The Price Of Parenthood - Or Lack of..

I thought very long about whether I should write this..

I read through again and again to make sure I am not prejudiced or extreme in my opinion.. though I am sure it is and people will say I am only blogging all these cuz I don't share the same problems. Perhaps, but I am also highly aware, everyday of it, every minute of it, of the price I had paid for having my 2 cute little boys. I used to begrudge it. I am still sometimes angry about it. But with this, I remind myself everyday that we have a price to pay for every choice we make. In economic terms, it is the opportunity cost.

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Well.. what started me thinking was a conversation with a friend who was telling me about her friend who was lamenting to her for some time now, and increasingly all the time, that her friend was trying for a baby but to no avail..

So I asked my friend about the profile of her friend, think this is a professional hazard of me, I need to know more about a person before I can begin to understand where his/ her thoughts are coming from - kinda like putting a person in context.

So the female in question is: 35 yrs old, a high flyer, go-getter career woman, doing extremely well in the marketing sector... and started trying for a baby when she was 33 cuz she decided that now that she is financially stable and established in career, she is now ready to take on parenthood. But parenthood is eluding her. And now she is desperate enough to consider IVF if nothing comes on the radar soon..

And she was lamenting non stop how UNFAIR life was. That she had planned her life such that when she is financially ready and well established in her career and ready to take on parenthood, parenthood is not happening.

This point of view of her got my mind churning. I HEARD tat there are a lot of successful people trying unsuccessfully to have kids... Someone told me that in her office, most women have problems trying to conceive and it is apparently such a high stressed environment that women have to take sabbatical leave to try for a baby (Seriously what is this world coming to?)

There are several ways of looking at this issue of unsuccessfully trying to have kids:

1. Chemical way - blame it on the processed, unhealthy, un-organic food - leading to bad sperm and egg etc

2. Social way - woman more educated, delayed birth, bad work environment and social stress etc

But I will like to offer my thoughts - which probably fall under the category of "Values".

I think we belong to a selfish, greedy and want-it-all generation. It sounds ugly. It IS ugly. It is the ugly faces we wear. And this assessment applies to myself and many people around me. We are it, JUST it.

We come from a generation where many of our parents had bent their backs working- tolling the Protestant Ethic of work to provide a chance for us to excel in life. I see so many of my peers rising from lower income to becoming middle income or even high income earners. We owe that to our parents' hardship. We had that chance because our parents believed in educating us so we have a better chance in this world.

But what happened to us? We think that we have been given are our due and entitlement. I am not saying that we are unfilial. Most of us are, and probably very grateful to our parents for giving us that chance and making who we are today possible.

But it is what we did with our lives and the values that we are corrupted with that had gone wrong. Very Wrong.

Did we inherit the self-sacrificial spirit of our parents?
Did we learn their aptitude and tolerance for hardship and pain?
Did we emulate their sense of stoicism when life is going wrong?

We did not. Not many of us did. I see it everyday around me.
We are mostly a bunch of SELF centered, greedy, take-it-all, want-it-all and self indulgent pigs.

One of the core reasons, I feel, why birth rate is not increasing is because we are selfish. Our generation is selfish and self centered and self obsessed. We do not want to sacrifice whatever good life we have now for interruptions such as having kids.

How many times have you heard friends complain that having kids will cramp their style - less money for themselves, less pampering, less holidays. That is often our first thoughts associated with kids.

How many people do you know work hard to grab more money because they want to ensure that when they have kids, they will still want the same lifestyle as before they have kids?

This mode of working hard is NOT the same as our parents', who worked hard for adequacy and providing what they could for us. Many of the rather high income people I know only have 1 kid or none simply because they claim to have "not enough money to bring up kids". It is not because they have no money, they just do not have ENOUGH money to keep to their preferred lifestyle. That is self-centered-ness and greed!

So we ended up with many people who want to be financially ready and established before kids.
Then the bad news hits.

Some people have the problem that my friend's friend was facing.
Then they blame everyone and everything, except themselves.

We have to recognise that we will have some sacrifices to make for the kids. Is that not the essence of kinship? Why is our generation so against sacrificing for our kids - sacrificing personal time, sacrificing money for self pampering treats, sacrificing ourselves for the betterment of our kids. Why do we want to make sure our needs and wants are met first?

Do we so lack that moral backbone that we only and always think of ME ME ME first?

So, I felt that there is a price for parenthood that we have to pay. And for those who have been trying to have all the money and the career AND then parenthood, then there is a price to pay for that as well.

Greediness is the bane of our existence today. In this flagrant consume it all society we have evolved to, we do not see it. We are being greedy when we want that perfect pay scale, that awesome career and still be parents. Women, especially, are faced with this pressure!

So if we are less greedy, more contented, perhaps, we will have less problems and be happier.
Franky, like my friend and I concluded, we are a bit tired of hearing all those reports of people struggling to have kids, especially if their profile are those of high career achievers who have stalled to have kids. It may sound ugly and nasty and unsympathetic to say it, and a bitter pill to swallow, but it is a choice they have made some years back. Some people step down on career to have kids. Others take sabbatical leave. Then there are stupid people ppl like me who will quit my job to ensure the pregnancy works out well in a stress free environment. These are all choices we make for what is important in our lives.

One cannot want it all - or to accord the same importance to money, career and parenthood. Something's got to give. And unfortunately for those hankering after parenthood after they have satisfied the money and career bit, they have chosen to potentially give away parenthood. To claim unfair-ness and to expect parenthood to smoothly fall into their laps is just greed. And the reality is - these people have to wake up. They simply made the bed that they should lie in, no matter how thorny that bed is.