Why have Children (12 of 28)

There are a lot of people around me having children. These kinds of life changing events seem to come in large batches, I've noticed. For a period of time, people are all graduating/landing their first career job. Then everyone is getting engaged, followed by the obvious marriage, and then finally it's children. I seem to be surrounded in that cloud for the moment.
While I was giving birth to something a little more nasty in the bathroom, I started to ponder the reasons of why people have children. Of course there's the whole need to propagate the human race sort of reason. We've been doing it for a long time, and I don't see that ending anytime soon. Then I couldn't help but wonder if we do it because having children is something that is expected of us. In a way, it's a type of brainwashing.
From the time we're very young, we're instilled with the notions of the previously mentioned life steps that we must go through. Girls have their dolls, and the boys have their manly toys (building tools, cars, war toys, etc). We play house. That's right, we become Jr. Families. Then in 15 - 25 years we take all that practice and apply it, just like we're supposed to. Life carries on.
We are lead to believe that getting married and having children will bring joy to our lives. And for some, I believe joy is brought to their lives with the induction of the little ones into their now grown up families. On the other hand, there are parents who shouldn't have been parents to begin with, and don't give their offspring the proper attention and direction they need. The cause of this.. usually "the accident" followed by the guilt of not wanting to abort. The whole propagation process fills all areas of the spectrum.

Myself, I don't know if I'll have children. No hard commitments have been made by TheWife™ and I either way. I don't want to have children because "we're running out of time." If we have children, I want to make sure it's for the right reasons, namely that it is something we want to take the full responsibility of doing, and not because it's expected. Then again, me taking this stance is probably something that isn't unanticipated.

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