Kids. Why’d it have to be kids?
- 06.14.10
- Fatherhood, childfree, children, parenthood
- No Comments
I wasn’t going to have kids. No way, no how. I told my girlfriends that: You want kids? Look elsewhere. I told my wife, back when we were just dating, the same thing: I’m the last of my line, baby. You see this fine genetic material? I’m taking it with me.
So how in Hell did this happen?:
Do you see the fear in that poor bastard’s eyes? He knows something important has just changed in his life, but he’s not entirely sure what or how.
Actually, there was a bit of a negotiation. After I moved into my then-wife-to-be’s house, she told me that she’d reconsidered her previous OK-ness with my no-procreation stance, and she was now un-OK with the idea.
After discussion, it was clear that having kids was more important to her than not having kids was to me. It was also, frankly, clear to me that I was between jobs, no longer had my name on a lease, and lacked much in the way of negotiating leverage.
Oh, you were looking for a magical transformation, weren’t you? Uh uh. That’s not the way it happened. In fact, just as soon as my wife was sufficiently recovered from giving birth to our son that I could be laid-up myself for a few days, I raced out and got myself snipped.
Oh, and that’s a story in itself. For now, let’s just say I was a captive audience.
So that’s it in a nutshell. From childfree to father through negotiation, a balance of competing priorities, and a relatively weak bargaining position. Magical, ain’t it?
Oh, don’t get so choked up. Maybe this will make you feel better:
Hey! I never said he wasn’t an amazing kid.
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