Welcome Back to Nuanced Beauty!
Today's discussion may feel like a no brainer to some, but maybe not to others? We wanted to explore this question: Why do we have kids? Because on one hand, we feel like no one ever asks people AFTER they have kids why they had kids to begin with. But people who don't have kids, or don't want to have kids at all, or don't have kids yet, or who have struggled with infertility, may get asked the question "When are you going to start a family?" or "Why don't you want to have kids?"
For us, neither of us felt a strong heart-pull to start a family, but we both discussed having two kids before we got married. It was a somewhat boring conversation as we recall it! We also note how the financial pressures and career ambitions can muddy the waters of family planning. We do think that a committed and stable couple provides the best setting for children to grow up, but acknowledge the reality of life being hard and single parents being absolute rock stars in doing the best they can for their children. Then, we know other families that absolutely could not wait to have a family, and they wanted to have a big family so their children would have lots of siblings to lean on growing up and in life.
Lastly, we share some thoughts about the NW and SE cultures around families that we've observed. We do feel like we see kids out in public more often here in FL, and there's a noticeable affection shown toward families with young children. Kids are out roaming the neighborhoods and there are many, many families with 2+ kids all over the place. To contrast, we note a few different interactions in the NW, where I don't recall seeing kids in public as often (think grocery store or restaurants), or kids roaming their neighborhoods without parents. There's a greater sense of pretending you don't notice a family with children when in public. The Double Income No Kid (DINKs) family model is more common and it'd be a social taboo to ask someone when they're going to have kids, or even if they want to have kids unless you know them pretty well.
Book Recommendation:
Glory in the Ordinary - Why Your Work in the Home Matters to God - by Courtney Reissig
I read this book early on after I had my first son, and I was encouraged by considering how we go to this point of not appreciating the tasks that we need to get done in our homes. The history of moving work outside the home, yet our homes still require our TLC. While this book is written for a Christian female audience, I did catch myself sharing some snippets with my husband because she did a nice job talking about the history of the changes, and in reality, how each family divides the mundane tasks of the home can look different, so I think we could ALL use a perspective shift at times here.
Thanks for listening!
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