Contemplating Fatherhood
How responsible are we when we decide to have children?
You are not having a baby.
When people announce that they are becoming fathers or mothers, they often say “I’m having a baby.” That’s sort of true, they are, after all, giving birth to a baby. But it’s not the full story.
That baby is a human being. You are giving birth to another human being — a person that may live beyond 100. A human being that will likely be 18 years old and get drunk; a human being that may well be bullied; that will likely have a complex about an aspect of how they look; a human being that will produce so much CO2 in their lifetime that it will likely outweigh the Eiffel Tower; a human being that will be ill many times in their lives; a human being that will surely suffer and cry; a human being that will get depressed; a human being that will argue with you and will likely leave you to start their own family. That human being will — hopefully — live to old age and worry about time’s effects on their body, and will likely live to the day that you die and suffer for it. That human being will also die.
It’s not as straightforward as “having a baby” is it? When I consider fatherhood I consider this. I don’t think only of a delightful miniature human being bouncing on my knee, I think of a human being in its…
