"Mom, she's a nice girl. If you ruin this for me, I'll punch your f%$#king heart out"
- George Seagal to Ruth Gordon in Where's Papa?

November 2001

Oh! Am I gonna catch hell for this!!!?

It's gone too far. Really, it has.

I'd like to think of myself as being a student of the human condition. The question that I really want answered is: What happens to a woman's mental facilities the moment they give birth. It has to be some kind of weird physiological change that turns the brain into strawberry gelatin. I really can't reconcile it any other way. I have seen perfectly rational women with a sound intellect mentally do a 180 degree turn in reasoning.

It's sad really. They need your help. So, please give to the mentally disadvantaged mother's fund. Your dollars could make a difference. (This is not a real cause for those of you easily prone to giving to charities.)

I think the entire problem starts during the labor process. It only stands to reason. Twelve hours of excruciating pain caused by the act of attempting to squeeze something the size of a watermelon out a hole the size of a prune. (This is not slander toward fruit for those of you who hold fruit in high regard.) Also the very location of this hole happens to be at the most sensitive spot of a woman's body. I've heard stories of torture victims who eventually shut down their mental pain centers and create their own reality in the process. It's the mind's way of dealing with a heavy trauma. Perhaps this is a factor to the eventual breakdown.

These women seem to have forgotten that there is a whole section of the world that exists outside of child rearing.

There are many women I know that have been permanently affected by this change. I know, I know, it's the maternal instinct coming into play here, right?. I think it goes beyond this. There is a difference between being a mother, life giver, and caretaker and having your life centered around one human being. It's just not healthy. A woman - a human being - should have some interests outside of child rearing. Granted, child rearing takes up a good amount of time, but for the moment I am going to assume that in a normal modern relationship parents elected to have children. They made the choice knowingly and are getting what they asked for. They have decided that their own emotional, educational, and developmental phase of their life is over and have shut them down in favor of dedicating their lives to the upbringing of an individual. Once again - THEY ASKED FOR IT. Don't come crying to me.

My apologies to those of you readers who found yourselves "in the family way" and planned parenthood was not an option. Truly, I don't mean to offend that group. There are circumstances beyond your control and I have seen unexpected parents be no less than perfect - mixing love, care, family values, and friendship with discipline, lessons of self reliance, and independence. If you are one of these people, my hat is off to you. You truly are the hope of tomorrow.

For everyone else who falls into the overindulgent, needs a life, "the sun rises and sets on my spawn", "world revolves around your child", "little Jimmy made the honor roll, again", parents - PLEASE - spare me the details. My tolerance in these matters goes about 15 to 20 minutes, and then the urge to puke becomes uncontrollable. It's good to appreciate the accomplishments of your children and to have pride - but get a grip. I'll be the first one to ask about someone's grandkids or a new parent's progress because despite my ranting - IT IS IMPORTANT. It is also good to acknowledge that a new parent is taking some amount of pride in not only their parenting skills but also in their child's ability to grow, adapt, and learn.

I think one of the best lines regarding this subject of parenthood comes from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. Where Indy (Harrison Ford) is talking with his archeologist father (Sean Connery) about how they never talked while he was growing up. Connery says that he was the perfect father. He was never in his business and he taught him the gift of self reliance. Of course, Indy's slant on the situation was that his father thought more of people who had been dead for thousands of years that lived in another country were more important than he was. Personally, I think Connery was right. My father and mother granted me a great amount of independence when I was a child. It didn't mean that they weren't there but at the same time I was able to cultivate a sense of self reliance. I learned to think without a safety net and make my own "Plan B". I really don't think that today's kids are getting that.

Here's a perfect example. There is a boy who lives in our development. My wife and I call him "Mama's Boy". It's not that the kid cries for his mother all of the time or that he is some kind of baby. It's that his mother 90% of the time is in line of sight. I'll never forget the time my wife and I were driving out of the development and saw "Mama's boy" near the exit. I commented to my wife, "I wonder where Mom is?". Sure enough, her car was slowly coming around the corner, searching for her delinquent son. The kid is approximately 12. The mental illness that is being cultivated will last the rest of his life. I believe there is truly a sociopath in the making here.

