Choices We Make
© Susan Todd-Raque
Throughout our lives, even when we are quite young, we make choices. The older we become, the more we realize the choices we made when we were young were not always as well thought-out as we would have liked them to be. We may have dropped out of school, hung out with the wrong crowd, married before we earned a decent living or had children when we were children ourselves.
In my years of practice I have seen too many stressed parents and children. So, this particular article is addressed to all people, especially to parents of young adults and to those young adults who are considering getting pregnant and having a child. My question to you is if you were asked to sign a contract that obligated you to the rest of your life to a certain role, would you?
Despite the romantic television commercials and shows about how cute babies are, how wonderful it is to be pregnant, or how much attention one gets in the beginning, it is a great deal more than that. It is a lifelong obligation to unconditionally love and protect the human being you bring into the world. And it is not just about mothers, but fathers too.
School may be tough. Your parents are hounding you about your grades and your behavior. Your hormones are raging and having intercourse seems so easy, maybe even temporary. The result, a pregnancy, is not. Your world will turn upside down. Life will never be the same.
Parents should communicate to their children about how difficult parenting can be.
Anyone who is a parent knows how much having a child changed their world, both good and bad. Having a child tests your inner strength like nothing else does. It is not a babysitting job, where you can go home and not be up all night with a teething child. It is your responsibility. Period. No ifs, no buts.
This is not to say having children is all trouble and no fun. What I am saying is when the time is right, having a child can be the most wonderful gift you will ever receive. You will live a long life and you have many things to do. Women have choices and are attaining success both as homemakers and career women as never before. Men are now sharing parenting and household responsibilities. People are traveling everywhere. The world is a big place with many wonderful places to visit, like the Grand Canyon, the redwood forests of Northern California, the Arctic Circle, Eiffel Tower in Paris and Big Ben in London.
So, think twice, maybe three times, about whether you want to sign on for such an obligation now at your young age. What are another five or ten years if you can reach a point in your life when you can say to yourself “I have done some of the things I have wanted to do and now I am ready to have a child”? You will be a better parent, more patient and more understanding, in the long run.
