I don’t have any children. I do have two adult stepdaughters, and I love them very much. I also have a nephew, two nieces, and two step grandsons whom I love very much. I have never met my sister’s kids because she and I don’t speak, but I love them as well. Although I don’t have kids, I love kids. I love learning from them and I love their wonder and awe that they haven’t yet grown out of. I love that they sometimes just start singing a made up song. I love that they skip and jump and play. I love that they are fascinated by bugs and dirt and mud and leaf piles. I love that they have incredible imaginations and can make up their own games and their own stories and their own imaginary friends. I love that they know what they like to eat and they don’t make any bones about it. I love that they dream big and they love bigger. It isn’t difficult to keep kids entertained and they love to learn new things and tell you all about what they learned. As much as I love kids, I made a conscious decision to refrain from having kids of my own.
I never felt called to be a father. I know our plans don’t always fall into place the way we’d like them to, and I know some people have children they didn’t exactly plan for. I also know some people wish to have kids but haven’t yet been able to. I understand there can be heartache for many people surrounding issues of childbearing. But when I was younger, I did some discernment and decided that it would probably be best if I left the child-rearing to other, more qualified people. If you’re a parent, then you know it’s hard to be a parent. It’s very demanding. All of those qualities I described about children can easily cross a line from adorable to annoying. Singing a cute song can quickly turn into a headache-inducing racket. Bugs and dirt and mud and leaves can magically end up inside the house and on clothing, where they don’t belong. Knowing what they want to eat can quickly become a frustrating game of figuring out whether we ought to pair macaroni and cheese or buttered noodles with our chicken nuggets tonight. And as frustrating as it can be to raise children, how we respond to them will inevitably affect them for the rest of their lives.
I know my parents did their best. I know they loved me and I know they tried to make sure I had everything I needed. But they didn’t always manage to keep their cool, and they brought with them the lessons they learned from their own families of origin. I’ve mentioned my dad grew up in a shame-based household with lots of secrecy and hiding things. I never met my grandfather, but I assume he was a strict man who easily became agitated. I assume this because those are the same traits I see in my dad and his siblings. My mother was raised in a large Latter-day Saints family. She was one of 14 children in a household that saw my oldest cousin born before my youngest aunt. My Aunt Lucie, the oldest, was pregnant with her first child at the same time my grandmother was pregnant with Aunt Ardella, her last. Within LDS theology, women are encouraged to be passive and to allow men to make decisions. Put these together and you end up with my household: a passive mother and a father who was often focused on work and had a short temper.
Because Dad’s temper was so short, I often felt scared of him. He’d come home from work in a grumpy mood fairly frequently, and Mom would shush the kids and encourage us to go somewhere else so we didn’t bother him. Dad had his chair, his television, his remote control, his spot at the dinner table, and his drinking glass. You didn’t mess with those things. Dad always got to eat first, he always got the biggest slice of pizza, and he always got to watch what he wanted to watch when he wanted to watch it. The kids had a TV in a different room, but we usually fought over what we were going to watch. The three of us seldom agreed. Although I think I was a pretty well-behaved kid, when Dad was angry with me, I felt like I must be the worst kid alive.
What was the most frightening to me was that the intensity of Dad’s anger didn’t always match the offense. I remember one Christmas Eve when I was a child. We posed for a family photograph in front of the Christmas tree before midnight mass. Dad set the camera on the tripod and had us pose while leaving a spot for him. He set the timer and rushed to his place behind me. He said something I didn’t quite hear and I turned my head to look at him to ask him to repeat it. As my head was turned around, FLASH! The shutter clicked and the photo was ruined. “You idiot!” Dad yelled at me, stomping around the room. While I understand it was likely frustrating to him, I thought he overreacted. We could simply set the timer again and take another photo. What did the ruined frame cost? Maybe 30 cents? On another occasion, when I was maybe 4, we were having dinner at a family friend’s house. The family had a newborn baby. When the new mother got up to go into a different room, I became curious and followed her. When I opened the closed door, Dad scolded me and yelled at me. I felt not only tremendous shame, but tremendous humiliation and confusion. What on earth had I done? I really had no idea. All I knew was that I opened a door. I didn’t know what was on the other side. Of course, now I realize that the mother was breastfeeding her baby. However, this really could have been a teaching opportunity. It would have been much more kind to say something like, “when mommies have new babies, they need to feed them. And when mommies feed their babies, they sometimes need privacy.” Instead, I was left essentially going through life fearful of what might happen if I opened the wrong door. In my mind, that was all I had done.
I don’t think these things are my dad’s fault exactly. I do think it would be helpful for him to demonstrate a desire to communicate about them. By this point, so much time has passed that I likely will never reconcile with my sister. But healthy conversations in our youth likely could have saved that relationship as well. I don’t know my sister’s story, but I’m guessing she had similar experiences growing up. She and I never really got along and we likely will never get along in the future. My interactions with my father and with my sister were catalysts to make the decision to not have children. We all make mistakes and we all do things we wish we’d have done differently. I suspect these events are not even on my dad’s radar. He probably has no memory of them or an awareness of how they shaped me. And that’s perhaps the biggest problem.
In the Church, we are taught to make amends when we mess up. But doing that requires us to be aware of the times in our lives when we’ve messed up. And it isn’t comfortable to search our souls and think of the mistakes we’ve made. We like to think we’ve got it all together. We like to think we don’t make mistakes. And if we do make mistakes, we like to tell ourselves they’re not so bad. But like that little boy who walked into the bedroom when a new mommy was breastfeeding her baby, we can learn from our mistakes and try to get it right next time. That means we need people in our lives who can keep us accountable and it means we need to keep others accountable as well. We need to pay close attention to our own choices and actions. Our kids are so impressionable. They watch everything we do every day. They listen to the words we say. They mimic our behaviors. It is important for us to try our best to keep our cool around kids. And when we lose our cool, it is important to admit it and to apologize. And if we don’t think we can do those things or we’re not cut out for it, then it’s perfectly ok to discern that parenthood may not be for us.