What Made You Decide To Have Kids?

StrollerderbyThe journalist solicits answers from her readers, which are posted as comments. One response:

This is one of those moments when I wonder about our kids reading the blogosphere. A friend of mine decided to have kids “to save the marriage”. When it didn’t work, but left her single-parenting instead, would you want her to tell her kid that?

Another friend grew up in the era when our parents said “when you grow up and have kids” rather than “if … you have kids” … and she decided to have kids because “that’s what you do when you’ve got married, saved a chunk of both salaries, bought the house, decorated the house, and your friends start having kids.” She quit a job she loved to “do the right thing” and stay home to parent. Hated it. Out of her four kids, today two are in jail. Should she be posting to Babble that she wishes she never had them?

From my own personal experience I will tell you that the joys and challenges of motherhood were the area of the biggest lying in my family. Mothers, grandmothers and aunts pushed the notion that motherhood would be my biggest joy and that they never regretted their choices for a moment. So when I found parenting challenging, I thought I was defective in some vital way. But by the time I was in high school, these same women were willing to ‘let me into the club’, sharing their frustrations and regrets just as if they’d never led me down the garden path.

I could say more about this, but maybe my kids are reading it?

However, other commenters simply say they "always wanted them" without giving a reason, and don't seem to be aware that they are not answering the question. I wonder what this says about their decision?

Technorati Tag: childfree