The Dreaded Kid Question

Joy here...As we went to the dome to train on Saturday morning, we were greeted with the many young children out there playing soccer.  They're cute; they're skilled; and their presence on my Saturday morning as I run around and around the track doing my drills (4 X 800m, followed by 3 X 200m this week), brings up the dreaded question:  to have a kid or not to have a kid...

I've officially reached the age when people stop gently hinting and suggesting that I sure would be a good mom, and I should think about having a kid, to aggressively telling me that my eggs are already probably too old and shrivelled up and I better get on that kid thing sooner rather than later.

And to top it off, while nearly all of my friends already have kids...the last few hold outs from my high school days are all having kids, like now, as I type.  One had a boy in Dec, a couple will be popping out screamers in May, and another one is due in August.  So that leaves me.  Basically out of any friend group I've ever had -- high school, sports teams, university, work colleagues, neighbours, miscellaneous people I meet on the street -- they all have kids.  They've done it the natural way, the IUI way, the IVF way, the calendar/thermometer method, the adoption method...any way you can think of having a kid, I know at least one (if not many) who have gone down that path to acquire their little bundle of joy.

And they've all started telling me to get on it too.

Some of these folks are even onto kid number two or three long before I've even been able to convince myself that one of them is do-able.

So on Saturday, as I see these kids playing, and I run past their parents keenly watching their children at practice, I can't help but rehearse the kid anxiety over and over in my head.

Now don't get me wrong, I like kids (generally).  I mean, some of my friends' kids are really interesting.  Some of them are really cute.  Some of them are really precocious.  Some of them are really smart.  The odd one or two is a royal pain in the ass, but then again, I've seen kids grow out of that too.

But here's also what I've seen:  people being fucked financially thanks to their kids; people's marriages ending thanks to the strain of having kids; people's marriages beginning to suck as they have no time, energy, or interest in their partners; people giving up their professions and interests for the sake of their kids; people getting fat and ugly thanks to the strains on their time and energy posed by kids; people never travelling again due to kids' schedules etc.; people getting stuck in jobs they hate, because they can't afford the risks of making a change; people getting sucked into being hockey coaches and chauffeurs to a bunch of kids; and I've seen a lot of really really really tired seeming parents.

And, to be honest, in almost all the cases, I see the moms get the really short end of the stick on basically everything to do with parenting.  Their bodies go through the biggest strain; they're the ones taken the most for granted by their kids; their jobs/professions/interests take the biggest hit (sometimes irretrievably so); they are often the ones who get ditched as dads upgrade to younger models; and society judges them super hard all the time about everything they do or don't do.

If you're a parent and you read that list, you know the magical joy of having a kid that I just can't understand that makes up for it all.  I get that.  I get that there's some powerful kid juju that happens that seems to make special sense to parents and you just can't get it until you become one.

But there's the catch.  What if nothing changes, and I just end up having a kid?  I can't really give it back, can I?

And I think I've figured out what's necessary to have a kid and not feel trapped, frustrated, angry, unfulfilled etc.  The answer is simple:  money.  If you don't happen to live anywhere close to family who can help you out (and wouldn't trust your parents with an infant even if you did!!!), then you need to pay for help.  So that means that if you want to have a kid but not see your life super drastically changed for the worse, then it seems to me that you need to increase your income by enough so that you can cover the cost of help and see that increased income have the potential to continue increasing over time to keep pace with the increased demands of parenting the way you'd like.

And, well, the truth of the matter is that I'm so totally not there yet.  I'm just not.

So the next time you see me:  don't ask me when I'm going to have a kid.  Don't tell me I should have a kid.  And certainly don't tell me that I'll be missing out on something if I don't.

Unless, of course, you follow that up with a cheque for $1m.  Then maybe I could wrap my head around having a kid.

And if a winter spent running around the track seeing the skilled kids and their parents, and the 9:30am takeover of the track by the kids' running club, where young ones no taller than my thigh race around the 400m track like nobody's business, putting me to shame and inspiring me all at once, is enough to change my mind on this...you'll be the first to know.

In the meantime, just don't ask.

Over and out,
Joy

PS - One of my friends who has a kid (don't they all???), posted this to my Facebook page to add here: