“If you wait until the right time to have a child- you'll die childless” James Cameron
It's a curious thing the child debate. You spend the first part of your fertile years avoiding child production like the plague. To have a child before you have accomplished anything at all in your own adult life, is seen to be folly in the extreme. After all, if the whole point of having children is to pass on your learnt wisdom and experience – what would you have to give if all you yourself have known to date is your own childhood. This is not to say teen parents cannot be great parents just because they popped one out at 14, there are plentiful examples – however it is often thought best to wait... until the right time.
It takes a brave person indeed to buck the trend and be childless from choice. I would never attack those who make the choice to be childless, and I do not feel threatened in my choices by the existence of theirs. But you have to except that people who make this choice are a minority and most of us subscribe to the conventional wisdom that having a family of your own some day is THE point of it all.
After all, there are the photo albums (digital or hard copy) to think about!
Have you ever looked at the photo albums in the home of a childless couple of a certain age? Next time you do, try to pay attention and you will note that in these carefully put together tomes, no one grows up, no landmarks are commemorated, and no random persons appear. It's just them, the same two people getting slowly older, maybe a little fatter. Sometimes to break the monotony there may be an exotic location before which they will stand in dark glasses (the shape and size of which may change over the years)... but in the main, it's all just a little dull.
It takes the chaos of your own off spring to introduce at close quarters a wild card into your life – from the 'friends' at baby group, to the sports you'll find yourself attending, to the families of your child's significant other. Your photo albums at a certain age will reveal a diversity of experience a little wider than exotic holidays and attendance at other peoples events. I find it odd that the very thing that is supposed to tie you down is the very thing in the final analysis that opens your life right up. BUT, it is widely known that to get to this point one must wait until the right time which means certain things must be in place before going down this route.
Conventionally in the UK at least, the right time is thought to be once one has travelled substantially to open the mind, worked extensively to swell the coffers, and been hedonistic enough to put being selfish behind one.
Now that all seems to make sense: travel is not something that lends itself to the trials and tribulations of childrearing with ease, money is something that must be in regular supply if childrearing is to progress with any sort of satisfaction and there is little room for hedonistic activity with small dependants. A cosmopolitan, financially secure and well experienced adult is what we expect a modern parent to be. All you have to do is get to the point in your life where you are able to say- YES... it is now the right time.
Ahem.
Not so easy.
I mean...what does well travelled mean? Currently there are just under 200 countries in the world. Does well travelled mean that you would have visited each one? And how long do you have to be somewhere for it to count as a well travelled experience? Does a 5 star hotel count...or do you have to hang out with the natives?
The cost of raising a child in the UK is £9527 per year according to leading life assurance research. (If you go for the luxury model who goes to Uni for 3 years, you'll be looking at £200,067 before that child is no longer your fiscal responsibility). So what are you supposed to do, wait till you have a ten grand pay raise before you pop one out? How many years worth of running costs should you have squirrelled away before you go commando on contraception?
Top adult pleasures are not always top with childrearing adults. It's not just the getting drunk, dancing till dawn, jumping on a plane with a moments notice, mad passion on the kitchen table that poses the whole problem. (Though those things are all pretty much on the Not To Be Done for a Long While Yet list!) It is also such hedonistic activities such as having lunch outside of your own home (pubs don't accept children and many restaurants locate family sections downstairs -with no lift ). So what are you supposed to do, wait till you've done everything you have ever wanted to do - then never leave your house again until your offspring are old enough to vote?
Thing is if you are going to wait till you have experienced every country on the planet, if you are going to wait till you have just over two hundred grand going spare, if you are going to wait till you have drank your last vino, danced your last tango and had your last spontaneous experience... then James 'Avatar/Titanic' Cameron is absolutely right.... you will NEVER find the right time.
Curiously, James 'Avatar/Titanic' Cameron was using the comparison of just picking up a camera and shooting anything with having a family. He said the tricky thing is deciding that you DO have the desire to take that path. Once that is done you just have to get on it. He reckoned he would have never have made any movies,if he waited until the time was right. Just as well...as he's made a few that have gone down rather well. It's as well that he turned out to be the sort of person who worked out what he wanted and just went for it, rather than waiting for the mythical right time.
I would like to add...Mr Cameron has SEVEN children.
I think the hardest decision of all is whether or not you want to be a parent and if you are cut out for that mighty undertaking. I really don't think it matters if you've travelled to all six (or seven) continents. I really don't think it matters if you are funded for every year of your off-springs life in advance. I really don't think it matters that you haven't danced your last fandango. But I really do think waiting for the right time will mean you will not be a parent.
No one knows the future- parents least of all. You just do it and keep doing it. There IS no right time.
It's the ultimate leap of faith... you just do it... then some day you get out those photo albums and realise that faith was and continues to be repaid in ways you could have never foresaw.
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