5 Reasons to have kids while you are young

This is not one of those scare mongering “your ovaries are a ticking time-bomb and your womb will turned to saw dust on the stroke of midnight of your 36^th birthday” posts. This is just the musings of a mum that had kids young and then went on to have a laat lammetjie*.  There really aren’t any hard and fast rules about the best time to start a family, but here are a few things that you may not have thought about.

1.     There is never a “perfect time” to have a baby.

I know a number of people think they need to have all their ducks in a row before they can go down the path of procreation. Things like having a good, well paying job; finding “the one” guy or girl they want to spend the rest of their lives with; owning the perfect family home.

Line up this way please ducks.

Now, I am not saying that having one or any of these things as a prerequisite to becoming a parent is a bad thing, but the truth of it is that none of these things are certainties. Each of these things can change in the blink of an eye due to circumstances in life. Not only that; none of these things make you a better parent than someone without them.

There is no such thing as true financial security and no perfect time to have babies.

2.     You have just come off the back of partying hard, you know how to function after all nighters.

No, really.  You have got this gig. You can stay up all night and still function the next day. I am sure adolescent partying habits are just nature’s way of training us for the early years of parenting. When you are in your 30s and 40s it is such a shock to the system (trying to party hard or have a small baby).

3.     You aren’t just having a baby, but growing an adult and all the stages in between.

When most people get that overwhelming urge to procreate, they think of the blooming belly and the squishy baby, maybe the cute toddler or even the sweet preschooler. But this is the short end of the parenting journey, these years fly by faster than you can possibly imagine.

So how old do you want to be when your kid is a teenager? The reason I ask this is because to parent your adolescents effectively you really need to put the same amount of energy into them as you did when they were toddlers. The focus is different, but the level of energy in the same. When you add in the fact that when it comes to brain development adolescence ends at about the age of 24, that is a lot of years your kids need you to be engaged with them.

4.     There is plenty of time to have a career after children

You can have a career then kids. You can have a career and kids. You can have kids then a career. None of these are wrong. There are always struggles, compromises and considerations for all of these options. Childcare is expensive.  Re-entering the workforce after having kids is a challenge. Juggling Uni and small children could mean studying on the toilet. But it can be easier to start a new career post children than to try and work your way back into an old one, especially if the industry you worked in is particularly dynamic.

5.     You don’t know yourself yet.

Here you are, you know who you are. You have hobbies. You have friends. You have a vision of who you are professionally. You have had the luxury of working on you for at least a decade and being in your own skin is the most comfortable thing in the world. Then you start to share your skin with someone else and piece by piece all of the above is eroded away. When you are older, you have had much more time to become set in your identity and no matter how hard you work there will always be sacrifices to who you think you were. Your body, your time, your money, your thoughts and even your feelings no longer belong solely to you.  You are left with one identity. Mum.

When you have children earlier in adulthood or late adolescence you are still doing so much growing yourself. You have the opportunity to meld into the role of mum and from there grow to what you want to be along side your child.

Finding out who you are while being a mum is far gentler than finding yourself, becoming a mum and then having to totally redefine who you are afterwards. No matter how you look at it; pregnancy, breastfeeding and parenting changes you physically, emotionally, socially and financially.

*Laat lammetjie is an Afrikaans term which means “late lamb” and refers to a baby born when its siblings are quite a bit older.

The Second Most Important Question of Your Life!

The question is, not “how bad do you want it?”, but “how you would like to suffer?”. Kind of. Sorta.

I remember the moment so clearly. I was standing at the desk with 3 patients needing my attention; a to-do list as long as my arm; and my mobile phone started to ring. It was one of my kids - she sobbed uncontrollably on the other end of the phone. She was exhausted, broken and in need of me; and here I was stuck at work.

Mark Manson's blog post: The Most Important Question of Your Life is a piece of brilliance. It really does clarify what it takes to succeed in every aspect of your life. It is not about the end result, but whether you are willing to endure the journey to get there. How would you like your suffering served?