I know another mother who seems to use her child to consistently make herself the center of attention. Once again - it's enough to make me puke. To hear her gripe about how tired she is and how much work is involved with raising a baby, you'd think she was being tortured. I personally know the parents and know that the father works just as hard in his nonprofessional life as he does in his professional life in the upbringing of his child. He seems to be the voice of sanity in the relationship. They made the conscious decision to have a child. And he takes his responsibility seriously. I see them play with their daughter happily. He works extra hard to make certain that her future will be happy and well provided for. His social life is pretty much nonexistent outside of his nuclear family. Yet, he rarely complains. This should be a labor of love not an excuse to make others know your own self importance and daily sacrifice. The mother has taken extra care to make certain that she and her daughter should be the center of attention in any given situation. It's just plain wrong to do that.

I'm pretty sure that as the oldest child, I've never been the justification for my mother's self importance. I'm pretty sure that my accomplishments were not bantered about in the way this mother keeps her child. (Then again, I may have never done anything to brag about. I kept out of jail and didn't kill anyone. So far, that's my prime accomplishment.) My concern is what happens to the child in a couple of years. Will she still be the means of keeping a spotlight on this woman or will another innocent life be brought into this world to keep this woman's reason for being intact? In the event of the former situation, what kind of brat does that make? The latter case would be where the child's entire world comes to a screeching halt because another child has entered the limelight. This child coming into the stark reality that she is no longer the apple of her mother's eye may cause real damage down the line.

You'd be surprised what kind of psychological backpedaling mothers can come up with to justify a child's eventual emotional and psychological problems later in life. "I should have breast fed." "He was colicky." "He was a bed wetter" "I had too many strawberries during the pregnancy" "His biorhythms were off." They will never own up to it. Let me remind you mothers, when you started this project, these kids were blank slates. They are what you and other environmental factors made. I would hate to see the justification for a child's mental illness blamed on the tides. Face it ladies, sometimes, it's your fault.

My wife and I are not having children. There I said it. WE ARE NOT HAVING CHILDREN. Most of the time when an adult says that, they are treated like some kind of anomaly. The decision not to procreate really should not be shunned. There is enough starvation in this world, why should I add to the problem? Hey, I have dogs and I'm happy with that. My wife is not a "child person". She has used the term "parasite" more than once. I'm not at that extreme. At one point, I really wanted a child. Now, as I get older, I see what friends and relatives go through and now I'm happy with the choice that my wife and I have made. And, although I see the rewards and joy these parents have, I also see the downsides as well. I understand that my grandfather had brothers so the responsibility for me to carry on the family name does not rest on my shoulders so my conscience is cleared of that*. I think the only regret I have is not being able to pass along what I've learned in my life to another. I have also discovered that there are other ways of doing that without bringing an additional life into this world or war, pestilence, disease, and famine. Who knows? My wife and I may eventually adopt an older child down the road. But for now, my wife is 36 and I am 35. I don't see kids in the near future and the prospect of a Downs Syndrome child is not something I am ready for.**

I can't speak of what it's like to be a parent. However, it's not like they have a certification program to become one either. Parents use their own life experience and whatever advice they get from Dr. Spock. Parents can only do so much in shaping a child's persona but at the same time, if they do too much; the child will not grow and learn on its own. The natural instinct for a mother is to protect their child from harm. Yet, at the same time there is also a time for mother birds to throw their babies from the nest to see if they can fly. There are special moments in a child life that parents should be - no, MUST BE - a part of. The first steps, the first word, riding a bike on their own, his first school play. These are all important - for the child needs to know that his parents care. Without that care, comes delinquency and alienation. It's part of the necessary developmental process.

Children require love and support - not coddling. Children are made of flesh and bone - not bone china. A child will learn more from their failures than their successes and it's the parents job to sometimes stand back and let them fail. When that failure comes it is also a parent's job to ask, "What did you learn from this?" - not "What were you thinking?!!"

Love your children. Don't spoil them. Encourage independence but don't be indifferent to what's going on in their life. Parents should be parents not "big brothers".

Parenting is a double-edged sword. Sometimes you'll never know whether you did the right thing, and most of the time you'll know you did the wrong one. If you give your kids a good foundation in right and wrong, they'll make their own decisions and you proud on their own.

*- I am the oldest of four children. I have three sisters and no brothers. My father is an only child. Were it not for the fact that my paternal grandfather had brothers, the family name would die with me.

**- From what I remember of high school biology, after age 35, the risk of having a Downs Syndrome baby increases as the spindle fibers weaken during the process of mitosis. It's not that I have anything against Downs Syndrome kids. I'm just not ready for that kind of responisbility.