It's time to put up or shut up. Why we should stop complaining about the emotional and financial cost of bringing up children and start enjoying them Kathryn Holmquist
There's not a parent alive who hasn't guiltily wondered what it would be like to be a THINKER (two high incomes, no kids, early retirement). Instead of worrying about how to balance children and work, THINKERS worry about how to balance work and personal fulfilment, aching for the time when they can get a sabbatical to go write "the novel" or go hang-gliding in Peru.
The THINKERS - and their pre-retirement form, DINKIES (double income, no kids) resent us, and we parents resent them. They resent us for demanding family-friendly workplaces and taking maternity and parental leave, while they have to stay behind in the workplace to pick up the pieces. We resent them for allegedly not understanding the demands of combining work and family life. I'm coming around to the view that they're a lot more understanding than we are.
We parents are to blame for this conflict and I'm beginning to wonder how the child-free have put up with us at all. Because, secretly, many of us don't just resent the childless, we resent having children at all. We do nothing but complain about it, and before you letter writers accuse me of being hypocritical, I'll admit that I'm as guilty of this as anyone.
This culture of parental complaint makes us give out about children that won't sleep at night, we complain because their Playstations and Nike leisure wear cost so much, we complain that we can't let our children out of our sight, then we complain that our children won't leave home. Then, when they finally do leave, we complain that our children expect us to remortgage our houses so that they can get a leg-up on the property ladder.
I've suddenly realised that I'm fed up with bonding with other mothers over war stories of getting up at 5 a.m. to make a costume for the school play, while a deadline loomed. And I'm sick and tired of reading books like Alison Pearson's I don't know how she does it, where the mother is portrayed as a martyr in her attempts to balance a high-flying job in the financial sector with the demands of young children, a husband and an e-mail lover.
We follow the lives of parents like actress and businesswoman Sadie Frost, almost expecting them to collapse under the pressure of fame and career. I feel nothing but sympathy for Sadie Frost, who has been hospitalised after collapsing under the pressure of life.
The mother of four has suffered pressures on her marriage, following an incident at a London party where one of her children picked an Ecstasy tablet off the floor and ate it. Frost's husband, Jude Law, who spends a lot of time on film sets, where, as well we know, real life doesn't matter, must be feeling harried and confused to come home to a wife who has allegedly made a suicide attempt.
This glamorous couple, who boasted that they looked after their children without the benefit of nannies, have hit the rocks. My advice: Never boast about not having a nanny. All parents need help. No one person can do it all. For our own survival, we need to make sure that we have the support required, even if that means giving up holidays so that you can afford a cleaner or a childminder.
All of us who have fallen into the "do it all" trap, would surely want to give Sadie a hug and tell her that nobody's perfect - not us and not our partners. It can take a collapse to learn that lesson. The do-it-all culture is doing none of us any favours.
What it's really about is choosing what you want, and celebrating what you have. We have children because we want them, yet the PR we're sending out would put anyone off having children.
WHILE there may still be a few feckless people who get pregnant because they missed biology class, the truth is that contraception has made children a lifestyle choice. Many more people are rejecting this choice. The average fertility rate in Europe is now 1.5 children - and the Irish have fallen behind the French for this first time. If the trend continues, the population of Europe will drop from 375 million to 75 million by 2200. Worldwide, population has fallen below replacement level.
The European Foundation, at an international conference I attended last week, warned that the greying European population will soon find itself working past traditional retirement age as a dwindling number of children ie future taxpayers are unable to support pension payments. Being a THINKER will become obsolete, as the economy will depend on people remaining in the workplace as long as possible.
So maybe we parents should start improving our PR. The other day, doing the shopping, I passed by one of those kiddie hair salons. Through the window I could see two parents, whose faces had expressions which I can only describe as rapture. Their joy and fascination in watching their toddler have his first hair-cut was so evident on their faces, that they could have been seeing a glimpse of heaven.
This is why we have children. Seeing them grow, feeling their little hands clutched in ours, sitting cuddled up with them on the sofa. The need to have children is instinctive for many of us. The benefits of having children are spiritual and emotional, rather than material.So why are we always complaining about the material disadvantages?
The cost of rearing one child has been estimated at between €150,000 and €500,000, depending on which survey you read. The cost of childcare and education figure strongly in the upper figure. The higher the expectations for your child - and for yourself - the more money you spend rearing that child. On top of this cost, having children is perceived to limit a woman's earning power. The "mommy tax" was estimated by the British government to be anything between £100,000 and one million pounds sterling.
This gets you thinking. How many best-selling female novelists can you name who have children (other than Alison Pearson)? (Answers on a postcard, please.)
But look at this another way. We don't have to buy the Nike runners and the Playstations. We don't have to write the novels. And we don't have to take two holidays a year. If the child-free prefer holidays and novel-writing to having children, good luck to them. Isn't that a reasonable choice? What's got me thinking about this is a new book, What are children for? by Laurie Taylor and Matthew Taylor, a father and son (Short Books, £6.99).
They believe that the reason parents are complaining so much, is that we parents have lost our sense of the value of children. We have become so materialistic that we see them as stresses and strains, rather than blessings. And that's our fault - and nobody else's. So let's stop complaining and look to our own values.
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NOT SUCH A BAD EXAMPLE.... David Harvey sent me a copy of his book on celebrity stalkers, which I skimmed with a glass of Chardonnay at the weekend. The most shocking revelation, to me, was what a good girl Madonna had always been. Accustomed to her bad-girl image, I had never realised that she was a straight-A student, who was allowed to leave high school early to pursue a scholarship as a dancer at the University of Michigan.
She was accepted into the reknown Alvin Ailey dance troupe, among others, and that's no mean feat. Yes, she lived in a tiny apartment on no money in New York doing whatever she could to scrape a living, but didn't we all? This girl is a high achiever and always has been. So tell your teenagers, that success really is 99 per cent hard work.
Television programmes such as Pop Idol and Fame Academy may give the impression that fairy tales can happen, but in real life the fairy princesses are actually workaholics with talent and brains to burn.
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THE POWER OF TELEVISION: Just when you thought you had had your fill of Britney ("Barbie") Spears and her "Colin Farrell's a great kisser" antics, her little sister, Jamie, has arrived on the scene to boost the nausea quotient. Jamie's new comedy show on Nickelodeon is like Barbie's little sister Shelly on speed.
The ethos is that children are obnoxious little creeps who will do anything to undermine the adult world and everything it stands for. Which means that Jamie's show is basically a reinvention of The Amanda Show - where children are obnoxious little creeps who will do anything to undermine the adult world and everything it stands for.
A session or two watching either Jamie or Amanda, will turn your children (temporarily, one hopes) into obnoxious little creeps who will do anything to undermine the adult world and everything it stands for. Yet another reason to grab the TV remote control and tune your TV - and your kids - out from Nickelodeon.
Except that my kids adore Jamie, and I haven't got the heart. What am I like?
