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OftenBen  ·  3224 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: I Was a Proud Non-Breeder. Then I Changed My Mind.

That's retrospective though. It doesn't sound like that's how she was feeling at the time, it sounds like that's how she THOUGHT she felt at the time, and we all know how bad humans are with the whole 'accurate recollection' thing.

    Matt and I went back and forth, and back and forth some more. We both felt like we were atop a fulcrum and could be pushed either way if only the other knew what to do. At some point, we decided that I’d go off the pill and see what happened.

This is really the crux of the argument for me. What things were they discussing that made them ambivalent, and what factor(s) specifically at the time made them choose to have kids?

It just all strikes me haphazard, as most conceptions seem to be. Have a baby, and the choice is made for you and then it's up to the writer in this case to justify it after the fact. I'm not writing this as a critique of parents as a whole, but of a person in specific. Imagine that instead of being able to continue to jet-set around to various exotic locations with a 6 month old, she had suffered intense postpartum depression, or else suffered the things her earlier negative examples had gone through. This article would have been a very different one.

    “through no act of his own, but because of a careless, inconceivably frivolous and selfish act of mine, making life untenable.”

    A 40-year-old mother of twins wrote, “I was an attractive, fulfilled career woman before I had these kids. Now I’m an exhausted, nervous wreck who misses her job and sees very little of her husband. He’s got a ‘friend,’ I’m sure, and I don’t blame him.”