11 Good Having Kids Answer
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This article is from the Good Things About Having Kids FAQ, by Benjamin V.C. Collins, collins@campus.mlc.edu with numerous contributions by others.
11 Good Having Kids Answer
The short term payoffs: you won't be pregnant anymore (no more
heartburn, you can sleep on your tummy should you choose to, you can
bend over to tie your own shoelaces, you can soon have a glass of wine
now and then without worrying about birth defects...)
The long term payoffs: these are harder to define. Of course, there is
the first smile, the first "Mama", looking at life though childish eyes
again, but this sort of stuff doesn't capture the "feeling". A friend
once asked me (a DINK): "What's it like to have a child?". I told him
that it's something you don't think you'd ever miss, until you became
a parent. If I might digress to scientific allegory: it's like you are
part of a most wondrous experiment with you and your spouse as principal
investigators, and even though it requires constant attention, you know
you are engaged in something big, and that the end result has the
potential to change the world.
The sleepless nights don't last forever, nor does the diapering, the
potty training, nor the terrible twos. (The worrying about the kids
does last the rest of your lives, though.) And once you have that
bundle in your arms, your view of the world will never be quite the
same again.
Caren Feldman
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