"People always assume their kids will be great."

 

In a collection of thoughts from older childfree people at BuzzFeed, I saw this comment, which really resonated with me:

My sister is a mess, and my parents had to step in and raise her two kids. My friends are at the stage where their children are becoming adults, and some are royally messing up their lives. Watching my parents deal with my sister and my friends deal with their kids — I'm SO glad I didn't reproduce. I don't have one regret. People always assume their kids will be great. In reality, it's a crapshoot, and you could end up with kids that make your life hell.

I mentioned something similar in my Top Ten list: "I know my retirement won't be spent raising multiple generations. My parents, along with many other Boomers (and now Gen Xers), did not anticipate spending their golden years still raising children. But my parents are now raising their great-grandchildren, after raising their grandchildren...so the future they saw for themselves has disappeared. None of us knows what our future will hold, but I definitely do not want that future for myself and my partner — and zero kids means zero chance of that fate."

It's one of the many taboo topics that doesn't get discussed nearly enough in public conversations about having children: We always hear all the great things about parenting, while parents are often discouraged from discussing the difficult things, or judged very harshly if they talk about struggles or regrets — especially when their children are making their lives hell.

As a result, people do indeed "always assume their kids will be great." And, although we all know kids who turned out not so great because of their parents, there are plenty of kids who start out not so great, and there's nothing their parents can do except their best, even when it's never going to be enough.

One of my fears about having kids was always that my kids could be great but so different from me that my life didn't feel like my own anymore. I am not a person who wants to spend long hours in the hot sun at kids' ballgames, for example. I am also not a person who would deny my kids exploration of their natural abilities and interests because they aren't mine. The only way to ensure I could avoid a life doing things I didn't want to do with my kids was to not have kids in the first place.

Too many people choose to have children assuming their kids will be healthy, great, and want to spend their time much the same way their parents do. It doesn't always work like that. 

And, when it doesn't, it can be a nightmare.

Parenting is stressful enough without additional conflicts that you never even paused to consider could be a possibility.

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