Amen to THIS.
I especially like the part where she mentions that so many of the kids with babies don't connect their impoverished, chaotic lives with the fact that they've made poor choices.
One of my biggest things I try to do is teach Bee (and eventually J) that the things they do have consequences...both good and bad. Hopefully they'll be able to accept a little accountability, and make the connection between good choices and a good life.
Not that good choices mean your life will be easy. Easy and good are not the same. But that's a WHOLE different post.
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I just read this article and loved it. Amen to your amen.
This issue is so complicated.
Obviously some of us do finish school (a lot of it), become productive citizens, get married to someone we think will be committed forever, then have children whom we love desperately, and still our lives our impoverished (at least emotionally) by others' selfish behavior. My divorce was probably the greatest blessing that me and my children had experienced to that point in our lives (at least since I had married). The happy childhood my parents provided for me was right up there in my blessings. I could not provide that kind of blessing for my own children within that marriage.
I'm also not sure what a productive or contributing citizen is. Is it about economics? Do you have to have good health insurance? Is it about a good pension plan? Shall we try to figure out how much so many different professions actually contribute to society? Is it an ethical question? How do you decide what success means and how do you measure it?
I certainly agree that children should be loved and wanted by parents who love each other. But a few days ago, my son Thomas thanked me for making a lousy decision, so that he could be here.
I think that the thing I enjoyed about this article was more the idea that, if you decide to have kids, you need to help them understand that they control at least some elements of their lives...ie, choosing to do drugs is a bad choice and will cause chaos in your life. But it also means that even when you don't like their decisions, it's important to still love them and respect that they have the right to make choices.
So for example, when it comes to my parents and their divorce, I think all parties involved (except possibly my two youngest siblings who left the church because of the nastiness with which the ward treated my mom) everyone is better off now. But the divorce didn't give anybody a "get out of parenting free" card. Both my parents are still involved in all of our lives, and have accepted the fact that their decisions and ours will somehow mesh, be it in a way they expected/desired or not. And that THAT's where family is.
I think that's more what I liked about it. Not that anyone should stay in a terrible situation just so kids can have a traditional home structure...just the idea that you can't leave your kids high and dry because a marriage doesn't work.
Maybe I'm just rambling.
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