Why we have kids.

[kyburg]

Seriously. The thought has to cross your mind, past the obvious "OMG we're pregnant - okay, we're having kids."

The mindset I prefer on the subject is happy acceptance - having sex and having kids? Kinda goes together. You're okay with one, you're okay with both - win/win.

So - unexpected pregnancy doesn't exist in your world. And when you want one, you get one and that's even happier.

I wouldn't know about that. Had the sex, didn't have the kids - and then didn't have the sex for a long, long time. Then got single again. Then married again. Annnd - the pregnant thing didn't jump out and snag us.

Now, you get to think about it. Because now - it costs. Regardless of the route you decide to take, it costs. A bunch. Take a figure and add six zeros or so. Past that, it's just random details.

Somehow, paying money to make a baby didn't make sense when paying money to provide a family to a baby who needed one existed as an equally viable option. We wanted to be parents - and the more I looked at assisted reproduction, the more squicked I got. Jim? He chatted up some coworkers who went that route and just about lost his lunch. Nobody was going to do THAT to his girl!

Not appealing. We don't have to pass on the genetics - really, really.

If it didn't happen on its own, we weren't going to force it. Now, keep in mind back then we were still back in the "adoption is going to be EASY, there's a BUNCH of kids needing homes" frame of mind. That may still be so, but the ability for us to actually connect with a child who COULD be adopted by us has turned out to be, well, not so much - as it turns out. We didn't know - I'll be honest. But I'm really grateful that we didn't spend the time and money on the AR merry-go-round - we didn't have the infertility loss issues to overcome approaching adoption. It IS our first choice.

(Could I still get pregnant? Hang on - I'm getting there. Short answer - yes.)

But why have kids at all - if it doesn't happen on its own?

I'll admit - looking at the house, the yard, the stuff...gathering dust, going to waste...really bothered me. If I've been learning, and growing as a person all this time...why? If I don't pass this baton on to someone...what have I've been doing this for? My own enjoyment? Wow. Not so much!

I want people at all ages of life, in my life. I want oldsters...and kids. And people my age. And people both twenty years older and younger. I LIKE IT THAT WAY.

For me, those are good reasons to have kids. I'll be blunt and admit it - I've considered putting "torch the house with everything in it" in my will, if I survive Jim. After dealing with Cliff's things - and still am - all of the things that really don't belong to anyone else but him - please, just burn it and toss the ashes after mine. (With a few exceptions, of course.)

This just rocks me back on my heels.

"The couple were so desperate for a male heir that they spent their life savings and took out a bank loan for IVF."

The mother is 70 years old.

The got twins. One of each.

Someone is going to have to cross-check me on this one, but wouldn't an adopted child have inherited the same as a biokid in India? (Adoption in India is an incredibly scary place right now - the corruption is mind-boggling and heartbreaking. Might not have been any kind of option for these folks - as old as they were.)

Why are you having children.

Wow.

Every time I look at this, I find another hot button linked to it - property, acceptance, proof of life, immortality, employment, identity....and none of it much involved with the fact that a kid has nothing to do with your issues, and has every need that has to be met by you as the parent.

They're happy - and this is their challenge that they met with these steps. Can't judge. But the mind boggles a bit, neh?

It's not what I would do. For me, I hope to have my adopting done by age 50 - hope, mind. I'd like permission to get older, with my kids being my kids. Not be old - and trying to make things work regardless.

They're happy. Is it wrong to feel sorry for the kids? Would it be more acceptable for the parents to have accepted their lot and not fought 'the system'?

And this is all before I talk about gender preference. Messy, messy, messy.

Comments

[luscious-purple.livejournal.com]

But don't most places ban adoption by people over 50? Or is that just China?

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

Every country is different, but yeah, 50 is the *bzzt-sorry* limit on China.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

It varies, to be sure - I recall a couple adopting from Russia about ten years ago in their late 60's, matter of fact.

Today - yeah. That's about the line One Can't Cross.

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

I've encountered both with friends and with family all sorts of responses on the 'why in the world would you adopt' direction.

First, the 'preserve the family bloodlines at all costs' argument. Any other choice, of course, is Just. Not. Acceptable. Someone else's bastard trash? Hell, no!

Second, the 'but they'll know and you'll know' argument. Since everyone's aware that The Kid Really Isn't Yours, including the kid, everyone will be unable to bond. At best, the kid will just be a whathehellisthatone roomer.

Third, the 'if it's not blood kin, you cannot bond' routine. See above. Kid won't love you, you won't love the kid.

I got some of these from my mother, and explained in some detail with a crowbar that this was going to be the only grandchild she was ever going to have, so you'd better frickin' get used to the idea, lady.

Unfortunately, she did when Mere was very young, and Mere doesn't remember her directly. I think she'd be tickled pink by Mere, and she certainly warmed up a good deal on the subject as time went on. I think she's *exactly* the sort of grandkid my mom would have dug in a big way.

The non-attachment stuff, is, of course, utter bullcrap.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

See, I'm the one who had adopted cousins. And there was never a question about it. You got kids in three ways - you had them, you adopted them or you saw a star in the East....

In all honesty, the bonding bit just blows me off too. My cousin? I trusted her with stuff NOBODY else got. Still do, matter of fact.

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

I didn't even touch the 'she's Chinese, so she'll know she's not as good as you and it won't work' people. I don't talk to them anymore.

[snobahr.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I forgot to mention. I'm full Eskimo. My mom is English, and my dad was of Irish, German and Polish descent (he was from NYC, and boy did he sound like it!)

