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

[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 :) )