I recently found out that a friend and his wife are expecting a child.

My first reaction, "Oh my... how the !@#$ are they going to handle this?  She
just started school last fall and he's barely halfway through his program...
they live in a tiny basement apartment and have a two-seater car..." 
Basically a negative reaction.

But when I thought about it, isn't having a child supposed to be a happy
occassion?

One hypothesis I have is that the media is always talking about teenage
pregnancy negatively.  So as you grow up in a society as such, having a
child is always a bad thing.

But somewhere along the line it becomes a good thing, right?  Otherwise
we'd have a problem with decreasing population if nobody ever thought
having a child was a good thing.

My question to you all here is, when does having a child go from being a
bad thing to being a good thing?  I'm sure one of the first answers that
will pop up is "it depends" so I'd also like to ask, what does it depend
on?

21 responses total.

Having a child is always a nice thing, but the problem arises when it becomes
(in the parents' eyes) an inconvenience.  By this I mean that young students
with low incomes, barely enough to eat, and maybe one car to get both of them
to work may see a child as one more person to fit into their small budget.
When you have a child (I'm speaking my opinion on assumptions since I'm not
a parent), it really compromises your income, space, schedule, and even your
life.  I've decided that I don't want to have a child until I'm out of school
with a steady income that is enough to support myself *and* a child. 
Hopefully, I'll be married first.  =)  

If I *were* to have a kid now, it would mean sacrificing school to work two
jobs to support us, but then the problem arises with "Who will take care of
it while I'm working 70 hours a week?"  A child, to me, is not a Bad Thing,
but it becomes a problem when it is *unprepared* for.  

For me what it boils down to is that having a child become a Good Thing 
when the child is totally welcome into the family.  

Some people have very little money or resources, but their joy at 
sharing what they have with their child is complete.  For them, as hard 
as it may make life in certain wats, having a child is a good thing.  
Others, who may have far more apparent resources would resent the 
changes a child would make in their lives.  For them, wealthy or not, a 
baby is a Bad thing.

Of course it isn't all black and white.  

A well-off family may start off thinking of the child as a resource 
drain and a problem, but over the course of time come to welcome the 
child.  Not ideal, but certainly it happens all the time and everyone 
survives just fine.  That's not entirely a Bad Thing.

In other cases, the family has so few resources (economic and 
intellectual) that the child will live in hardship all of its life with 
little chance for advancement.  No matter how much the family may 
welcome that child, that isn't entirely a Good Thing.

Yup.  It depends is probably the truest possible statement on this.

This response has been erased.

         don't know if I've already said this somewhere back before, but I dont
think anyone can tell in advance when its a good time to have a child or
whether they will be happy being a parent.  One gets that information in
retrospect.  There are some people who, through thorough self analysis get
the imapression that they might not be a good parent because they are too
narcissitic or too depressed, of not have the energy level to handle the
demands of a child, but that's rare.  Almost everyone finds out after they
have had a child, whether or not it was a good idera for them.  Then, of
course, it's a bit too late to change your mind.

And you go with the flow. . . .and do the best you can with what you have.

This response has been erased.

Valerie, with my first delivery, I said just that.  I was in childbirth
without benefit of anesthesia and after a few hours, I (seriously) told the
nurses, I changed my mind, and didn't want to continue.  They all laughed as
if this was the first time they'd heard that.  The start of labor was a piece
of cake.  After 12 hours, you tend to lose your perspective and good sense.

But, in case I haven't told you this before, I am absolutely not sorry I
decided to have two children, and sometimes wish I had gone for one more.
I can't imagine how much less joy (and heartaches) my husband and I would have
lived without, if we had opted not have children.  And now, the incredible
joys of being agrandparent.  A bonus I never imagined when the original
decisions to get pregnant occured.

Yeah, I definitely want to have children some day because I'd regret it later
in life when it's too late if I didn't.  But not any time soon.

This response has been erased.

I was happy to learn I was pregnant with Rhiannon, since I'd been
married three years, and while it wasn't planned, it wasn't regretted.
Though, of course, I was out of work, and we were in debt up to our
eyebrows. It didn't matter. And I have never regretted becoming her
mother. Gareth was planned to be spaced exactly two and a half years
later, and he was pretty darn close. Again, maybe the financial situation
could have been better, but I still never regretted it. I'm very glad
I had both of them when I was in my early twenties, because I'd never
make it now that I'm in my forties!

