Regretting having children

I'd like to have kids someday...but I'm pretty selfish and irresponsible.

RJG, I'd feel completely gutted if I found out reading some diary or something that that was the case with my parents (I'm pretty damn sure it isn't, btw). I wouldn't blame them, especially as they'd have made the best of the situation, but it would be so sad / guilt-inducing.

: (

I think it is situations like these which lead to that Susan Smith case = parents, in particular stressed mothers, killing their young children after being unable to handle them.

Then there's the career v. family stuff, kid's health and education, gaaaaaah. I don't see how anyone does it.

My mom has said this. Because at the time she had her children, she was still very young and was forced to give up her career. I get the feeling there was a lot she would have liked to do that she didn't get the opportunity to because of her children. So I can understand why she said that, but it still kind of made me feel like "oh I guess I wasn't really worth that much to you" but perhaps that's just me being immature again.

She is now nearly an adult. It is becoming clear that she will probably outlive my wife and I. A few of her caregivers do actually care about her, but they are rare and never a given. I often wonder what her life will be like when her parents aren't around to provide her with unfailing love and protection.

My own life has been worn to a frazzle, my marriage tested nearly to the breaking point and my dreams mocked by the demands this has placed on me. If any good soul innocently asserts in my presence that 'God never gives a person trials beyond their strength to endure', I just wince.

In my darker moments, I admit I do sometimes wish my daughter had not been conceived or born, much as I love her. It is one of the more dreary discoveries of my life that these two feelings are not incompatible. It has nothing to do with not loving her. Nothing at all.

It is very difficult to speak of one's suffering without hitting a self-pitying note. I only hope I managed to avoid the worst of that. Every parent suffers for their child at some time. It is the nature of love -- and one's love for one's child is very powerful in every respect. I simply felt I had to remind people that children, lives and regrets take many complex forms.

Since I am the Ancient Mariner at this feast, I simply was playing the role my experience has fit me for. Don't hesitate to have a child on this account. Just plant both feet squarely on the cleats and take a good firm grip on the handlebars.

I was born with a genetic neurological disorder. After many years of medical intervention I am able to lead a very normal, basically successful, and happy life. And for that I am thankful. Yet, when my mother and I have talked about the disorder and how it has affected not just my life, but those of my family and friends, she says that she sometimes wishes that I'd not been born, because of the pain that it put all of us through. Not that she regrets my life, but that if she had known the prognosis ahead of time she might have rethought her decision to give birth to me. I do not take her words as rejection or invalidation of her love, but I do understand that she feels guilty, especially as the disorder comes from her genetic line, that she is responsbile for all of this.

And I find myself pondering the issue now, when I think about having children. I will probably pass along the defective genes to my off-spring, but they are not dominant genes and there is just a small chance that the child would ever develop the disorder. But do I have the right to make that decision for another being? I don't know that I'd be able to watch someone go through what I've been through, and be thinking all the time "I did this to her/him." I've pretty much concluded that if I do move into parenthood it will be with adoption, as I think that my genetic line needs to cease, unless some great genetic cure comes along soon, where they can get rid of the nasty thing.

I mentioned my mother's attitude to me: it's not unrelated. She and my father waited a long time for a baby to adopt, and in the first six weeks after picking me up I nearly died twice - my first asthma attack, then double pneumonia. My mother concluded that I was a faulty model, but she couldn't trade me in for a working one. She made her resentment for this clear to me, covertly or overtly, every day of my youth, though I only learnt that I was adopted when I was 19.

It is for this reason, and the fact that there is autism in both my mother's and my father's family, that I am pretty sure I will never have children. I feel that I am too selfish to commit my life wholly to helpless dependent, who may possibly have special requirements (my autistic brother, for example, is unlikely to ever leave home). Parenthood seems such a difficult thing, and I fear I am too cowardly to attempt it.