Ethnicity was never an issue. My parents just wanted a Healthy Girl. Well, they got one, all righty!

I can't speak for anyone else, but...

[snobahr.livejournal.com]

I'm part of the "They'll know/You'll know" scenario - as the child. Before my mom moved to Minneapolis in the mid-90s, she showed me the letter she received from the county, dated (around) June 1, 1968, notifying my parents that their application to adopt an infant girl (race unspecified) had been received.

I don't remember ever not knowing that I was adopted, that my youngest brother (My dad sired 4 boys: 3 from his first wife and 1 from my mom) would, at the supermarket, bring strollers to my mom, asking if they could take (the baby) home, he wanted a baby sister that bad. I'm told that the mothers/nannies belonging to said strollers thought this was funny as all get-out, given it was the 60s and my brother wasn't even 5 yrs old during these incidents. Given the timeframe, in Los Angeles, it was Teh Ky00t.

Bonding? I call my mom almost every morning, after I drop my husband off at the bus stop, and we chat about everything. Her cancer recovery, comparing traffic perceptions between Los Angeles and Charleston, SC (where she now lives), stuff from when her mother was alive, dogs, cooking, kids... bonding? My mom and I are emotionally inseperable. My dad died in 1990, and as I type this, my eyes are tearing up, because I miss him that-fucking-much.

There was a lot of love in that house while I was growing up, and the years and miles have only made that love more special.

Yeah, in my case at least, the non-attachment stuff is complete bullcrap.

[sekl.livejournal.com]

Must vent, give me a sec. Why have a system where only boys can inherit? What is left to inherit after you spend your life savings on IVF? Are these people the Bennetts? Is the entire estate entailed on the male line? Argh.

Good luck to them. And to the babies.

[moropus.livejournal.com]

If the entire estate is entailed on the male line, who is going to raise these children? One of the parents has adult female children and you can bet anything THEY WON'T BE HAPPY HAVING TO RAISE THE HEIR WHEN THEY GET NEXT TO NOTHING. Bet he has a terrible accident and doesn't survive his childhood. The sister either, just for good measure, or she gets turned into the poor relative maid for life.

India seems to be one of those countries where they will do anything if the money is right.

Having said that, my genetics are so substandard, I decided the polite thing to do would be to get out of the gene pool.

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

The irony in my own family is that our single male heir is incompetent, so giving him the family estate would be like throwing it away. He has a trust instead, and when he blows through that, too bad.

My parents wanted a boy so bad that they had him named on their honeymoon. They got me instead- five years later. My brother was an 'accident'.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I really don't know. I'm going to ask my guys if they can shed some light on the screaming, crying need for a male heir - something that would demand this level of desperation.

But wow - the amount of work done to prevent female children, female infanticide and everything that goes with it. Something is at the bottom of it.

[poetpaladin.livejournal.com]

I'm fine with your reasons to have children. You have the wherewithall and you have the resources and you have love and kindness and good parenting in abundance to offer.

[betnoir.livejournal.com]

I'm going to take this from another angle.

I get "Why don't you have kids?" As if, in somewise, Himself and I are being Utterly Selfish for not doing so.

Really?

Because, to my way of thinking, the more SELFISH thing would be to pass along my Crappy Genes just so I could say I had children.

I had visions of my tearful 11 y.o. child wanting one very simple, yet complicated answer: Why.

Why, if I knew first-hand what it was like, did I do the same thing to them?

And I would have no answer for that question. None beyond that I was indeed selfish.

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

My own genetics are shaky- with an interesting combination of albinism and being a DES daughter. It has been recently found that DES daughters who can have kids are passing the Rude Reproductive Tract Surprises down to their grandkids, resulting in some really scary reproductive problems.

When I was young enough to (theoretically) have kids, I didn't want them. I only recently discovered (within the last 6 years) that I probably couldn't have had them even if I wanted them. And no, I still don't want them. I do wish that the people who do want them but cannot have them could have an easier time of it. Kids need good, competent parents, period.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I remember Cliff being very clear, in the last years of his life with regards to his diabetes.

If his parents had known before he was born? He hadn't wanted to be born. Period.

And he was the one who was very clear about there being worse things than dying in this world.

I'll never forget.

[eyelid.livejournal.com]

Nobody was going to do THAT to his girl!

do what? what's so horrific about IVF? If that squicks you out, yeah, probably best that you didn't go the bio route - your paternalistic husband would have been aghast at what child carrying/childbirth would "do to his girl."

I am very skeptical that this woman is really 70. Most places won't even do IVF for women over app. 45 because the success rate is so abysmally low. unless they're using donor eggs, of course. The issue isn't the uterus - it's the eggs, which generally are too old to be viable long before 70. though I suppose there's always a medical exception somewhere

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

Jim's pretty protective - he didn't like the amount of medical messery (and both of us are hospital brats, remember) required, and with me sitting there going 'eh' - I wasn't motivated, and he was less than impressed. He has no other frame of reference - anything he wasn't willing to do, he wasn't willing to demand of me. And Jim hates having blood drawn. 'Nuff said.

Then we start talking costs...and percentages...and all of a sudden, it just wasn't attractive at all. Like - we'd have to do WHAT - and no. Pass. Please - no. (Did we even do timed intercourse? No. That's how unmotivated we are about having our own biokids.)

As for where the eggs came from - the article neatly doesn't mention that, just that the husband was the biological father. It just wouldn't 'do' to out the poor woman who had just given birth as being incompetent as far as her fertility was concerned, right?

Honestly. Doesn't this stuff just make you crazy?