Perri Nelson's Website 

On being a parent

Adults know the mechanics of the process. Even adolescents know them. In fact there's a serious effort being made to even ensure that prepubescent children know them.

Becoming a parent is incredibly easy. It doesn't take a great deal of intelligence or planning. It doesn't even require great skill at interpersonal relationships. It also doesn't require personal responsibility or maturity. All it really requires is that two people of opposite sexes give in to their animal urges without regard for the consequences and it's likely that two new parents will be created.

Have you ever heard the expression "too stupid to breed"? Would that that were actually the case. How about the expression "children having children"? Isn't that one truly a shame?

I can't give you any statistics, but I'd be willing to bet that the majority of children born in the United States are born "out of wedlock". We've come to accept it as normal. A single parent "family" is often the norm these days.

In the vast majority of those cases it's probably the mother that is the only parent. The father either doesn't know about the child, or doesn't care. If the father does know about the child he's often abdicated his responsibilities and he's long gone.

Being a single parent can put an incredible burden on anyone. At least it can upon anyone that chooses to take responsibility for their child. For single parents that don't take the responsibility for their child other burdens will present themselves soon enough.

The burdens the child will have to bear can even be more onerous.

It doesn't have to be that way.

Single parenthood used to be pretty rare. To be an unwed mother once carried a stigma that was shameful and difficult to overcome.

We didn't teach children how to make babies back then. Instead we waited until they had developed emotional and physical maturity to introduce them to the concept. We also taught them to be responsible and how to avoid becoming parents before they were ready to take on the responsibility.

Those were the days when a young man had to ask the pharmacist or store owner for condoms because they were kept behind the counter. Being forced to ask for them was embarrassing, and might even have led a young man to reconsider engaging in premarital sex.

In those days a girl that became pregnant was looked upon as a harlot or a slut. Her reputation could be ruined and she might never be able to find a "good" man if she was rumored to be "sleeping around".

Yes, there were still unwed teenage mothers in those days. There weren't nearly as many as we have these days though.

Today those are the misplaced attitudes of "moralists" or religious nuts. Teaching children "abstinence" is looked upon as misguided because "they're going to do it anyway". Never mind that when it was taught in the past it worked. These days, children are taught how to engage in sex, and it's encouraged by educators, by television and the like.

Today, we see commercials on television for Viagra, Levitra, Cialis and other medications to treat erectile dysfunction. Some of these ads may seem to be tastefully done, but others seem to be portraying the attitude that casual sex with strangers is the accepted norm.

We also see commercials on television for condoms, like the recent "Trojan's" commercial. You know the one I'm talking about, the scene opens with a bar full of pigs and one pig leaves a conversation with a woman. The pig goes to a condom dispenser on the wall and buys a condom. Suddenly it's a man and not a pig. The commercial ends with the word "Evolve" on screen.

This sort of thing was never acceptable on television in the days when I was growing up. The implication that to be evolved you have to go to bars and have casual sex with whatever women you meet would have been offensive, even if you used a condom.

Condom's do do more than prevent pregnancy, although they're not completely effective at that. They also help to prevent venereal diseases. They're still not completely effective at that either.

Other forms of birth control are also advertised on television. Some of them are being advertised not just because they prevent unwanted pregnancies, but because they also suppress menstruation. Apparently it's just too traumatic to live the way that we evolved (since it's not acceptable to say the way that God made us).

Birth control pills used to be somewhat difficult for a girl to obtain. Now they're being distributed in elementary schools. It's amazing. An eleven year old girl can get a pill that is loaded with hormones that will affect her body's development because of a mythical "right to privacy", yet she can be expelled for bringing Midol to school.

The problem with birth control pills (at least from society's current point of view) is that they don't prevent venereal diseases at all. So, if our children don't learn how to cover a cucumber with a latex balloon, they need to "be careful". And so we have commercials that tell us how important being careful is. That's right, if you have herpes, Valtrex is the answer!

Is it any wonder with the messages sent to children these days that so many children are having children of their own? Is it any wonder that some estimates place the number of abortions since Roe v. Wade at over 48,000,000? I don't know if that number is in any way accurate, but I think it's a safe bet that the number is definitely well into the millions.

Morality is so passé these days. It's simply wrong to expect people to act responsibly and avoid the problems that are associated with premarital or extramarital sex. In fact the very idea that sex should be reserved for marriage is so old fashioned.

And so it is that it's so incredibly easy to become a parent. Thus we find ourselves in a world where parents can't be bothered with personal responsibility, let alone the responsibility for their child. Thus we find ourselves in a world where it's necessary to allow a woman to "drop off" her newborn at a hospital, "no questions asked" simply to avoid finding yet another dead baby in a dumpster.

Yet not all parents abandon their responsibility in this way. There are literally millions of parents that have accepted their responsibility to raise their children. There are literally millions of parents that have thought it through and deliberately chosen to be parents.

For these parents the joys and rewards of parenting can be incalculable. I can't tell you what a joy it is to see my granddaughter smile. It's difficult to express how proud I can be of my son when he works hard and sees the rewards.

The pain of being a parent is also incalculable. You don't want to know about the disappointments I've had when my children make poor choices. You don't want to hear about the pain I feel when they have to suffer the consequences of those choices.

My older son is facing some of those consequences in his life now. He's an adult now, but it's still painful to watch. No, I'm not going to tell you more. It's his problem and mine. Nobody else needs to know until he decides to tell his own tale.

Having children is full of both joy and sorrow. It's worth it to me, although sometimes it's hard too. The joy is worth all of the pain though.

At least it will be if my wife and I can keep "the village's hands" off of them.

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