User:Woozle/Childrearing

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There's something everyone should understand about me (and Harena, too). Despite having, between the two of us, no less than five (5) offspring, neither of us wanted kids.

I mean, if you could think of a situation better designed to highlight our shortcomings as human beings, I'd like to hear it. We are now more-painfully-than-ever aware of our problems with:

• social skills
• being organized
• financial management
• tolerance and patience
• ability to take care of others
• being in charge
• setting boundaries
• remembering appointments
• keeping up with reality
• etc.

I know what you're thinking now. "But why did you have kids if you didn't want them?" The answer is simple: we were each individually talked into it by former spouses¹. In Harena's case, said spouse promised to do the childrearing if Harena would just take care of the actual childbearing. Unfortunately, their ideas of childrearing were... incompatible. (That's a whole other issue I won't get into now; suffice to say that it was the straw which overrode her fear of the social contact necessary to get a lawyer.)

You're probably also thinking "...but now they're here and you love them, right? Don't they light up your life in little ways?" Well, maybe. Emphasis on "little". We love our various mutual kids and we hope they grow up to be much happier and better-adjusted adults than we are, and that's about the most positive thing I can say about it.

I can't emphasize enough that having kids was so completely not a part of what we saw ourselves doing as adults.

Footnotes

1. I can't complain so much; Harena ended up with four, one of them autistic and all with various schooling issues.