About being a parent…
For the longest time in my adult life, I thought to be childfree. As I grew up and learnt more, even after marrying the love of my life, I (we) remained to be adamant on being childfree. And I’ve got to say, it is not bad. You have less responsibilities, you are much more independent and carefree. And of course, it is the dream.
But some of you who is reading this, know now that I am a father to a beautiful little girl.
So, I thought to write down why I (we) changed our minds on this. There were other reasons why I wanted to write this, namely to remind myself of the reasons (LOL) and also this nice write up by my dear friend.
As you grow up, the more you learn about the way of the world, it is very hard for someone to make peace with themselves to bring another life into this world. At least this was my reason. Let’s face it, we need a viral video to remind us and reinstate our faith in humanity. More often than not, we are surrounded by doomsday prediction and inhumane things being done everywhere in the world. Therefore, it is not so surprising that lot of us millennial generation folk tend to choose to be childfree. To me, it was more of being worried about the innocent child that is born into this chaos. Why would I want someone else to go through all the sh** like we all do?
That said, babies are born left right and center every single day. When you look at the numbers, your mind wonders. What is that these other parents see (or saw) in having a child. And chose to have a child (and disclaimer here, I am addressing the cases where the parents made an explicit choice to have a child).
But I think that thought wasn’t enough. A fundamental change in mindset is needed in a significant life choice like this; to be childfree or not. And we did have that. We had a major change to our lives which is moving from Sri Lanka to The Netherlands. That was a fundamental change to life as we know it. You see new things (you pretty much see more parents, bigger families and babies around and among people of similar age group), the economic security changes (you can actually live a normal life and save a bit of money), and the societal norms change (people and institutes actually respect the “social contract” as we know it). I do realize all this is not applicable just in any other country. For example, if we had moved to US-of-A there is a very big chance for us to remain childfree. Therefore, if I wouldn’t acknowledge that the change in fundamental living condition didn’t nudged us towards being parents, I would be lying. That said, I am not saying people should only have children (or got children) just because their living conditions changed or warranted so. Yet, this is what happened with us. And just to add here, even Netherlands isn’t immune to problems, just that it is relatively better.
Which brings me back to the next point. I think this is the more important one for me personally. Remember I said at the start of this, that humanity is in such worse condition and the world as we know it had become toxic. So toxic that it is not a good place to bring life. But let’s look at who is making it worse, it is us the same humans. So, to make the world a better place (almost quoted MJ there 😊), don’t we have to make the change (did it again 😊)
Yup, this thought came back to me quite a lot. It made me realize, we have the power to make the world a better place. Especially making the future a better place by making future generations better humans than us, than me. None of us are perfect, but what makes us unique is that we can learn, and course correct ourselves. This thought influenced me so much that I start to realize that I can pass on what I learnt as a human to my children. And over time I developed a feeling of guilt of not passing it on. In other words, missing out on a part where I should meet the social contract. Also, quite interestingly, during this time period I also started to recognize that most people who has valuable lessons to pass on don’t have (or take) an opportunity to do so.
That being said, I am not trying to say here that you can only do good to the world by having a child. Having a child is the easier part in this whole endeavor. It is much more harder and time consuming to turn that child into a decent human being. And there is no guarantee to that also, who knows how they will behave when they are an adult. So, I know it is not going to be easy, or that it is not a sure shot, but I figured it is one more thing I can do to make the world a better place.
So, there you go. These were the reasons. And again, I don’t have it all figured out. But we welcomed ourselves to parenthood, and I hope the rest of the journey will be good. It is only getting harder every single day 😊
