2011–2012.4
“Ever having been diagnosed with depression” did not change between 2007 (4.7%) and 2011–2012 (4.9%).
And, that doesn’t even account for congenital health problems that kids can be born with like downs syndrome and other disabling conditions.
So having a kid isn’t about filling your empty heart, to have a kid fill it. It is about having a full enough heart to be willing to be present, mature enough, and financially capable of the very real responsibility of having a child (or children). It is about knowing that you are going to be a parent to that child for the rest of your life. If the child is healthy and capable of making a decent living on their own at maturity you have been very lucky. However, for many, it is not a case of ease and joy throughout the child’s life. It is one of helping the child to deal with whatever life throws at them till they hit the age of maturity, but even then, many parents are finding their kids living with them for longer periods and into adulthood because of the cost of housing along with school loans, etc.
So, how do you make this decision? You need to know that your relationship with your partner is as solid as you can know it to be because after all, 50% of marriages do end in divorce. You need to have the finances required to truly care for your child’s needs without really knowing what those may be. And, you need to know that you are doing what you are for the child. Otherwise, rethink your notion of having a child, because once you have that kid, it is your responsibility to care for until at least the age of the child’s maturity.
I know for myself, I saw a prenatal specialist with my then-husband when I was in my 30s because I was on lithium at that time for bipolar 2. The specialist told me that if I stayed on the lithium my baby could have a hole in its heart. I forget the statistic, but it wasn’t something that I wanted to roll a dice on. I also didn’t want to go off the lithium at that time because it was indeed keeping me chemically sane. But, then I had another realization as we were at that specialist’s office and that was the fact that my younger years of adulthood were taken by this illness and that I really didn’t have it in me to take care of another person — being on call 24/7 etc. I really wanted my life to be unencumbered. I also realized that my than-husband was really married to his visual arts — lots of our money went into his schooling and his art and I was fine with that. I felt that I would be living like a single married mother being responsible for all the discipline while my spouse would just want to be the ‘good guy’ and I was utterly uninterested in that life. The interesting thing was that after we were separated he thanked me for never forcing him to have a child, even though his mother was on my case to give him one.
So, this is something that both parties need to be totally on board with — it is never up to the grandparents-to-be to force the issue. And, truly, if both people are NOT on board, you will be making many more problems once the child is born than what you had before if there were any issues in the relationship before having the baby.
I know this was a bit of a downer post, however, life isn’t always full of rainbows. I have worked with many families over the years who have had kids with all sorts of emotional issues that had taken a toll on the family. In most cases, we were able to help the child back to emotional health. However, if you were to ask any of these parents if they thought they were going to be going through such a thing, only two of them would have told you they knew. One because in that family the parents were both drug addicts with the child was born and it was actually the grandparents that were raising their autistic granddaughter realizing the parents did not have the ability to raise her. In the other case, they may have had some idea given the history of their adoptive son.
Learning: Before believing that a child is going to bring happiness into your life, one needs to consider the realities and practicalities of what having a child entails. Because we have no way of knowing what special needs that child will have or even the personality of that child. So think long and hard and make sure that both partners agree to have a child before bringing one into the world.
***If you are a person who is feeling stuck, not sure how to get unstuck in your life contact me and we will set up a time to have a conversation to see what we can do to help you out — see if hypnotism is a good way for you to get past your blocks. You can contact me here:
