J-Lu said:
So it sounds like everybody has no regrets about their decision to have or not have kids. Is there anyone here who does have regrets one way or the other (just curious)?
"My parents moved a lot when I was a kid, but I always found them." -- Rodney Dangerfield.
Spouse and I watched one couple try to conceive during a Western Pacific deployment. We'd be pulling into port and she'd be waving from the pier (the spouses refer to this meet-'em-in-every-port behavior as "sea gulling"). The topside crew would be nudging him and saying things like "Hey, Rick, dude, who's the major babe? Ouch, geez, sorry man, izzat your wife?!!", "Rick, do you have to cancel any other plans? Want me to call your girlfriend?" and "Want me to take your duty, man? Or do you want to take mine?" Even the CO got into the act by making sure that he was the first man off the ship. Rick would just groan or whimper a little and next morning come crawling back across the brow. It was pretty hard for those two to keep their conception challenges private, but today they have three bouncing boys and no regrets.
Spouse was watching this behavior with some amusement (I was just hoping to get one of my best guy's mind back on his job) but evidently it started a train of thought. A few months later, as we approached a couple years' shore duty in the sixth year of marriage (in our low 30s) I called her from Seattle (another "short" deployment) and she said "So, wanna start a family on shore duty? Think about it on your way back to Hawaii-- no pressure!" Yeah, right. I knew better than to discuss my thoughts with any of my shipmates.
We had read that childless couples were "missing out", "too selfish", and ostracized by family/friends. We couldn't imagine the pain of trying to conceive in vitro later in life after passing up what seemed to be a valuable opportunity. OTOH both of us had dealt with a problem sibling while growing up and we weren't sure that more than one kid was such a smart idea. No way did we want an "Eight is Enough" experience, either. Other than those concerns, there wasn't much productive thought or discussion because we could imagine our lives either way and felt we should just give things a try. We decided that raising kids was probably better than not having kids, and shore duty was probably a better time to try than during sea duty.
After watching Rick's public travails we decided to take it easy and not sweat any deadlines. Spouse went off birth control to make a gradual transition to fertility. I was still six months away from shore duty when we rented a vacation cottage at Bellows Beach after the holidays, lost power for a couple days during a thunderstorm, the water was too cold for swimming, and we had no other sources of entertainment... bam. So to speak.
We knew the day we left the delivery room that our family was the right size. I've posted before about how tough some kid's personalities can be and how the military is not easily made family-friendly. For a while, especially between six months and three years, I felt tricked by my genes. (Our daughter, the spitting image of my deceased contentious mother, has everything in my DNA but my Y chromosome. Freud would get a lifetime of research out of this one.) We traded a lot of comments like "Hey, you already made your first mistake by marrying me, what warning signs weren't strong enough to keep you from procreating?!?", "$#@%ing sailors", and "There's no doubt this is
your kid!"
Today I still feel a little hoodwinked by my male biological imperatives, but somehow kids worm their way into your affections and won't let you go. Spouse and I agree that this project has been worth the effort and that we are better human beings for having been parents, as long as we don't give in to the occasional temptation to kill her before she reaches adulthood. I enjoy teaching, and this seems to be the ultimate teacher's challenge. Our kid has taught me more strategy, tactics, patience, leadership, psychology, humility, and endurance than from anything I've ever done in the Navy. (I'm also a trained police interrogator & human polygraph.) I've learned more about human beings-- especially women-- than I ever thought I would need (or want) to know. Our kid does share interests with me that spouse doesn't, which is nice. And at least I have someone who hasn't heard all my sea stories yet. But I'm pretty sure that God (or my mother) isn't finished punishing me for the things I did as a teenager. Parenting is truly a life sentence without parole. And any parent who claims "Oh, my kid always..." or "My darling child would never..." has a lot to learn.
Both of our siblings appear to be in lifetime relationships, but AFAIK neither has kids. I don't know if that makes them sad or, after spending time with our kid, feeling like they've received the governor's pardon. We think they're missing out a little but we don't know if they've even tried to have kids or not. We don't think that being childless has ruined their lives. It's certainly improved their vacations & recreations!
So emotionally I'm 100% for having kids. Intellectually the decision is about 75-25 in favor. Financially, a kid is a big loser. However if intellectual or financial considerations are an issue then you probably shouldn't be having kids in the first place.
It's just like ER. If you're considering parenthood, then I recommend offering to watch a friend's or relative's kids for a couple weeks. They'll be extremely grateful (although initially suspicious-- "Have you lost your ever-loving minds?!?") and you'll certainly learn how you can handle the subject. But don't worry-- somehow kids survive all our attempts to raise them.
