Parenthood: Week 473 - Meaning In Family Before Kids And After

Parenthood is not essential to living a meaningful life and having children is not necessary to have a great marriage.   

I recently saw a post on Facebook talking about how having children shouldn't be called “starting a family.” The post was making the point that two married people are a family and that family can exist amongst friends and doesn’t require marriage. I agree with this 100% as someone married and has three children.  

People need different things in life, and people’s families look different. I remember driving home after we got Buffy and feeling like we were more of a family. It’s not like Diana and I weren’t a family with just the two of us, but seeing Buffy asleep in Diana’s lap made our family feel more complete. It’s not like we weren’t happy before we had Buffy, but I think we both sensed that we were missing something and found that in Buffy.  

There was a process when we decided to have a child. It’s too private to share here, but I will say that it took time and a lot of conversations. We both were committed to having children. That is something that we had talked about before we had married, but the timing was the point of discussion.  

I clearly remember a moment in the first month of Ollie’s life when Diana, Ollie, and Buffy were all asleep, looking at the three and feeling that we were a family. I felt so content and so at peace. I was grateful and proud.  

I’ve felt these moments through the years when we are all together. Sometimes it’s in a car ride or at a park when I can feel everyone’s presence and energy together at the same time. I’ve looked for this in my family, and I have found this feeling in my children and my wife.

I don’t think I lived a life without meaning when I didn’t have children. I worked hard to help children as a teacher, I was kind and supportive to my friends, and I did the best I could to be a positive partner to my wife and a good son to my parents. It’s not that life’s meaning doesn’t exist when you don’t have children; it’s just different.  

There are things about life that you can only understand by having children, and there are things that you can only understand about life by doing other things, like playing sports, being a doctor, and other things that provide unique life experiences.  

I feel like people put too much emphasis on having children. This speaks to the very primitive part of our nature, but it also reflects patriarchal viewpoints about the centrality of having children that subjugate women. Religious dogma that placed value on women based on whether they have children is oppressive and wrong.    

I spend working days with children, and I come home to children, which is the life I chose. It’s a challenging life, an exhausting life, but it’s my life. I feel grateful to be part of such a wonderful family. My family is large than some and louder than many, and it’s just one example of many of what it means to be a family.