When I was little, my idea of having children was settling down with a nice guy (marriage was never part of the plan, not because I'm against it, but just because my parents weren't married so it wasn't really part of how I thought of "family" in my mind) and then having kids with him. As I became a (not very popular) teenager I started to think about having children on my own, without a guy. Artificial insemination was an interesting solution.
I got a bit older and I came to realize that finding a guy to have children with wouldn't be a problem, but finding a guy that I wanted to have children with (this is, a guy that I thought would be a good dad) would be more difficult, so the idea of being a single mum didn't go away. By then, I had visited Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland, and I had noticed not just that in these countries there were more children, but also that parents were younger. Mentioning this to my mother, she said that it was natural, that that was how it should be. You should have children young, when you have the energy to keep up with them, to play with them, to do things with them. I have read arguments for and against young parents and older parents. My conclusion has been that the advantages of being a younger parent (better fertility, less chance of children having certain health problems, being able to keep up with your children as they grow up, more chance of being alive to meet your grandchildren, etc.) were to me more important than the advantages of being an older parent (having money, and probably a house, having a stable job, being confident in who you are, having done everything you wanted to do, etc.). I admit that part of the reason for this has to do with the way I was raised. My parents didn't slow down when I was born. Sure, they did have stable jobs and they bought a house soon after I was born, but this didn't stop them. They moved to the States (twice) before I was 9, they traveled a lot (on their own and with me, I had visited the States, South America, Morocco and a few countries in Europe before I was 12), they learnt languages, they did things. Having me didn't really stop them from doing anything they wanted to do, they just took me along for the ride (and I'm grateful for that). Part of it, though, has to do with my attitude towards money: as long as you live in a country with a decent social security system (a good public school system, a good health system, etc.) having children is not that much of a burden. A child is expensive, sure, but in general children are resilient, they can deal with a lot, as long as they are well treated, and loved. What I mean by this is that I don't view financial stability as a prerequisite to having a child (OK, I wouldn't try for a child if I didn't have a job and I were in debt, but not having a permanent job wouldn't worry me too much). Combining these things I came to a conclusion: I want to have children young.
Ideally, I would have my first child at 26, and it would be with a guy that I thought would make a good dad for it and a good partner for me. But hell, if this doesn't work out, I'm not gonna sit around waiting until the perfect guy comes along. I have set myself a limit: if by 28 there's no guy I can see myself having kids with, I'll have a child on my own. The idea scares the hell out of me, but what scares me more is the idea of not doing it, and regretting at 45 not having done it. I want children, I've known this for years, and it's within my possibilities to have children on my own, without depending on anyone to do it, so I will.
This raises the problem of being a single mum. Other than the fact that it means working and taking care of a child (hard enough as it is), I face a moral issue. Is it right for me to decide that a child is born without a father? Many will say that a lot of children grow from single parents and they turn out perfectly OK. I agree, I don't think that single parents, or gay parents, or heterosexual parents, or communes where children are everyone's, necessarily affect how a child turns out (in terms of good and bad, in terms of what they can become) as long as the children are treated well and loved. However, do I have the right to decide that a child will be born into this world without a parent? Monoparental families are often the result of death, separation, abandonment. In all of these cases, the child grows up with a single parent, but this is not out of the choice of the parent. In the case of monoparental families that are the result of a woman getting artificially inseminated or of a man using a surrogate mother, these people have decided to have a child knowing that this child wouldn't have a parent from the beginning, to satisfy their need for being parents. I know I will do it, if it comes to it. I don't think it's wrong. But sometimes I wonder. As much as I tell myself, "the child will have a network, I have friends, I have family who will support me and the kid if I do decide to be a single mum", sometimes I wonder if it's (ethically) my choice. I suppose it is. After all, no one chooses who they are born to. A lot of children are born to people who don't want them at all, so I believe it's not wrong of me to bring a child into the world that will be loved and wanted, even if that child happens not to have a dad.
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