There's a lot more to this issue than anything so high falutin' as “the right to choose”; its much more about how we feel about ourselves ... and kids..A Friday call-in show asks the question: “Do you regret having kids?” and callers offer up “motherhood is a nightmare, but I really do love my kids” and similar comments. The show host quotes a 1975 survey by Anne Landers which found 70% of respondents wouldn't have had kids if they were to do it all over again. It seems they've touched a nerve..A Malthusian and self-avowed feminist and columnist for the CBC suggests parents who have large families should be subject to public criticism. After all, the environmental concerns. Overpopulation..As Canada holds one of the lowest birth rates in the world — 1.4% — why is having and raising children increasingly rejected? How have we become so disconnected from nature, so unaffirming of women as mothers, that we downplay the birthing and raising of our young, unless you can do it in Yummy Mummy Kim Kardashian style?.We have six kids, so I know some of the challenges: the absence of sleep, the shocking food budget, feeling like I do nothing on weekends but fix things, wishing Florida hotels offered a bulk rate, trying to eke out my car to 500,000 kilometers, and hating myself because my daughters are scared during a power outage and, craving sleep, I burst out in frustration, “The house is NOT going to burn down!” All of it I live alongside my wife..Parenting is hard. Damned hard. I feel like a good person one day and a rotten one the next. To say kids stretch a person is laughable understatement..I am also a non-tenured university prof. Have been for 20 years. The job gives us a lot of freedom and me a lot of time to be home. Do I daily wish I could pour more into publishing, into my career and writing about stuff I care about and think others should too? Every day. I am, ahem, restricted..Still, the thought of not having them, or worse yet, somehow begrudging them for being alive, taking up space — a weight in my delicate equilibrium? Not a chance..OK, we have a good marriage, and I have one resilient wife. Along with our faith, our marriage was founded on strict and exclusive coffee times — to our children's frustration. My wife comes from a family of four siblings, so yes all this is in her DNA. But, her ability is beyond me: how she listens to the barrage of voices, keeps track of pretty much everything, takes fresh bread to a widow down the road, bursts into laughter with our kids, and at the end of the day gets immersed in DeTocqueville or Russian history (while I sail away with Dean Koontz.).And that's to say nothing of the zen-like focus I watched during the birthing of our kids — a moment when as a man you realize this woman you fell in love with has something that you will never have: a reality and force deep and ancient and ingrained in a woman's bones. I stood in awe, working on my breathing..A long time ago we let go of the notion we could perfectly balance having kids with maintaining our independence and freedom. I'm an only child and had stated to my wife-to-be during a “romantic” conversation one night at a lighthouse that I wanted no more than two kids. She just smiled. Just over a year later, our first was born, I fell in love, and it was game over. Fears of future frumpiness went out the window, along with hopes of a new Toyota Celica..So, today even as my kids come in every few minutes to complain of their latest squabble, and we bark back, “No matter what she did, you don't slap!” (that one's up there with shouting “Stop shouting!”) — I still don't get why we as a society don't want children. I don't get why our aims must be incessantly to some more elevated sphere where kids don't factor in; why we don't see our kids as valuable as any Gates or Musk; how we miss their uniqueness and the fact their tiny faces change every single day. How can we reject these little human beings?.I find myself mulling over one of Allan Bloom's key observations in his classic The Closing the American Mind, wondering if we've simply become jaded, lost our romantic idealism. In preserving at all costs the individual self, we've lost our common humanity. We're no longer, as parents, all on the same team doing something intrinsically good..Perhaps if we had more hope in humanity....I was recently reading Here She Is with our youngest daughter. In the short picture book by Catherine Leblanc and Eve Tharlet, Little Bear is having a tough time accepting the arrival of his new little sister, Anna. He kicks his toys. He throws himself on the floor. He refuses to wash. He complains, “She can't even walk or talk by herself, and you can forget about playing with her.” For six pages we read of Little Bear's grumpy antics borne out of the newbie sister upsetting his nice little world..Then we turn the page. Everything changes in one short line: “Then little bear looked a little closer.”.It might be simplistic, but in an age when we're driven to chaos and distraction (150 times a day on our smart-phones, suggests a recent Globe and Mail article), chasing things that are either virtual or as plastic as the big-screen TVs lining Salvation Army store shelves, it is worth considering..Maybe a lot of our unhappiness is simply about how closely we look.
