what are the odds?

[metaphortunate]

I know seven het couples, including the one I form a part of, that got together and got serious despite both of them knowing at the time that one half of the couple wanted to have children, or at least a child, and one half strongly did not.

All seven of those het couples currently have one child, and I happen to know that at least one of the others is currently working on a second.

Possibly there are tons and tons of couples who get together despite this discrepancy and many of them end up with no kids but it just happens that the seven that I know all went the other way.

In four of them the guy was the one who wanted a child, in three it was the girl.

I don't know any of the people in the other couples well enough to ask them if they got pressured. (I feel like you would have to know someone really fucking well to ask that question. Or, not at all. I've had some hella deep conversations with people I knew I would never meet again.) I know that I was never pressured, that I changed my mind, and didn't tell Mr. E until it was almost too late, because it's such a difficult thing to change your mind about. I wonder how it went for other people.

I'm sure a lot of people get together but don't get serious because they don't agree on this issue. I wonder whether there is any correlation between getting serious and secret doubts about one's position. At the time we started getting serious, I didn't have conscious doubts. Still, I'd never seriously considered getting my tubes tied. In retrospect, I wonder about that. My brain does a lot of shit it doesn't feel the need to let me in on.

I don't have any conclusions, but I think about it a lot.

Have a couple of links:

"No Children", by the Mountain Goats.

"The Ghost Ship that Didn't Carry Us", by Cheryl Strayed.

Comments

[brainwane]

Thinking about it too. Thanks.

[metaphortunate]

So, here's an interesting thing: my reaction in my brain to reading this was "It's totally amazing! You should."

Please ignore that! That is terrible advice, because I know nothing about your situation, and while my kid is amazing he is also soul-destroyingly hard work, and he's the easiest baby I've ever heard of! But here is the reason I bring it up: up through, oh, probably at least four months ago, people would say "We're thinking about it," or something to indicate that they were thinking about it, and the reaction that would come out of my mouth would be "You should not do this unless you're REALLY REALLY sure that you REALLY want to. Because Jesus Christ it is hard work."

So at some point in the last four months, maybe things have gotten a bit easier. I should take a moment to appreciate that. :)

[hunningham]

I did have my tubes tied. About 20 years ago, no regrets yet. I would have considered children if my partner had been truly desperate for children AND ready and willing to be the primary caregiver. But he was all "whatever you want, I'll go along with it..."

I'm always surprised by how many people I know have children because they goofed on basic contraception.

[metaphortunate]

At least in my family, there are a number of children who exist because people goofed on basic contraception....sort of. Upon further question, it starts to look more like people weren't willing to own their desires, so they acted in a way that was quite likely to lead to children, while still saying that they didn't want to or weren't ready or whatever. Multiple times, in some cases. And then, when children unsurprisingly got started, well, what are ya gonna do? *rueful shrug*

[crystalpyramid]

That's interesting — my boyfriend apparently recently realized that he's not actually at all attached to the idea of having children, he just sort of osmosed it from me, because I had all these big, concrete life goals, and he didn't really have them. We'd just been going along as if my goals were The Goals, because I'd somehow won him over to my side. I know initially he was opposed to the idea of children, and then to the idea of more than one child, but that was a long time ago (college), and I'm not going to bring it up if he's not.

[moonvoice]

Ah, I love No Children by Mountain Goats!

It's an interesting subject. I'm Childfree, but my partner is not. He's also not particularly fussed one way or another. I always said to him that if he ever did want children, he is more than welcome to have them, just not with me.

I have personally always struggled with the idea of people who have kids to make a partner happy, because they 'didn't really care one way or another' etc. As far as I'm concerned, that's probably not a great sign. I mean, a lot of things can change, but I wonder how much authenticity is happening in relationships like that. But my requirements in a relationship are my own, and other people often don't have the same expectations of others or themselves.

[zdashamber]

(Not about the actual post, sorry) I liked your icon enough to click through and poke over 4 pages to find it and see if you'd tagged the artist... And it turned out to be your art! It is super nifty; in this tiny form to me it looked like applying a Roger Dean landscape flavor to a hidden creature, which I thought was a cool idea. Going off to poke through your Etsy.

[metaphortunate]

Hee! I actually find that icon nightmarish in a body horror kind of way.

