{"id":1120,"date":"2006-06-14T15:29:20","date_gmt":"2006-06-14T15:29:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/expecting-the-unexpected.html"},"modified":"2006-06-14T15:29:20","modified_gmt":"2006-06-14T15:29:20","slug":"expecting-the-unexpected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/06\/expecting-the-unexpected.html","title":{"rendered":"Expecting the Unexpected"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, I’ve been meaning to write something like this for a while – not in response to virulent anti-breeders, but simply on how parenting is a delightful experience in hanging out with other fun humans. If you choose to look at it that way.<\/p>\n

Slate’s Emily Yoffe, author of "Dear Prudence," answered a letter-writer , an about-to-be married woman, asking how to answer invasive questions about children, when she and her husband weren’t planning to have any.<\/a><\/p>\n

Yoffe gently mentioned that the woman might want to reconsider her decision not to have children.<\/p>\n

The response?<\/p>\n

\n
\n

The majority of letter-writers were not single but happily married and professionally successful\u2014the people you’d expect would make wonderful parents, and in a previous generation probably would have. Many didn’t just write about the adult pleasures of their childless (or "childfree") life\u2014travel, restaurants, undamaged upholstery, sex in the living room\u2014but expressed contempt for those deluded enough to want to reproduce. As one woman wrote: "My husband and I are childless by choice and I heartily encourage all younger friends to consider it. It is the most wonderful lifestyle, free of whining and sniveling and mini-vans."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yoffe continues by making her own case – she too, had thought she would remain childless, but changed her mind, and has to this to say:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

I noticed something else in the letters from nonparents that I had experienced myself: They have an unrealistic sense of the passage of time\u2014or at least the passage of parental time. They seem stuck on the notion that being a parent means forever climbing a Mt. Everest of diapers (and what happens to these punctilious couples if a spouse ends up needing diapers?). Diapers pass in a snap. It all goes so fast. When our daughter turned 6, my husband and I realized with a pang that we were already one-third of the way through the time she would live with us. And I worry that the writers have an unrealistic sense of their own passage through time\u2014believing they’ll forever feel that nothing is more important than building their career or taking that next trip.<\/p>\n

In Maybe Baby,<\/em> a collection of essays on whether to have children, Michelle Goldberg, a married writer in her 20s, decides she’ll probably stay childless because studies show that childless couples are not only happy, but that having children tends to ruin a marriage. Michelle, maybe I’m an asterisk in these reports, but I can’t recall a single fight my husband and I have had over our daughter (we have occasional fights, but not about her). We still have adult conversation, we go to the theater, we even have sex (granted, not in the living room). But the other night, my daughter, now 10 years old and no diapers in sight, was reading a book on American history and asked my husband about a confusing episode. A week in Paris could not have made my husband happier than telling her everything he knew about Iran-Contra.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The point about time is so well-taken. You only know this with, well …time. The baby days pass in a flash, and most of the time we look back on them with nostalgia. Well, qualified nostalgia, but nostalgia nonetheless. <\/p>\n

Parenting is not for everyone, by any means. Most of the time people who don’t want to have children probably…shouldn’t, I’m thinking. But the contempt for parents and children is a sign of a deeply unhealthy culture. Which comes as no surprise to anyone here.<\/p>\n

Everyone into the minivan – and don’t forget your t-shirts! <\/a><\/p>\n

Via Lickona, who knows whereof he speaks<\/a><\/p>\n

Slate link via Peter Nixon.<\/a><\/p>\n

(For the record, we don’t own a mini-van…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}