Considering Parenting

CHAPTER 14

AMANDA DUFFY

Are Children In the Future For You?

Children Need Most Of Our Time

Devotion – are you ready to spend every day and night with your child?

Finances – are you financially stable?

Medical Encounters – are you able to care for your child if they are ill?

Intense – are you ready to completely change your lifestyle to provide the best lifestyle for your child?

Less Personal Freedom – are you ready to give up most of your free time?

Influences on The Choice of Parenting

Family pressure – Your parents may have other friends whom want to be grandparents together, sisters may want to be aunties and brothers may want to be Uncles, seriously pressuring their family member to conceive

Peer pressure – friends may be having babies together all around the same time which could pressure a women into having a baby when they aren’t ready

Partner pressure – Your partner may be exceedingly excited to start a family and have a baby, but you may not.

Partner Reliance – how well can you depend on your partner? Does he/she have any drug/alcohol abuse or anything else that needs to change before considering parenting?

Influences on Choice of Parenting (con’t)

Worrying about Parenting – The fear of not being a good parent can be a set back. If you are ever worried about not being a good parent, don’t be. Consider parenting classes or other parenting groups to help you through that fear.

Does one child mean multiple children? – If you are scared that one may turn into two or three, don’t be. Having one child doesn’t mean you have to have another, but who knows, you may want to after raising the first.

No experience – Having no experience with children can influence whether one will have children. It’s best to be involved with younger siblings or nieces or nephews to gain as much experience, with babies and children, as possible before parenting.

Positives of Parenting

Continues families into new generations

Comes with extreme love and emotions

The want and need to love and give another person as much as possible is fulfilled

Sexual intimacy with partner may become intense

Feeling of accomplishment and proudness

Negatives of Parenting

May produce a single-parent scenario

Financially uneasy

Time consuming from work and other routine activities

Pressures from society, having a baby for the wrong reason

Need of constant care for your child

May produce stress on a relationship or situations

When to Conceive

Deciding to have a child late in life can come with many health risks

Deciding to have a child to early in life can come with financial and emotional problems

Infertility is common during late forty’s

Incredibly, today about one in five mothers have their child after age 35.

Chromosomal Abnormalities that take place as we age may cause miscarriages. A women in her 20s has a 12-15% chance of having a miscarriage each time

she becomes pregnant; whereas a woman in her 40s has close to a 50% chance of having a miscarriage.

Conceiving late in life may cause one to unsuccessfully carry out a full term pregnancy or may make it very difficult to actually conceive

Trying to Conceive

When trying to conceive…….

Talk to a doctor about past pregnancies and family history medical conditions that could effect pregnancy.

Get examined by a doctor to determine if there is anything that could cause potential problems during pregnancy

Review all medications that you are taking with a physician and ask how these medications could effect conception and birth.

Be sure to get all immunizations needed before conceiving, to not alter pregnancy.

Talk to a doctor about your environment, living conditions, and personal problems such as substance abuse so that he or she can get the help you need to healthily and successfully conceive.

Birth Control

Family planning

Used to prevent pregnancy

Not all are completely 100% effective

Can be difficult to conceive after use of birth control

Adoption

Extends and creates families

Financially need to be stable

Best option when child birth is unsafe to mother and baby and may come with many medical complications

Emotionally stable and strong Questions about the birth mother may appear during later stages of

childhood

Support from family, friends, and your partner is crucial

Appearance at birth of child can emotionally attach the baby and his or her new adoptive parents

Homosexual Families and Adoption

Adoption agencies, for the most part, will work freely with lesbian mothers or gays to produce a family

Lesbian mothers are forced to adopt as “single,straight” mothers, even if they are planning to start a family with two homosexual mother

Once adoption follows through, most states allow the partner to be recognized as a parent through a second-parent adoption process

Creates a loving environment and family for those who cannot conceive with their partner

May cause discrimination from other family members or friends, therefore support is crucial.

Discussion Question

Do you think that it is ethical today in 2014 for lesbians to be forced to adopt as “single, straight” mothers, instead of truthfully adopting as lesbian parents?

Is it right that the other lesbian partner has to go through a second-parent adoption process?

Quote

“Today about one in five women has a first child after age 36.”(p.351)

This is alarming to me since more medical problems are bound to come with pregnancies later in life then pregnancies earlier in life. It is incredible because a little further down a quote reads “A woman in her 20s has a 12-15% chance of miscarrying. A woman in her 40s has over a 50% chance of miscarrying.

My opinion is that people are contemplating whether or not to have children for too long of a time before conceiving. Part of this could be because people are looking for marriage and settling down before having any children, which could take many years, but part might also include the pressures of having a child later in life, when they may not have ever wanted to have one.

References

The Boston Women’s Health Book Collective. (2011). Our Bodies Ourselves. New York, NY : Simon and Schuster.