Aaron,
I can understand your reluctance to have children. And I would like to throw out an idea that many do not consider when preparing for parenting in this day and age.
I am a natural childbirth teacher and have watched the national childbirth scene degrade over the past ten years to something really ugly and deadly.
Wether young adults are conciously aware of it or not, it is a jungle out there for the young families of America.
Just this past week a new report came out sharing the surprising news that for the first time in decades the maternal mortality rate is going up in America.
Maybe for you, looking at your wife, best friend, lover, and life partner, you are thinking to yourself, “how can I deal with the guilt of this beautiful body being cut up just so my child can be born into the world?”
Father guilt is a real and deadly thing, and especially for the young person who has grown up with parents telling them over and over how horrifing his birth was, and how challenging it is to nurture one of those “screaming balls of fury”, that even the thought of dealing with that emotion on top of taking care of a wife who has been tortured and needlessly traumetized during birth is not something young men want to face.
So they delay and delay and come up with a thousand different reason why NOT to have the baby.
I don’t blame you and I don’t judge anyone as a perpetual adolescent.
I would prefer to talk about the real reason that young people are avoiding babies. Young couples are SCARED!!! Rightfully so.
For many the spectre of the financial costs, the possibility of disability or even death, coupled with the many pitfalls around post birth issues, post partum depression, raging autism levels, etc etc etc… is just too much for many families to consider.
No, I don’t judge you, or anyone, for making the decision to remain childless. I did feel comfortable heckling you a little about raising children and believe you have responded in a very grown up way by contacting me in private and then writing this thoughtful piece on our conversation.
What I would like to do is challenge anyone reading to do a little research on the current debates that are raging about how children should be born, and the impact drug and surgery birth has on family life.
I’ve been writing about it for the past ten years. Here is a good round up of recent media interest and blog responses to husband/wife home birth.
http://www.naturalfamilyblog.com/archives/cat_diy_homebirth_debate.html
Jenny Hatch
