Biology 101

A major reason that my husband and I do not want children of our own is that there are far too many children in the world anyway. Schools are horrifically overcrowded, and a good education is nearly impossible to find outside of the high-income neighborhoods that having a child would preclude us from living in. Oh, wait, we could move outside the city, but our desire to be near a cultural and creative center is another aspect of the childfree life that we find appealing.

It's so interesting to me that there are so many people who "accidentally" get pregnant. Of course accidents happen, and I have several friends and acquaintances who are the victims of failed birth control. But I see television shows like Maury "Paternity Test" Povich, where these women are coming out and wondering if one of two, three, ten, twelve men are the father of their children, and I just wonder how on earth God could let them breed. It's one of those issues that truly makes me wonder how there could possibly be a God, to be honest.

All children are a blessing, a miracle, right? I don't think so. Constantly I see women with more children than they can handle, and often they can't even handle one! They have unprotected sex and the punishment for that is what? BABIES! It just seems so wrong, like God would consider a more appropriate punishment to fit the crime.

Raising a child is so difficult -- why is it that it's so easy for humans to breed? The only answer I can think of is that it's just science, biology at its most basic, not some master plan by an unseen higher power. It's unfathomable to me that this God who is supposed to be looking out for His people, would let the world become overrun with children, would take something that is supposed to be special and wonderful and make it no more magical than an accident. In a world where children are so easily produced, so frivolously produced, I just can't see children as anything but that -- as Biology 101. Even my beautiful neice was little more than an accident, and both she and my brother have been paying for that since her birth because her mother is so messed up.

Of course it's more than that, and for many couples it's a conscious choice and these kids are created intentionally and out of love. It just kills me that it's implied that I'm missing out on this miracle, when all I see that I'm missing out on is Biology 101, a reproductive process that I have no desire to be a part of. If I want kids someday, I will take in one of those frivolously created children, someone whose parents didn't think about, couldn't take care of. As long as all those children need homes, need love, need parents, I feel like they would need me more than a child that I biologically created could ever need me.

But that's the beauty of my situation. Those children need a home with people who are willing and ready to raise them. I am not that person, and neither is my husband. If our situation changes, we know there never will be a shortage of kids up for adoption. But until we are 100% ready for that step, and if our life continues to be as full and happy as it is now, we won't ever be, if we get sterilized as we want to, we don't have to worry about accidental pregnancy. It's the best freedom of choice that there could possibly be.