Mama and Papa, Don't Preach

I just came across a terrific Salon essay titled "Mama Don't Preach." I'd printed it out and saved it 15 years ago, back in the days when I used to collect essays about the pros and cons of having kids. At that time, I felt 85 percent sure I'd never have children. The lifestyle, as far as I could understand it at the time, wasn't for me. But the to-breed-or-not-to-breed debate intrigued me (and still does), and I wanted to mentally play out as many possible scenarios as I could before it was time to make a decision.

Which turned out to be a full decade later. As I reread that Salon essay now, the writer's leave-women-the-hell-alone argument feels as spot-on as ever. (By the way I'm reading it on the hard copy I printed out, because back in 2003, who knew if that whole "Internet" thing would survive? Ahem). Author Amy Reiter wrote it as a mom who'd had enough of other parents pontificating to kid-less adults about the joys of parenthood. And now that I have two kids of my own (who bring me boundless joy, especially when they're not busy wrecking our sleep and our walls and furniture), I couldn't agree more with Reiter. Key lines:

"Like marriage only more so, having children is an irrational act, a total leap of faith for all who attempt it. If you worked up a cost-benefit analysis of childbearing and child-rearing, the cost side would be filled with real sacrifices—financial, physical, emotional—and the benefit side would feature things like 'When my baby smiles at me, I go all gooey inside.' So if you don't have that deep-down urge to have kids, if you're not prone to melt for the smile, you should probably skip it."

The essay is thoughtful and non-glib, and it's worth reading in its entirety here (because whaddaya know, the Internet still exists).

And while we're on the subject, here's another essay (also in my printout file) that's worth reading in the same Salon series: "To Breed or Not to Breed," by Michelle Goldberg, now a New York Times columnist. As a married 27-year-old in 2003, Goldberg was wrestling with her instinct to not have kids despite all the pressures to breed.  The pros didn't seem to outweigh the cons, as far as she was concerned, but she worried she'd regret not being a parent. She quotes a University of Florida sociology professor who surveyed 3800 people aged 50 to 84: "Beliefs about childlessness leading to a lonely old age are simply not supported by our study," says the prof, Tanya Koropeckyj-Cox.

The piece makes a strong case for why people who don't have kids will likely not regret it, even if one statistic in the article—a 1975 survey of readers of Ann Landers' advice column, which notes that 70 percent of respondents with kids regret their decision—seems highly dubious.

Was 1975 THAT bad a year? And is 2018 giving it a serious run for its money?