I was very anxious about the labour part -- especially after my mothers only
comment when I asked her what it was like was to say "if it was *that* bad,
would I have had six of you?"  Well, yes, she would.  She's a devout Catholic.

Then I discovered that labour doesn't have to hurt.  With both of my kids,
it was intensely physical and "labour" was exactly the right word.  I worked
Hard!  But it never hurt even as much as cramps and miscarriages have.  And,
to add icing to the cake, pushing the baby out gave me the most intense
orgasms I'd ever had.  <laugh>  i though my first husband was going to kill
me when, after a 16 hour labour I turned to him, grinned, and said "That was
fun!  can we do it again?"  (He's a pepetual hysteric and was in far worse
shape than I was when they handed me the b

I'd do it again in a heartbeat!  But the pain comes later.  As they grow away
from you and make choices that break your heart you may wish you could go back
to protecting them inside your body.  I have.

That's beautiful, Misti.  =)

Yes, that's sooo true. Every so often,  Iwsih I could take them back 
to babyhood and do things differenetly, or just have THOSE worries...


You mean I missed something good from labor? ! Rhiannon was over twenty-four
hours of misery and we still hadn't prgressed much past really early labor.
then they discovered that my waters had broken sometime earlier (like in the
previous week, and I still don't know when that happened!) so we ended 
up having a c-section. Good thing, too, since apparently we would have died
if the infection had progressed much further.  Gareth was also a c-section.

This has now been linked to the smalls conference as item #85.

My labor with Jonathan was slightly-to-somewhat uncomfortable, really, and
progressing fairly rapidly, until the attending obstetrician broke my water
and the contractions started to be painful.  No orgasms.
My labor with Paul was bad-crampy uncomfortable, culminating with the
feeling of suffocation once I was in the hospital and they were trying to
turn him around for delivery -- *great* relief when they told me it was
going to be a c-section after all!
Both of these were wanted children, howevermuch I may feel in my more
depressed moments that they would have been better off not conceived.

Myself, I think that in principle a baby is Good; *having* a baby may or
may not be good for the people involved; it's usually not for me to judge.
Marriage etc. ditto.

Timothy wasn't planned, but we always knew we'd get around to kids sooner or
later, so sooner wasn't such a big deal.  That agreement was a great relief
to me, since I would have reluctantly aborted if there had not been two 
welcoming parents for the wee one.  He's not an easy kid, but I love him
dearly and like him ever so much- which is not always a given between kids
and parents.  Gareth was planned.  He was our souvenir from a trip to
Japan<g>.  Sometimes I wish I'd chosen a different time of year, though- I
don't much get on with Pisces (for what that's worth).  He's a sweetheart and
I think I'll come to like him as much as I love him, in time.  Everyone *else*
sure does.  As to labour, I had great pregnancies and easy labours, and while
they were, indeed, WORK, and not quite as -ah, satisfying- <g> as Misti's,
clearly what my body was designed to do.  With Timothy, I remember how good
it felt to have him lying on my chest, newly born, and the first snow coming
down outside our early morning window.  With Gareth, I was using a vocalizing
breath, and Michael's comment was "that was on key" (I managed not to kill
him for that...).  Gareth sang along.  Yup, I'd guess they're both Good
Things.  Sometimes they're Wild Things, too...<g>

Both of my sister's children (Joshua and Rachel) were planned.  And I'd rather
be an uncle than a father.

If the child is wanted, having one is not a bad thing.

...and wanting may come either before or after conception.

I'm feeling a bit sad right now, since on Tuesday I had an operation that
definitively cut out any chance that I'd ever get pregnant again. I mena,
I did have my tubes tied after Gareth was born, but there was always a
vague idea in the back of my head that I *could* have another baby, even
if it took a lot of technical assistance, if I ever wanted to. Now, even
that really vague possibility is no more. I guess I'm mourning the loss
of possibility right now.

{{hugs to Twila}} I can see why you'd be sad.

That's hard, Twila.  You have my sympathy.

Ouch!  OK, have you considered getting together with some women friends,
especially slightly older ones, and having a "croning" ritual to mourn
that loss and seek comfort and guidance moving into a new stage of your
life?  <hugs>

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