I think I’ve linked it here before, so excuse me, but I’ve told people who asked for an opinion to read The Referendum and decide which side of the coin feels more natural to them. I think about that short article a lot when I’m with my kids.
I didn’t have kids until my mid-30’s and I’m still early in the process, with tons to learn, but I think his descriptions of both life before kids and after kids are pretty humorous and accurate. A couple favorite paragraphs…
I may be exceptionally conscious of the Referendum because my life is so different from most of my cohort’s; at 42 I’ve never been married and don’t want kids. I recently had dinner with some old friends, a couple with two small children, and when I told them about my typical Saturday in New York City — doing the Times crossword, stopping off at a local flea market, maybe biking across the Brooklyn Bridge — they looked at me like I was describing my battles with the fierce and elusive Squid-Men among the moons of Neptune. The obscene wealth of free time at my command must’ve seemed unimaginably exotic to them, since their next thousand Saturdays are already booked.
and
Most of my married friends now have children, the rewards of which appear to be exclusively intangible and, like the mysteries of some gnostic sect, incommunicable to outsiders. In fact it seems from the outside as if these people have joined a dubious cult: they claim to be much happier and more fulfilled than ever before, even though they live in conditions of appalling filth and degradation, deprived of the most basic freedoms and dignity, and owe unquestioning obedience to a capricious and demented master.
Whenever my 3-year-old yells “Papa, come wipe my butt!” from the bathroom I think of that last sentence. Whenever she tells me she loves me “big much” or learns something new I’ve been working with her on, I wonder how I would communicate those rewards.