It also has one major flaw. Not all of us are journeying on our own; and when you are a primary caregiver (let’s be honest, 95% of the time, this mean “mother”), you have to ask a second question: How would I like my kids to suffer?

Here is my shameful confession:

I was willing to suffer a LOT to be a successful business woman. It played a significant part in the ending of my 17 year relationship. I was willing to ditch my commitments to my friend and her business. I pulled out on supporting a woman in birth. I gave up my hobbies. I stopped being there when my kids desperately needed me.

But that phone call was a catalyst for me to see that it wasn’t just about me suffering - it was about all those that I made suffer with me. It was my blind selfishness that made me think that they would thank me in the long run, without ever asking if they were OK with suffering for my goals.

Giving the dream away has been another form of suffering. I lost a huge amount of capital; I lost my income; I lost my sister; but I have also lost watching my kids suffer for my dream.

So I give you the second most important question of your life: Have you asked your loved ones how they would like their suffering served?

Shame-damaged

You feel the blood rush to your face. Your hands are shaking, and your heart tries to beat itself out of your chest. Tears prickle your eyes. You pray for the ground to open up and swallow you whole. Everyone is looking at you and thinking you are an oxygen thief, a waste of space, abhorrent, disgusting.

We have all experienced shame at some stage in our lives. These moments etch themselves deeply into our brains, scarring us to the core. Nothing has as damaging an impact on our psyche than a severe public shaming. Particularly if it has been performed by a parent.

Shaming; a part of the parenting toolbox

Shaming; both in its obvious and subtle forms, have been a staple in the parenting toolbox since time immemorial. It can be on the outrageous global scale, like those poor kids in the “Get along” shirt posted to Facebook; or it could be a case of bringing up an indiscretion in front of the whole family, instead of in private. I am sure all of us have been on both sides of this scenario in some way, so can relate in one way or another. As the parent it can appear to have the desired effect - it creates such discomfort in a child they are less likely to repeat the behavior… while in your presence anyway. But what does it actually teach kids?

Some of the lessons learned from a public shaming are:

• It is socially acceptable, and often even celebrated, for adults to act like bullies. 
• That they need to perform in a way that you see as acceptable with out understanding the “why”.
•  To lie.
• To justify their behavior.
• That they are awful people undeserving of love, or even inherently evil; so they have no control, or desire to behave appropriately.
• How to be a narcissist.
• To fear judgment of themselves as a person when there is criticism, or discussion to the contrary of their beliefs.

Why shame does so much damage

The reason shaming is so deeply damaging is that we are, at heart, social creatures. For millennia, we have relied on our tribes and villages to survive. If we are ousted by the group, we are completely vulnerable to starvation, or attack from wild animals. When we are shamed, we are told we aren’t good enough to be part of the tribe; and this hits our deepest, most primal fears. If everyone hates us, we could die.

It is understood that at the core of many mental health problems like depression, anxiety, PTSD, self-harm, and eating disorders; shame is often a powerful underlying issue. Sometimes, this is self imposed and other times, the message has come from elsewhere. But either way, the result is the same.

Damaged people aren’t shameless; damaged people are mortified.

There exists the idea that people that commit horrendous crimes, murders, assaults and rapes, are completely without shame; but that is often a simplification of what has really gone on in their psyche. Damaged people have often been shamed so often and so deeply in their formative years, that they believe deep down, they are inherently evil and cannot change. They are without shame - they often describe themselves as being without feelings at all. Our strongest word for shame is “mortified”. Is it any wonder when the severely shamed feel dead inside?

Hard core criminals are not the only ones we witness with shame issues - some of the most obvious ones are internet trolls and vigilantes. Not just those that set out to be nasty, but also those that take offense to anything that sits out of their world view.

I see this so often in parenting circles - if I said I was a breastfeeding/ homebirthing/non-circumcising/non-spanking/co-sleeping/etc. mother in the public sphere, it would only be a matter of time before a person who has been deeply shamed in childhood, will start trying to explain why what you have said is offensive, judgmental, dangerous or wrong. The further a view sits from the mainstream, the more vitriolic the comments become. “If other people believe 'x' over what I have done, which is 'y', then they are going to think I am not good enough.”

