5 Reasons Not To Have (More) Kids: Part One

There was a pretty awesome article — “5 Reasons Not To Have Kids,”  by Jessica Valenti 
— on the Publishers Weekly website recently. It was about why we should not be having more children. It is funny, as we have a million debates about this topic in my home right now, and it always come down to a few important points, which also came up in this article.

The first being…

“1. Our society does not support mothers. The United States is the only industrialized nation without paid maternity leave, putting families and children at severe economic risk. And due to the distinctly American belief that child care is a personal — not a political — issue, there is very little momentum behind changing the status quo. Parents are too busy fighting over breast vs. formula feeding to mobilize for lasting change.”

Okay…so we have 12 months in Canada. It is awesome. Maternity leave in the States is much shorter, and that totally sucks as I could not even imagine leaving a 2-month-old.

But still, even at 12 months they are very small. They are still likely breastfeeding, and they have very few words. They can’t tell how terrible daycare is, or how great. They are not even fully walking. And FYI: you will miss that milestone for sure.

Child care for 12-month-olds is soo expensive and crappy. All they really need is their mama. Well, they don’t have her, and daycares take complete advantage of the guilt and the enormous amount of work it takes to replace us beautiful mamas.

Yes, it is all political, but more than that, as the author shares, it is VERY personal. It is this personal piece that the current daycare system manipulates, creating a whole new level of debt for the working professional.

I say hell no.

-Gray Mama