At 11:41 AM 7/14/97, Laura Wigod wrote:
>I've always wanted a large family, largely
>(haha), I believe, because of the horrificly abusive nightmarish violent
>childhood I had. One of the (many) things that got me through it was
>fantasizing about the kind of parent _I_ was going to be, and, which, I can
>say, most happily, I now am.
(snip)
>Anyway, I just wanted to point out that the decision to have more children
>goes beyond social, cultural and economic reasons and encompasses the
>deeply personal.
Agreed, of course; but I have to add that the deeply personal reasons can
also be negative in both cause and effect (obviously not the case for you,
thank gods). I am thinking of a young woman I know who grew up with an
emotionally and pyschologically abusive and manipulative mother, and who
for many years moaned about her "baby-lust", which she herself understood
to be an expression of a desire similar to yours, to give some kids the
great childhood that she had been deprived of.
However, it was quite clear to virtually everyone around her (although not
to her in any respect) that she had come out of her own childhood experience
with such a fear-driven drive to control everything and everyone around
her that it seemed virtually certain that instead -- if she had children --
she would duplicate, more or less, the miserable situation in which she
had grown up, this time as the mom instead of the kid.
Fortunately, various economic and personal factors have since brought her
around to deciding that she hasn't the resources to bear and raise a child,
and she has thrown off this obsession and plunged instead into her
career, with results that delight her and make all who know her proud and
pleased on her behalf.
In other words, as I guess everyone who thinks at all knows by now, This
Field Is Mined; Always Proceed With Caution! You found a path. Others
who set out with similar intent can wreck themselves and those they love.
Of course, it's perfectly possible that we were all wrong, and that if she
had had a baby after all the experience would have led her to grow out of
the worst of the ruts that her own bad experience had left in her soul.
Suzy
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:27 PDT