- Sometime between when we were children and when we had children of our own, parenthood became a religion in America. As with many religions, complete unthinking devotion is required from its practitioners. Nothing in life is allowed to be more important than our children, and we must never speak a disloyal word about our relationships with our offspring. Children always come first. We accept this premise so reflexively today that we forget that it was not always so.
Whenever I try to think about having kids, as in me having children, (instead of just saying "Yup not really interested" and dismissing the idea on the spot) all the logistics and crap like this start to rise to the forefront of my mind and I am unable to get very far beyond "this sounds super complex and like it super SUCKS." I know there are rewards to having children and I am sure many members of the community whom I value feel these positives and could speak to them. I know that just cuz lots of people suck at parenting right now doesn't mean I'd suck at parenting or necessarily fall into those same traps. (I see articles about helicopter parents and think, Wow, being like that sounds terrible, I would never want that.) In all honesty this article discusses some parenting quirks I kind of doubt I would develop - I don't think I'd be the parent that can't say anything negative about their kid. But god does this sound unappealing too, even if it would just be about dealing with society's perception of the kind of mother one should be vs. the kind of mother one was: If I haven't actually said it here before, my current "kids?" conclusion is that, were I to find a partner who made me feel as if he (or she) could co-parent with me in such a way as to compensate for my parenting flaws (and vice versa), at that point I'd be willing to seriously consider procreating. I don't know if that would be enough, but it'd be a start. After thinking some more and reading this article I think my partner would also have to be super engaged and super enthused about having children. AKA, if any parent is going to " live in a clean, cheerful world filled with primary colors and children’s songs," I think it'd have to be my partner, over me. I feel like I would feel as if my identity and self were being subsumed otherwise.Mothers are also holy in a way that fathers are not expected to be. Mothers live in a clean, cheerful world filled with primary colors and children’s songs, and they don’t think about sex...It is unseemly for a mother to enjoy pleasures that don’t involve her children.
The origins of the parenthood religion are obscure, but one of its first manifestations may have been the “baby on board” placards that became popular in the mid-1980s. Nobody would have placed such a sign on a car if it were not already understood by society that the life of a human achieves its peak value at birth and declines thereafter.
-For many people the peak value for a human is in utero and it begins its decline at birth.