1. Curiosity: Go ahead and see what you can whip up. Drift into a hormone-induced fog thinking how great it would be to have a baby with all the combined charm of you and your sweetie. Realistically, that baby is just as likely to exercise its genetic options and come up with a nice mix of Cousin Fred and and Aunt Myrtle’s worst traits.
2. Karma. You have to “pay for your raising.” I can’t tell you how many times my mom wished “fifteen kids who act just like you” on me. What a horrible thing to curse a kid with! The woman had no conscience! Nothing makes you forgive your parents’ horrendous mistakes like screwing up your own kids.
3. Kids keep you humble. Nobody knows more about raising kids than folks who’ve never had one. There is no surer way to ensure your kid will humiliate you on a regular basis than to criticize somebody else’s kid. Never, never, never say, “my kid wouldn’t do that.” They are probably doing it right then on the six o’clock news.
4. Budgeting is no problem once you have kids. Except for rent, groceries, and utilities, and minimal clothes for yourself, everything goes for kid expenses. It will be many years before you have to bother yourself about fancy cars, entertainment, vacation, savings, or investments.
5. Educational benefits. I never realized how little I knew until my first night home with a new baby. Nothing I did worked. Though child care looked simple enough, nothing I’d ever done prepared me for the challenge. As they grew older, my incompetence grew exponentially. By the time they were teenagers, I barely had enough functioning brain cells to tie my shoes. Thank God, a few years after they left home, I seemed to be functioning moderately well. It’s amazing how children in the home makes parental IQs plummet.
6. Hopefully, they get grown and give you beautiful, well-behaved grandchildren, asking you to babysit only on rare occasions.
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