A commenter to my previous post got me to thinking about the decision to have kids or not. Obviously, I can speak from nothing more than my own personal experience. But, that decision was huge in my life (then and now) and I thought I'd share it and its reprecussions with y'all.
"Everyone says that they want to have kids. Few people say 'I want to have a teenager'."
"If you don't have kids now, when will you?"
"If you wait until you can afford to have kids, you will never have them."
"I would never send them back, but if I had to do it over again, I might reconsider having them."
"They are enormously time-consuming, expensive, and life-altering; be sure."
These are all actual words of advice we were given when we initially considered having children. And, of course, they're all true and reasonable. But, for me, none of those arguments meant a thing. I wanted children. From the moment I married the girls' mother, I knew I wanted to have children. I have always loved them. The desire came from deep within me and was without reason. She felt differently. She wanted her own life, independent of the huge responsibility of caring for kids. But, after 6 years of marriage, she agreed and Jennifer (now 22!) was born.
[NOTE: I originally wrote a long, rambling post about this subject -- and that original entry is below the fold -- but I edited it down to the following essential thoughts when I realized that most won't care about the details or want to read such a lengthy post.]
Having children has brought me the greatest joys and the greatest heartaches of my life. There are two people -- and two people's personality quirks -- involved when you decide to have children. The joys and agonies of having children comes from all sources, including the kids themselves and your partner. If I had to do it over again, I would do exactly the same thing. Nevertheless, I believe that one cannot make a "wrong" decision when one is deciding whether or not to have children. Whether I've managed to be a good parent or not is open to debate. Clearly, the only jury that counts -- my kids -- is mixed on the decision.
We were enormously lucky in our lives. Despite my being a high school dropout I had managed to go back to school and get a degree in accounting which led to a job with Arthur Young & Co., one of the premier accounting and consulting firms in the world. I made a whopping $15,000 per year. When Jennifer's mom was 6 months pregnant, she got very sick and had to quit work. After Jennifer was born (prematurely, scaring the hell out of us; she was in children's intensive care (one of those incubators) for a couple of weeks), I easily convinced her mom to stay at home and not return to work (she hated her teaching job anyway).
Less than 4 years later, both of our other daughters were born. Their mom threw herself into being the best mom she could possibly be. She even home-schooled the girls through elementary school. She was (and is) a rock-star mom.
I don't know why our children turned out as wonderful as they did. Perhaps it was the full-time attention they got from their mom. Perhaps it was the complete awareness that they were loved unconditionally and safe in their world. Perhaps it was good genetics (you know, from their mom!). But, we were blessed by never really having to deal with the problems that so many seem to be faced with. The girls never smoked, or got involved in drugs, or gangs, or became violent. Even during the teen years, although they had the usual growing pains (exacerbated somewhat, I'm sure, by our divorce and my gender issues (as an aside, I don't want to minimize the effect that my transition had on them; it was enormous)) they didn't become the defiant, abusive, rebellious teenagers that everyone hears about. They are, and always have been, great kids. I don't want to suggest that we didn't have problems or disagreements (indeed, both of the older girls moved out from their mom's house and came to live with me while they were in high school because of disagreements they had) but, all things considered, things were pretty easy.
But, this is about me and my decision to have kids, so I return to its effect on me. There are a couple of sayings that I've heard about divorce that I think are apropos here. One is that you "marry one person and divorce another"; another is that you "never really know someone until you meet them across the divorce table". I think both sayings are grounded in truth.
The girls became a huge focus of our divorce. I loved them so much that I could not bear the idea that I would not see them every day. I could not bear the thought that I would be relegated to twice a month "visitation". But, it got worse than that. Their mom (or her attorney) filed papers with the court saying that my parental rights should be completely terminated because of my transgenderism. It was during that time that I came as close as I've ever come to hating someone. My attorney was fairly convinced that it was just a ploy to get me to agree to a higher alimony settlement amount. Whatever, the reasons, it was the lowest point in my life. Not only was I facing the prospect of being in my children's lives only part-time, I was now facing the prospect of never seeing them again. I agreed to everything the other side asked for.
Over the years, I have derived enormous pleasure from watching my children grow and mature into young adults. Each year has been my favorite year. Despite the added trials that having kids added to my life (the divorce would certainly have been easier, for example; the strain of being estranged from my oldest daughter, is another more important example), I would make the same decisions again, without hesitation. But, I also recognize the value of not having children. I would hope, however, that intelligent, rational people would make the choice to not have kids on the basis of positive things in their life (alternate uses of time and money for example) and not based upon the fear of what might happen. Fear is a terrible (although very effective) motivator, love and desire are awesome motivators (although somewhat less effective in some instances).
I love my children. I hope that I have made a positive influence on their lives; they have made an enormously postive influence on mine.
