Ask Amy: Married couple ponders parenthood
Dear Amy: My husband and I are in our mid-30’s. We’ve been together for 10 years. During the course of our marriage, we have traveled a lot and have had some wonderful adventures.
We’ve been talking about whether we should have children, and, true to our personalities, we’ve been doing a lot of research about what it is like to be parents.
Honestly, a lot of what we’ve read and heard makes parenthood sound fairly awful, like an exhausting and depleting journey with no guaranteed happy ending.
We’re really undecided and are looking for reasons to become parents.
We’ve asked a lot of other people. Now we’re asking you.
Can you help?
– Undecided
Dear Undecided: I think this may be one of those cases where, “If you have to ask, don’t do it.”
I can affirm that parenthood is exhausting (especially in the early days). Being a parent is also extremely depleting, expensive, and occasionally heartbreaking and soul-sucking (especially in the teen years).
And … although parenting doesn’t have a “stop date,” it also seems over all too fast – because for many parents, the experiences in between the exhausting, frustrating, frightening, and depleting periods are made of spun gold.
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