Why Do You Want To Have A Child?

Do You Really Want a Child? An Honest Exploration

Have you ever asked yourself why do you want to have a child?

In my journey of infertility I have gone through many phases or state of mind?

The denial state: Shocked and non acceptance of the fact that I cannot have a child. Kept on trying for many months without going to the specialist. Doing test and check up as per my own research and random suggestion by family and friends.
The Angry state: Angry with the whole world. After the expert opinion, changing the lifestyle, eating right, exercising, giving up all so called bad for health habits and only explanation available is that it is an un-explained infertility. Why me? Jealous of everyone who was getting pregnant.
Fix itstate: Praying, healing, astrologers, bargaining with God, universe.
Depression state: the dark long nights…. expectation month after month followed by disappointments, mood swings, can’t find a purpose in life.

Trying to get out of these stages and in the quest of finding answer to these questions it took me deep into myself, into my own mind. I discovered many things about myself which I wasn’t even aware existed or even if I was aware,I never realised the power of them.

Then going very deep into them and trying to fix things so that I can fix my infertility problem I went to a healer for a tarot card reading and healing of my childhood trauma because somebody told me that my inner child needs healing which is actually blocking my child from coming into my womb. So this tarot card reader asked me “THE” question, “why do you want to have a child”. And suddenly I had no answer.

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The answers that I had was all about others. Like:

I want to have a child because I have been married for 7 year and this is the right time to have a child.
My husband wants to have a child.
My dad is very unwell and he has only one desire that is to see a grandchild.

I am not a person so much concerned about what others think so what society says was not of much botheration to me. And I am blessed with awesome in-laws who never blamed me or pressurised me to have a child.

So when I really asked myself why “I” want to have a child, I had no reason. I was never a very motherly kind of a person. Neither was I oozing out of joy in this world that I needed to overflow and express the overflow of my joy as a child. I had read somewhere that for plants or animals when they are so full of joy or excitement,they express their joy or gratitude for this life as a flower / fruit and offspring.

That put me in thinking, we the human species who are gifted with a higher intelligence, do we bring a child into this world because we are so full of joy and do we see them as an expression of joy and gratitude or as our contribution to this world.

Or do we have children because that is what we are supposed to do, “the social norm”?

Or do we have them out of fear for our future? Who will look after us when we grow old?

For a long time in India which was agriculture-based economy children were produced for cheap labour e.g. If I have sons then they will take care of the farm and the parents in the old age. And mind it we are only species who do this to our children. All other species have offspring and bring them up to a certain age and then let them go to fend for themselves. Where as we the so called higher species bind them to us and make them realise at every opportunity about how much we have scarified for them and of all the struggles that we have gone through for them.

Once my dad had told me that,

If I don’t have a child, then after one point in time I won’t have a purpose in my life.

Because until your children grows up and get settled we have the job of worrying about them and even when the children are grown up and go away we still have their calls or visits to look forward to. We put such burdens on these children, is this right?

And I also realised that now that my father has passed on, my mother who had borne two children and brought them up, stays all alone in Kerala (as she is not very old and is healthy and she choose to stay in her own home till she can). And I also heard of parents who had 6 children who are still living a lonely life and dying alone whereas their children are in far off places. So having a child so that my future is taken care is not right thought process.

I also realised that Children are not investments, neither are they a proof to the world of our capabilities. Children should be an expression of love and joy, they are individuals who just choose to come through us and our responsibility is to give them the best of what we have and let them be free to express themselves as they want to be in this world. But instead of being joyful this whole struggle of having a child was actually sucking all the fun and happiness out of me.

I decided that instead of getting depressed and running after proving anything to anyone in this world, I would like to focus on finding my joy.

I also realised that not having children actually gave me a lot of freedom to do all those things that I wanted to do. Like I can travel anywhere at any time not having to wait for school holidays, I can shift my residence to any place that I want to. I don’t have to worry about saving a lot as I don’t have to spend on children’s education or marriage. I don’t have to spend a lot of time in kitchen planning meals.

I also realised that if I am full of joy and love then I don’t need to produce my own child to express that love. I can express my love to anybody or on any cause to that matter. I can adopt a child and love the child in the same manner. So after my realisation I had a frank and open discussion with my husband and I told him that I don’t want to go for anymore of the treatment cycles. And that if is he really keen on having a child then we can go for an adoption and he understood and supported me in my decision.

This acceptance of my condition gave me a lot of freedom from my state of depression, the running after the doctors; it lifted a heavy burden off my shoulders that I was carrying unnecessarily. And I started enjoying life and seeing other women who are pregnant no more affected me negatively, infact I started sharing their joy and started enjoying little humans without any remorse.

So, to conclude the question “Why do I want to have a child” actually liberated me from my sorrows.

About the Author

Anju Jayachandran is a post graduate in Business Administration with over 15 years of corporate experience in Human Resources. She is an absolute fighter, we salute her for a positive outlook and will power.