Warning: Children ahead

I have had some thoughts running through my head lately and have been trying to put them all in a neat little pile, ready to serve warm with seasonings. They have changed under the influence of little things happening around me. This started as an idea for a post about how to appreciate our newborns and turned into a question.

We, in the ‘developed’ Western world have built a certain way of experiencing children as a whole. In general:

– as soon as a month before the expected delivery of the child approaches, we get anxious and impatient and cant wait for the whole thing to be over and done with;

– do our best to feel as little as possible of the whole birth process;

– dont breastfeed;

– move our baby from the carseat to the pram, to the shopping trolley seat, to the pram, to the carseat, to the bouncy seat, to the high chair, to the walker; to the bath tub seat; to the crib in their own room and try as hard as possible to keep them there;

– leave babies to cry out to sleep instead of the less popular choice of cuddling them;

– use dummies to keep them quiet;

– attempt to get them attached to a toy or blankie, so it can act as a comfort to them instead of us;

– give them to the grandparents to get a break;

– go on holidays that have kid clubs, in order to enjoy our time;

– give them in the mall child care center, so we can shop in peace;

– send them to school for the vast majority of their young lives;

– sign them up for extra curriculum activities;

– send them off to camps;

– let them watch endless amounts of television, the best nanny;

– aside from the other mother substitute items feeling our houses, there are also things like this (pics are links):

and this:

…

No, I will not be arguing how good or bad those things are. That could be for another time. I dont know about you, but all these facts bring a simple question to my mind.

If we are spending a  good chunk of our hard earned money on products and services to relieve us of the apparent burden of caring for a child; if we cannot spare the time to even  provide basic comfort or feed that same child…why have that child in the first place?