2019年7月10日星期三

Why I’m Resisting the Urge to Have Another Kid

Why I'm Resisting the Urge to Have Another Kid

By Jessica Grose

WEDNESDAY, JULY 10 2019

Doris Liou

This week in NYT Parenting we have a lovely, thoughtful essay by Sara Petersen, in which she wrestles with her identity as a stay-at-home-parent, and wonders whether she's having a third child to feel more secure in her life choices. Did she want another baby because of biology? To show the world her youth and sexual viability? Because she fears having to lean into work full time? It's worth reading the whole essay to see where she lands.

I find thoughtful meditations like Petersen's more satisfying than the social science that purports to help you decide how many kids to have (and let's be clear, it's a privilege to be able to decide at all).

Joe Pinsker at The Atlantic has a thorough dive through the research on the number of kids that makes people "happiest" — and the experts he speaks to explain that the decision is highly personal and affected by a combination of finances, cultural pressure and personal preference. "While people's ideal family size may vary — and is highly individualized — they'll probably be happiest if they hit their target, whatever it may be," Pinsker wrote.

But how do you even know what your target number of children is? It's not a strictly rational decision; it's far squishier and more mysterious than that. If you were being strictly rational, you might not have any kids at all unless you were independently wealthy, because it's the dumbest financial decision you can make: It's like setting all your money on fire and then flushing it down the toilet.

For my family, the ultimate decision on family size was based on something called "emotional bandwidth" — a term I stole from my mother, a retired psychiatrist. Though it is also used to describe the way people transmit feelings using technology, in this context emotional bandwidth roughly translates to having enough patience and humanity to give to another child.

I always knew I wanted to be a parent, and so did my husband. Before we had any kids, we thought we might have three. So it wasn't a complicated decision for us to start trying for our first. Then I had a miserable pregnancy, and even though I found motherhood to be a sheer delight, for a year after my older daughter's birth, if you had asked me, I would have said we were one and done. I couldn't put my body through that again.

Then, when my older daughter hit 2, I started wanting a second child. I could already see her luscious baby-ness giving way to the competent kid she would become, and I wanted to experience that baby-ness again. My husband and I both had siblings, and we wanted our kid to have that, too. Still, part of me wondered if doing it again was insane, because pregnancy was rough on me. But the innate desire for another child prevailed.

I got pregnant as soon as we started trying, when my older daughter was about 20 months old. But that pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, which only made me want a second child more urgently. The urgent need was not logical, it was much deeper than that, and it did cause me pain when I didn't get pregnant again right away. It took another full year — my younger daughter had almost the same due date as the pregnancy I lost, just 12 months later.

Now that the baby is nearly 3, I find myself looking wistfully at newborns and my primal lizard brain wants another one. But this time my rational brain is giving it a hard nope. It's not purely a question of finances; if we really wanted a third, we'd have to change our lives significantly, but we could make it work. It's not because of age, either — I'm 37, just like Sara Petersen, so there's time. It's because I don't think I would have enough of me left for another child.

It takes all of the emotional reserves I have — that emotional bandwidth — to be the calm, present mother I want to be with my children, and the kind of spouse I want to be to my husband. Already at the end of many days, especially during the workweek, I find myself used up after the children go to bed. I did not feel this way when I had one kid, and it's not just about physical exhaustion. With two kids, I have given everything I have, and what's left is an empty husk watching "Real Housewives." My husband feels the same way.

Everyone has a different emotional bandwidth. And while I occasionally look at parents with three or more kids with something akin to envy, like they must be more evolved and empathetic humans than we are, I remind myself that it's not a competition. Accepting our own limitations is the key to making our family feel whole, as it is.

What went into your decisions about family size? Drop us a line and let us know.

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Want More on Family Size?

Journalist Lauren Sandler wrote an excellent book about only children, "One and Only: The Freedom of Having an Only Child, and the Joy of Being One," which dispels a lot of the negative stereotypes about onlies (they're spoiled, selfish, etc.). Sandler also wrote a Time Magazine cover story on the topic in 2010.
On the other side of the coin, Bryan Caplan, an economist, wrote a book called "Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent Is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think." Read a Q&A with Caplan from The Times in 2011.
One of my favorite essays about not having children is by Meghan Daum, "Difference Maker," from The New Yorker. Daum edited an essay collection called "Selfish, Shallow & Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not To Have Kids."

Tiny Victory

Parenting can be a grind. Let's celebrate the tiny victories.

	To get through evening dental care with our almost 3-year-old, we have a new member in the family: the Little Red Toothbrush. She wants to know what he ate all day and hear his stories (between scrubbing sessions). She's become so important to him that he now insists she come to bed and that we read her bedtime stories as well. They even snuggle.
	Sarah Jorgensen, Charlottesville, Va.

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