[moonvoice]

Oh, thank you so much! <3 It's probably very narcissistic of me for me to use my own artwork in some of my icons. *blush*

[kate_nepveu]

I had never really seen myself with kids but wasn't actively opposed to it, and before we got married had decided I wasn't interested in "kids," but I was interested in "_our_ kids," because I could get an idea of what our life would be like together and I wanted that.

[metaphortunate]

If I were with someone else, I'm 99% certain I would not have become a mother. I wanted to have a kid with Mr. E.

[snippy]

I think some people are sure they don't want kids, and some people think they don't want kids but if they end up with one or more kids, they find that life is actually okay with them.

Plus people's self-knowledge is rarely perfect. In addition to which, people change, and sometimes even in the area of kids.

[metaphortunate]

Plus people's self-knowledge is rarely perfect.

Hah, no kidding.

[firecat]

In our case, he kind of did, I mostly didn't but was willing to if various circumstances were right; when we got ready to try, it turned out not all of the circumstances were right, so we didn't. Fifteen years later we both think that was the correct decision.

I wonder if having a firm opinion on whether to have children is really as common as it's made out to be.

[metaphortunate]

I wonder!

[rosefox]

I have always been adamant about not wanting to be pregnant. Never never never never never. For a long time I thought I'd like to foster kids, though (mostly thanks to Dean Koontz's Lightning, oddly enough), and I especially adore teenagers. Josh likewise adamantly does not want to be party to procreation, but he likes kids, especially young kids, and is really good with them.

When we got together, we decided not to have kids because we were both so firmly against going about it the inexpensive way and the expensive ways felt like way too much work (plus we weren't sure a queer poly couple would be approved for adopting/fostering). So... that was that! But that meant we were in the perfect position to say "Sure!" to Xtina moving in with us and eventually having a baby, because now she can deal with all the hassle and costs and biology that we remain opposed to, and we can get to be parents.

It's not so much that our minds have changed as that we didn't see a way for parenting to happen given prior constraints, and then new options appeared.

[metaphortunate]

I hope it all goes as smoothly and easily as possible!

Can I ask how old Xtina is? I will not take offense if the answer is "no".

[rosefox]

She's 34, same age as me. Josh will be 41 in January.

[jrtom]

I'm not sure what you mean by "she can deal with all the hassle and costs" in combination with "we can get to be parents".

I'm not being snarky, I really mean that I'm confused.

Being a parent, as I am familiar with it, entails hassle and costs. Perhaps you mean "Xtina pays for all kid-related expenses", but having a kid will impact everyone in the household, even if you're not responsible for her at all (and if that latter is what you mean, then I don't know what you mean by "be[ing a] parent", and I would be curious to hear more.

[rosefox]

Oh, not the hassle and costs of being parents, we'll share those. Just the getting-pregnant bits.

[jrtom]

Ah, thanks for clarifying. That makes more sense to me. :)

Good luck to you all, in any event.

[I would like to apologize for my lack of close parenthesis in my previous comment. Here, have one: ) :) ]

[jrtom]

So, we had sort of the second-order version of this.

Both Megan and I wanted to have kids. The original plan was to have "2 or 3", with the intent that we would have at least one boy and one girl.

So we had our first kid, and that was difficult in ways we weren't expecting and incredibly stressful (and was a contributing factor to me not finishing my PhD, although others were more significant). When enough time had passed that we'd forgotten how hard it was, we followed that up with the twins.

(Let's just say that I'm glad that the twins weren't first. At least we got a chance to learn the parenting ropes with only one kid.)

At this point, we had three boys. (1/8 chances happen, right?) This is the point at which we both really had a hard time deciding what to do next. Sex selection is difficult and expensive and doesn't always work, and the one method that's guaranteed (tossing out the fertilized eggs that were unlucky enough to get hit with the 'wrong' sperm) never sat well with me. (We did discuss adoption/fostering, but that's a whole 'nother topic.)

Eventually we decided to cross our fingers and try again...and had our fourth boy. ("Hope is not a strategy!") But getting to that decision was difficult.

(At this point my theory is, of necessity, that Megan provides a hostile working environment to female-bearing sperm, that being the only way that this isn't my 'fault'. :P :) )