{"id":318,"date":"2008-11-20T14:21:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-20T14:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2008\/11\/20\/the-baby-elephant-not-in-the-room\/"},"modified":"2008-11-20T14:21:00","modified_gmt":"2008-11-20T14:21:00","slug":"the-baby-elephant-not-in-the-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2008\/11\/20\/the-baby-elephant-not-in-the-room\/","title":{"rendered":"The (baby) elephant (not) in the room"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As promised at <a href=\"http:\/\/arduousblog.blogspot.com\/2008\/10\/elephant-in-room-part-ii.html\"><span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">Ruchi&#8217;s<\/span> place<\/a>, a post about not having children. (Or, rather, not <em>planning <\/em>to have children; this is not always the same thing, as a couple of my friends have found out!)<\/p>\n<p>Mr E Man and I had The Talk very early on &#8211; within the first six months of our relationship. Luckily we are on the same page, for many reasons. In no particular order:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Being parents is incredibly hard (conclusion reached through years of observation of friends and family who are parents, and the occasional verbal verification from one of them).<\/li>\n<li>We have enough trouble looking after ourselves (we run out of milk and bread and clean towels <em>all the time<\/em>).<\/li>\n<li>We&#8217;re selfish and like our lives the way they are (I recently told two different friends that sure, if you&#8217;re going up to Whistler at short notice on a weekend, call me! 5 am, whatever! I can grab my skis, my gear and a granola bar and be ready to leave in less than an hour).<\/li>\n<li>Kids would inevitably increase our environmental impact, no matter how hard we tried to minimize their effect (plus, I believe that the planet needs extra people like I need, um, lice, or some other non-fatal parasite. I know <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">Ruchi<\/span> disagrees&#8230; but if we ever change our minds about having kids, adoption would be our first choice).<\/li>\n<li>We&#8217;re lazy and like our sleep way too much (did I mention that we&#8217;re selfish?)<\/li>\n<li>Childcare is ridiculously expensive and hard to find in Vancouver (I know two new mothers here on postdoc work permits who may have to leave the country, because they can&#8217;t find affordable childcare, and therefore can&#8217;t go back to work, and therefore can&#8217;t renew their status in Canada).<\/li>\n<li>I don&#8217;t want to give up sushi for 9 months (yes, this is a valid reason. One of my friends really, really struggled with the lack of sushi. No booze, no caffeine, no problem &#8211; but no raw fish? Screw <em>that<\/em>. Another argument for adoption, in my book).<\/li>\n<li>We&#8217;d truly, honestly, rather have a boat (did I mention that we&#8217;re selfish?)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Don&#8217;t get me wrong &#8211; I love kids, for at least a few hours at a time. We have six young nephews and a whole bunch of young <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">cousinoids<\/span>, and regularly spend time with friends&#8217; kids. I am Auntie <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">Cath<\/span> to, let&#8217;s see, about 20 children? (I <em>love <\/em>being an Auntie). And obviously <em>some <\/em>people need to keep having kids if the species is to survive, just not <em>everyone<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, not everyone sees it that way. The majority of our friends and family just seem to assume that we&#8217;ll be having kids soon, given that we got married a whole year ago and all. And it&#8217;s incredible (but no longer surprising) exactly how many people will try and talk us out of our decision. Sometimes this manifests itself as a simple &#8220;when?&#8221; question, and then surprise at our answer (&#8220;<em>really? <\/em>But, but, but, are you sure?&#8221;) And sometimes it get <em>much<\/em> more irritating and intrusive than that.<\/p>\n<p>I would never, ever, give someone a hard time for choosing to <em>have<\/em> kids. So why do so many people fail to see that <em>not <\/em>having kids is a personal choice that we&#8217;ve actually thought through and discussed, rather than a personal insult directed at them or their lifestyle?<\/p>\n<p>For example, at Thanksgiving in October we were at my mother-in-law&#8217;s house. I was sitting around the dining table with my MIL (who has 5 kids), her eldest daughter (2 kids), and my brother-in-law&#8217;s hilarious (not so new) girlfriend (1 kid + 2 <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">stepkids<\/span>). Mr E Man was washing the dishes in the kitchen while the rest of us shared some wine and chatted about <span class=\"blsp-spelling-corrected\">various<\/span> benign subjects. But then, with no warning, the two younger women unleashed a shock and awe pro-kids campaign on me. (<span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">BIL&#8217;s<\/span> H(<span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">NSN<\/span>)G told me the next day that this had been planned over drinks the night before. She also apologised and said &#8220;that was incredibly rude, wasn&#8217;t it?&#8221;. I concurred). They both told me that we should <em>totally <\/em>have children, and will come around to the &#8220;right&#8221; point of view soon enough. Like, <em>after<\/em> we have all those kids that we should be having! The youngest child in the family is now almost 6, and it&#8217;s selfish for us not to have children when everyone so badly wants a new baby to play with! My MIL, an incredibly sweet lady who I adore, chipped in at this point with &#8220;I&#8217;d really like another granddaughter, [name] is all grown up and there are <em>so<\/em> many boys in this family&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>I could sense, even from behind a half-wall, that Mr E Man was getting really pissed off. His family, his argument &#8211; so while I made polite noises about &#8220;I&#8217;m sorry but having kids isn&#8217;t for us, you&#8217;re really not going to change my mind&#8221;, he quietly seethed for a while before snapping &#8220;not gonna happen, now leave us alone!&#8221; They did, and hopefully they won&#8217;t be trying that approach again.<\/p>\n<p>In a few weeks we&#8217;ll be heading to the UK for Christmas. We have yet to have the &#8220;no grandchildren for you!&#8221; conversation with my parents, although my sister knows the situation. It&#8217;s coming&#8230; and honesty is definitely the best policy, despite the temptation to use Mr E Man&#8217;s idea of saying &#8220;that&#8217;s a hard subject for us [sob], we&#8217;ve been trying for years and nothing works [sniffle], there&#8217;s this incredible clinic in Cuba but we&#8217;d need to go for at least a couple of weeks and we can&#8217;t afford it&#8230; [pleading look]&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not going to go down too well, I don&#8217;t have a big family and my parents <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">looooove<\/span> kids. Hopefully they&#8217;ll be happy to be an extra set of grandparents to my cousins&#8217; kids (the aforementioned <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">cousinoids<\/span>, who they see a couple of times a year). And I can place some hope in the following conversation, reported to me by <s>an intrepid spy<\/s> my sister a few years ago:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Dad:<\/strong> &#8220;When are you going to give me some grandchildren?&#8221;<br \/><strong>Sis:<\/strong> &#8220;But Dad! I don&#8217;t even have a boyfriend!&#8221;<br \/><strong>Dad:<\/strong> &#8220;Well don&#8217;t let <em>that<\/em> stop you.&#8221;<br \/><strong>Sis:<\/strong> &#8220;Oh, yeah, you&#8217;d love <em>that<\/em>. Anyway, why don&#8217;t you go and bother <span class=\"blsp-spelling-error\">Cath<\/span> instead? She&#8217;s at least living with someone!&#8221;<br \/><strong>Dad:<\/strong> &#8220;I don&#8217;t want <em>Canadian <\/em>grandchildren&#8221;.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I hope that this was said for more than comic effect &#8211; but I suspect not!<\/p>\n<p>Wish me luck&#8230; and please do share any of your own coping strategies!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As promised at Ruchi&#8217;s place, a post about not having children. (Or, rather, not planning to have children; this is not always the same thing, as a couple of my friends have found out!) Mr E Man and I had &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2008\/11\/20\/the-baby-elephant-not-in-the-room\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,58,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-family","category-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}