My father was raised in a family of ten children in rural Idaho.
I loved hearing stories about how my dad grew up in a two-bedroom house with twelve people; his parents had one of the bedrooms, his sisters shared the other one, and the boys slept either on the front porch in the summer or in the cellar or attic in the winter. His parents (his father was a studio photographer and his mother was a homemaker) could have found many reasons not to have a large family, but they knew having children was important.
As my dad once commented to me:
"I don't think they thought about it very much; they just kept having kids."
I have five children and love reading stories of my ancestors and how they raised their families. For thousands of years of human history, having a family was not a "choice," but an expectation as a natural progression of aging and becoming an adult. Society was engineered to support a system where men worked, women stayed home, and children came into the home naturally without much planning or consideration. There were wonderful parents and terrible parents, just like today, but families happened organically as part of the natural human experience.
The birthrate in the U.S. has dropped significantly since the 1990s, as fewer people choose to marry and have children. Today, every single state in the US has a birthrate below replacement levels. A host of factors contribute to this decline, but as we as a society have started looking for reasons not to have children we've found plenty and elective childlessness is taking the place of having families. Many individuals would love to start a family and struggle to find the right partner, but a growing number of men and women are simply opting out of marriage and kids altogether.
When my husband and I were first married, the conversation around children was not a matter of if, but when. We were in our mid-twenties, my husband was just starting his career, and I was working as a journalist and was excited about the direction my professional life was headed. We both felt very strongly that we wanted to have children sooner rather than later.
There were a million reasons why we shouldn't have started our family at that stage in our lives; we were poor, we were living in a tiny house in a bad part of town, I was heading down a successful path professionally ... and the list went on and on.
But we never questioned if we should have kids. We just had them.
Our first three children were born close together. We relied on hand-me-down clothes and tight grocery budgets while my husband built his career and I stayed home during those first few years. I thought many times about my dad growing up happy in a tiny house with 9 siblings and I realized we were doing just fine. My kids didn't attend every single toddler gym class or mommy-and-me swimming clinic, but we didn't want for the basics either.
And we were happy.
Our society is moving towards a point where the expectation to have children is becoming the exception, not the rule. With all the millions of choices in our lives, the "choice" to have kids will always seem like a hard one. Some marriages need to space to work on challenges before bringing children into the relationship. But when we start trying to "logic" our way into having kids, it's very easy to talk ourselves right out of the decision.
Here are a few common questions couples ask when thinking about starting a family, and a few very honest answers:
"Do we have enough money?" (Answer: there's never enough money when you have kids, no matter what you make.)
"Do we have enough time?" (Answer: there's never enough time to do all the things you want when you have kids.)
"Will having kids impact my career?" (Answer: if you're a woman there's no way to avoid this. It's just a function of biology. If you're a man, you'll miss out on some of the opportunities single people will get as you make space for your family and your career.)
"What if I don't love staying home with my kids?" (Answer: there will be times that will be so hard, that will push you to your limits, that will bring you to your knees. But that's the case with virtually anything worthwhile we do in life.)
"What if I make parenting mistakes?" (Answer: Ooooh boy, will you ever. But you learn as you go, and kids are forgiving and resilient.)
As humans, we have a finite amount of experiences in this life.
Having children is not only an experience that will change your own life, but it's the foundation for creating a successful civilization. Once we, as a society, started making the creation of a nuclear family optional instead of expected, we opened up a conversation around the logic of having children that never ends in a logical conclusion.
Is having children difficult? Yes. It's mind-numbingly hard. But as I look back on the past 14 years of my life as a mother, I can't imagine how different my life would be if I'd "logic'd" my way out of motherhood.
I've had to make sacrifices for my career, but I've also been able to find amazing work part-time and grow my professional life on the side while raising our kids full-time. But because I've never viewed having kids as optional, I've never resented my role as a mother. It's part of who I am.
