We love them but they don't always make us happy

11 February 2014 - 02:10 By Jackie May
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Jackie May. File photo.
Jackie May. File photo.
Image: Times LIVE

A friend, somebody I like but barely know, recently told me she is pregnant.

I hadn't seen her for a long while, and had no idea she was planning to have a baby. So, when she broke her news, my jaw dropped. She is already the mother of one, but, speaking as someone her age, I was horrified at the thought of a new sprog sprouting from my womb.

"I am expecting twins," she said.

I forced a smile, and congratulated her. But my first thought: Does she have any idea she has messed up her life? Completely. To have one child is a delight, but three is evidence of carelessness.

I left her hating myself. I drove from the one corner of the life I now lead - the contours of which could fit on a postage stamp - to the other, where at home I fed dinner to my three children. Those little people I love more than the pet dogs are the reason I work, breathe, occasionally sing and dance. Without them I'd only be singing and dancing.

They give my life meaning, the sentimentalists would say. But they also wear me down, and drive me insane with their whining, demands and tantrums.

Woody Allen, that filmmaking man with a dodgy reputation, once said: "It's no accomplishment to have or to raise children. Any fool can do it."

But if any fool can do it, why do so many of us find it so hard? Nobody has taught me how to manage my time and how to deal with petty lies, anxieties and the teaching of times tables I never learnt.

But let me not carry on in "the pissed-parent" genre for too long. It is, after all, as common as food stains on my blouse. So common that one can almost take comfort from the universality of the experience.

Take, for example, Jennifer Senior's book All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood. I haven't read it (parenting; time trouble), but the reviews say Senior spoke to parents to examine "what it means to be a parent".

According to the New York Times, she supplements these interviews with research and insights from philosophy, psychology and social science reports.

Her (unsurprising) finding is: "Raising children is terribly hard work, often thankless and mind-numbing, and yet the most rapturous experience available to adults."

Parenting, we know, sometimes gives us incredible joy. We lose ourselves in wonderful moments of silliness. Loving and tending to our children gives us a sense of community and connectedness.

The little pockets of joy are the reasons we tolerate our children. But mostly they drive us mad.

Here is the thing. It's a paradox. We love them. But they don't make us happier than people who don't have any. (Except maybe when we're old and have the absence of our children to complain about.)

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