My friend Jamie shared this Ted Talk entitled "Let's talk parenting taboos" with the creators of Babble.
It was pretty good. Their goal is to share some of the realities of parenting so people won't be left disappointed once they become parents. Four of the things we generally don't talk about are:
1. You may not have automatic love for your babies.
2. It's lonely to have a baby. 67% of women said they were most lonely when their kids were between the ages of 0-5. In one country, a few months before a woman has a baby, she goes to live with her mother up to several months after the baby is born to combat this loneliness. In our country where that doesn't typically happen, we should probably be watching out for/visiting each other more when there's a new baby. (Thank goodness for Visiting Teachers -- it's a start!)
3. It's okay to talk about miscarriage.
4. Average happiness declines when you have kids, but you have lots of happy peaks as you raise those kids!
I think it's good to talk about these things, but in my case, knowing at least some of those things beforehand made it harder to make the choice to have kids. I'm just so practical. :-z
