Later it occurred to me that like her, my wife and I had waited, 4 years in our case, to have children. That seemed just about right. In my pre-marital counseling, I always tell couples that three years are the minimum they should wait to have children. Anything less is crowding out the time to get to know one another and build a family relationship that children can thrive in. A couple ought to do some careful planning before they decide to add another human being to the equation and stress and demands of a marriage.
Sound advice. Followed less and less. In 1995 America, a family is seldom a requirement, or even a forethought before launching into parenthood. The last figure I saw was 40% of all births now are to unwed mothers. Whether it is a teenager looking for someone to love, or a professional woman whose biological clock is about to expire, or an unplanned accident, women are having children without the benefit or need of a father/husband.
No doubt you have heard some of the current outcry against what William Bennett has called a "Culture of Illegitimacy." Many believe that children being born and growing up in families without both parents, especially teenage mothers who are on welfare, are a threat to our stability as a nation. In more cases than many of us want to admit to, kids whose parents are kids in poverty are malnourished, underestimated, and crippled intellectually before they even get to nursery school. By lowering moral standards and giving monetary support to unwed women having children, we support and even "encourage" women of any age to keep having children outside of marriage.
Thus the conservative backlash against our welfare policies and the current Congress' rush to radically change them. Yet for all the "legislative" changes proposed, we all know that even changing or ending welfare will not completely stop single women of whatever age or economic status from having children outside of marriage or family. One of feminism's doctrines is to allow women control over their lives and their bodies; for which I completely agree. But perhaps an unforeseen or unintended corollary is the right to have a child whenever a woman decides she wants one; she can be rich or poor, married or unmarried, by natural sexual relations or artificially.
It would be nice if it were that simple to make a personal biological decision and have a child, things will work out. But what if they don't. What if the consequences of having a child impacts others than its mother; and what if those affected, be they father, extended family, or the society as a whole are short on or running out of the resources to support the new person being born? Should not all possible consequences be explored before starting the process of bringing another child into the world?
On Star Trek : Voyager last week, one of the crew, Kes, who is not a Terran, had her biology impacted by a part of space which pushed her reproductive cycle years ahead of when it would naturally happen. Her species has 6 days to "mate" with another once the cycle begins before it passes forever. Kes reaches out to her friend Neelix, another non-Terran (with a horrible hair-do) to father a child with her. Neelix hesitates, unsure that he is ready or capable of fatherhood. He finally decides that he is ready; but by then Kes is having doubts. When she learns from the ship's doctor (my favorite character) that her condition is unnatural, she decides to wait for her natural reproductive cycle to return and then at that age and time she will be ready for motherhood.
Perhaps a simple and trite morality tale, but it has enough truth to ponder. It would do any woman and man well contemplating parenthood to pause and think. They, their child to be, and the rest of us cannot help but benefit from hesitation and thought before plunging ahead. Intelligence, compassion, and a dose of caution - not just biology -should be characteristics for parenthood.
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