Personal Narrative: Life after Children

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Recommended: Difficulties of being a teenager

Rising children is difficult. If you don't believe this, then you should read a few recently published articles - they will dispel your happy family fantasies. Suzi Parker provides an unsettling description of current teenage fads - girls biting each other and disfiguring themselves. In another article, Sarah Wildman recounts her 18-month-old daughter's flair for the dramatic, "squalls that take over her entire body, arching her back, howling at the moon, pulling my hair as she tries to take me down to the floor with her "). Either article will make any wanna-be parent think twice about unprotected sex.

Sarah reported on mothers of small children who, according to recent sociology studies, have lately been surprised to discover that being a parent is really (really) hard and makes some young women (especially the more mature among you) feel robbed of the tidy achievement-filled lives you traded in for a 5-way Pack 'N Play and that 25-pound Bugaboo stroller system (plus accessories).

Before I get back to sex-related topics -- the antithesis of parenting, by the way -- I want to tell all mommies (and daddies when available) of small children, and those people considering becoming them, that the job is not for wussies. The only thing harder than raising your children is finishing doing so.

Each child brings her own special demands and his own sweet rewards. They steal your heart and twist it around and make you want to do anything in the world just to get them to smile at you (not to mention the dragons you'd slay for that dance of delight when they see its you arriving after your grueling day as careerist). But being responsible for another endlessly needy human's bedtime, birthdays, baths, best friends and bologna sandwiches -- day in and day out, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer -- is a far larger commitment to today, tomorrow, and the future than most people believe they are making when they marry. Then, after only 13 or 18 or 24 years, the co-dependent children disappear and become these tender adults who no longer need you, occasionally cringe when you speak, and continue to make mistakes you can no longer protect them from, even if they would let you.

(Which reminds me, getting back to talking about sex, I recommend reading my colleague Mary C. Curtis on the enduring Kinsey Institute, where they have answers for all your sexuality questions.

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