Excerpt

50 Reasons Not to Have Kids comes from the trenches from a full-time single dad. Its not a book about how bad kids are. Its about how poorly prepared we are for the job of bringing them up. It dispels the myth that life with children is more fulfilling than a life without children.

The trials and tribulations with kids in this generation are unlike anything parents have had to deal with before. A happy family is like a mirage. You keep thinking you see it, and struggle to attain it, but usually just find more hot sand. And if you do reach this oasis drink up, savor it, because it will dry up quickly.

You'll quickly be back on your journey through a scorching, endless terrain of colic, teething, daycare, school, babysitters, broken bones, illness, disease, sex, drugs, alcohol, driving, disrespect, broken hearts, and all the unexpected things that an ever-changing life will bring.

During this heroic journey of parenthood, you can expect to carry the burdens, suffer through the setbacks and have your advice regularly ignored, only to be blamed for everything that goes wrong.

Our children are evolving as fast as our world is. They question more, know more, and demand more. Forget about Do as I say, not as I do. It may have worked for your parents, but it will not work for you.

We have children expecting them to fill our hearts with love. But are we willing to fill our childrens lives with our time? Forget about this quality time B.S. Thats just a form of absolution for parents to ease the guilt. Children need both! Quality AND quantity. A baby should be expected to fill its diaper, not your heart.

Unfortunately, we have made it socially acceptable to allow others to raise our children, by allowing strangers to care for them as early as a few months old. Children today are placed in daycare when they need us most deprived of the time, attention, and love that is vital in the early years of life, that can only come from a parent. If we wont sacrifice for our children during their most tender years, why should we expect them to sacrifice for us during our most fragile years?

Having a child in America today is often viewed as a special gift that God, with his infinite wisdom, has bestowed upon us. Although we seldom let God choose when or if we should have one. Many forms of birth control are used to prevent pregnancy or terminate it when it happens. And if we dont receive this gift, we use all kinds of artificial means to make it happen.

So much for Gods infinite wisdom! The point is, making a baby is not a gift from God, any more so than a rainy day is. Its an instinctive and simple biological function that requires no skill or training. All humans and animals can procreate. Even the lowest form of life instinctively procreates. God or nature, whichever you choose to believe, made it this way.

We have been given a mind with the ability to do the right thing, not just the instinctive thing. We can put thought and reason into our decision to procreate. We should also consider potential risks for both the child and parents. And we must rationally evaluate our ability to provide physically, emotionally, and financially for the needs of a child for at least 18 years.

Having a child is viewed as something we all MUST do in order to have a fulfilling life. But a happy family which fills your inner needs exists only briefly, and is rarely as satisfying as in your imagination. We often allow wonderful illusions of a joyful family life to overshadow reason and logic. This illusion makes it easy to ignore our own emotional emptiness, which will affect this child as surely as genetics will.

For many people, children have become the remedy of choice to cure loneliness. A child may initially make the feeling of loneliness disappear from your life. But I think we all know that disappearing is just magic.., its still there somewhere. And when you look behind the curtain, youll probably find your child has it. The way happy people spread happiness, and optimistic people spread optimism.., lonely people spread loneliness.

Your child will be molded by your fears, unlived dreams, dysfunction and unhappiness. Parents almost always dump their emotional pain onto their children. We hide it from co-workers and do our best to keep our friends from seeing it. But we pour it on our kids. Like a corrosive acid it continues to emotionally eat away at our children throughout their lives, and probably long after were gone.

You can live your life to its potential by reaching for your own dreams, instead of creating another life to find them for you. You can start a business, discover the artist within yourself, or choose a career that makes a positive difference in society. Be a mother or father to all children by being an advocate for childrens issues, and making the world a better place for them to live.

Even if you still choose to have a child, this book can help. Ive stepped in most of the parental bear traps along the journey of child rearing. My experiences may help you avoid some of them. Prospective parents should be aware of the down-side to having children. Theres already plenty of voice to the upside.

Theres a Chinese proverb, A wise man learns from experience. A wiser man learns from the experience of others.

Making a baby is not a sacred event raising a child is. You dont just have a baby you have a toddler and a teenager. A cute baby is oh so brief a challenging child lasts a long time. 50 Reasons Not to Have Kids is not simply a snapshot of the surface, its a window into the soul of parenting.