Offense becomes the best defense, and a shaming is incredibly contagious. We see people becoming more and more polarized and dogmatic, as each view-holder pours shame on those that think differently. All the while, feeling more justified in their outrage and worldview.

When I read about the Benjamin Franklin effect - which is the idea that “we like people we do nice things for, and we dislike people we treat poorly; not the other way around” - I instantly saw how being “programmed” by shame would create this situation. Shame has taught you to hate the people you have wronged - we see this time and again with bigotry, misogyny and homophobia.

What can we do?

As I mentioned, we all walk around with our own experiences of being shamed - some of our wounds are deeper than others'. Every person you have ever interacted with, carries around the same hurt you have had; and the more abhorrent you think they are, the deeper that scar runs. There is an antidote to shame; but those that need it most, are the ones we are generally the most reluctant to give it to; especially if it is ourselves. The antidote to the shame-damaged is compassion and empathy.

Two women who have used this technique successfully* are MaryBeard and Cindy Gallop**.

When it comes down to it; you have a choice to play a part in healing both yourself, and our terribly broken society.

• Treat your kids as raw materials - they are just learning their place in the world. Teach, guide and explain, without shaming.
• Take the time to examine your own history and feelings when it comes to shame and feeling judgment. Look on with empathy and compassion for yourselves as you contemplate ideas that challenge your belief systems.
• Look for the shame damage in those that attack or wrong you. Remember that you don’t hold any responsibility for their wound - you aren’t the troll whisperer, but empathy is never wrong. They still are that shamed toddler.
• You can hold people to account for their actions while still maintaining compassion and empathy, rather than shame.
•  Walking away to protect yourself can be an act of compassion.

* Both took the conversation to a private space so as not to add to the public shaming.

** Loc 375 "Make Love, Not Porn" by Cindy Gallop

An Open Letter to Michelle Bridges

Dear Michelle Bridges,

I woke up in the middle of the night and you came into my head. Not in a creepy way, but I wondered if you were awake. If you were feeling that horrible deep anxiety of someone who has just been blasted with vitriol and hate across all platforms of social media. I thought about your wee belly-babe being soaked in cortisol and adrenalin and it made me feel appalled at what we have become.

In honesty, I am not a fan. I disagree with you on a scientific and philosophical level about how you have applied your obvious passion for wanting to help people. I am a high fat, low carb, non-processed food eating kind of person and yes, I even have veggies and edible natives in my garden. But, to see the ugliness that has been thrown at you made me want to say that I am sorry.

The video that was put out by Woolies was so poorly thought out that it looked like an idea put forward by the work experience kid who happened to stumble into the marketing department. Considering they spent $18.8M in the first quarter of this year on advertising, am I right in guessing that this was put forward by their marketing department and not written by you personally?

If so, how nice of Woolworths to throw a pregnant woman under the bus of social media vigilantes!

And if not, and this was your campaign to sell your brand of TV dinners, maybe running the idea past a few more people might have been a good idea. But regardless of that, I pretty sure that every person who has sent you a message of hate has said or typed something stupid in their lives. It just happens that your faux pas is very public. He who is without stupid can post the first trolling comment?

As a former birthworker and a mother of four, I hope Steve and your friends are there to hold the space for you right now as this type of shit feels so much worse when you are pregnant. I hope you are able to debrief your feelings around this and let it go before you come into birth.

As a foodie and a movement enthusiast, I would invite you over for dinner to happily and respectfully debate lifestyle, fat-shaming, health, fitness, hormones, circadian rhythms and all other topics where both our passions lie.

As a person, I just want to say I am sorry and I hope you are OK.

Claire Chapman

Emotional Consent part 2. (Graphic Content Warning)

This blog post can now be found at: http://teenboyguide.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/emotional-consent-part-2.html