Great Advice: Kids Are an Adventure All Their Own

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Kids are a game-changer, no question. In the early days, they bring with them sleepless nights, unexplained witching hours with seemingly endless crying, and oh, so much poop. Joy, too, of course, but that doesn’t necessarily make the tough parts easier.

I was ready to have a baby before my husband was. He eventually got there—he’s a wonderful father to our 16-month-old daughter—but he was hesitant to give up lazy Sunday mornings and the freedom that comes with being childless. A few years ago for my 30th birthday, he surprised me with a trip to Paris. (Yes, I know, I’ve got a good one.) On a Thursday night, he came home with stale croissants from 7-11. When I complained, he promised we would get better ones tomorrow — in Paris. We left Friday afternoon. That kind of turnaround would have been much more difficult, if not impossible, if we’d had childcare to consider.

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Plenty of potential parents have similar reservations. Will the joy of a child compensate for the loss of freedom? Will seeing my little one smile and walk for the first time be as memorable as a spontaneous vacation? Will I ever get to sleep in again?

One would-be father posed this concern to Washington Post advice columnist Carolyn Hax on Monday in post that quickly racked up nearly 1,500 comments. The man is unsure whether he should have kids just to pacify his “very beloved” wife. “Plenty of people have told me they didn’t want kids, but then never regretted them. I wonder whether that’s just what people have to say,” he writes. “I am not inflexible, and I do consider myself quite adventurous. I see kids as adventure-killers.”

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Hax’s response is gracious and thoughtful: “No, you can’t shoot rapids with your infant, but you’ll get there eventually if that’s your priority,” she writes. “And I see it as the ultimate adventure to take something that doesn’t exist and create it, nurturing it into something complete and independent of you.”

To Hax’s credit, she doesn’t pretend that everyone who has kids is happy about their decision.“I, too, am skeptical of the ‘Oh you’ll love them when they’re yours’ line,” she says. “Some people regret having kids and just know they can’t say that out loud, and I’d wager there’s a bigger population who don’t even let themselves think that.”

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Still, until you have a child of your own, it can be hard to imagine how significantly kids can change your outlook, she says. “We parents can also be taken aback by what having kids does to our perspective on the world. … When they’re your own kids, you also know them well enough to understand their ‘wow’ moments — when they master a thing you used to take for granted and for months or years watched them be hopeless at doing,” she explains. “You also see the world differently by having to explain it. There are countless times where a child’s question forces you to put together a better answer than the one you were about to reflexively give.”

Readers also weighed in with divided reactions. Writes Duck504: “Almost everyone is scared of having kids. It is in the top 10 of ‘most scary things to do.’ It is also in the top 10 of greatest things to do. What kind of high would you experience teaching your son/daughter to ski in deep powder or climb a cliff in Yosemite? While you can’t do every adventure with a newborn or toddler, you can do many adventures. More importantly you can teach a new generation about the adventures that are possible.”

But plenty of readers commented that if a man questions whether he wants kids, then he probably doesn’t. “If you don’t feel emotionally attracted to having kids, don’t lock yourself into having them to please one person,” writes Hyperlocal. “You will most likely spend the rest of your life thinking about the peace, happiness, solvency and yes, adventures (even if to you, going downtown to a concert without having to make a bunch of babysitting arrangements is an adventure) that you have screwed yourself out of to please another. … If your heart is hesitating, listen to it. There are lots of other mates in the world, but you can’t (gracefully) unhave a kid.”

I’m no advice columnist, however I do know that my husband hasn’t once regretted his choice to have a child. We haven’t jetted off to Europe again, but there’s time for that. In the meantime, the last 16 months have been exciting, scary, surprising, difficult, rewarding and very, very memorable. And, as Hax writes, “how is that not an adventure?”