Nice point @ Greenbutton. It’s just a feeling or wish to provide best for your kids.(provide better opportunities or memorable experiences.) I’ve seen friends who have the means to provide their kids very luxurious lives whereas we have lived a much simpler life.
“When you adopt you wouldn’t know the whole history of a child either.”
Of course. But the child is already here. You’re not taking the risk of creating more of the inherited problem.
" We don’t look back and think fondly on things, we look back fondly on the love that was given to us."
I look back pretty fondly at my expensive education. I don’t think it’s so simple to dismiss material concerns in favor of love. Responsible people always take tangible resources into account when deciding to have kids; we just draw the line in different places.
I was under the impression that most kids who are up for adoption are abandoned by their parents, with no medical or information of parents. Is it possible to test for future mental illness? I have heard many mental illness or learning disability do not manifest itself until kids are older.
We have three and the third was so easy at first that we thought we would have four. Then things go a little harder and it seemed like a crazy idea. There were definitely times when I was overwhelmed and thought it would have been far simpler and easier to have only two. For example, one year we had a child’s appointment every day of the week after school. And this was without any major illness or accident, just allergy shots, vision training, etc. It might have been easier with more family nearby or living in a place with less traffic but that wasn’t our situation.
With an empty nest now and a looser work schedule, H and I are really having fun. We have younger friends with younger children and the whole soccer schedule and all and I’m very glad to have a break from that! By the time grandchildren come I will be well rested.
My parents have friends who had two daughters. At that time 21 and 23. The parents had the girls in their twenties.
Once they had an empty nest they decided to have another two children. (So there must have been at least a 21 year gap between the 2nd and the 3rd.) The basically started all over again.
We have 4- 2 boys and 2 girls- and would do it again in a heartbeat. Neither one of us thought we wanted children when we got married. DH had never been around small children, and for me, babysitting was the very last job I ever wanted in high school. Then after 3 years, we decided we would “try” one. Nature did not agree and we got boy-girl twins. Working full time with twins was hectic so we said no more. DH had a vasectomy. After 4-1/2 years, we really regretted that decision so DH had a reversal and I got pregnant almost immediately with a girl and a 5-1/2 year gap.
Then once again, we decided to add on and had a boy with another 5-1/2 year gap. There’s a pattern here: looking back, we think that once we got far enough away from babyhood, we forgot all the hard stuff and missed the fun stuff. I was 39 by the last one, and while my DH wanted to go for #5, I told him he’d have to get a new wife. The only thing I might change is that it might have been nice to have them closer together- seemed like I was volunteering at the elementary school continuously for years and years! The interest levels were different also so it was hard to plan vacations that kept everyone interested. On the other hand, out youngest was cherished by his older siblings and got so much attention. He was very comfortable talking to teachers in high school since his sister was already a high school teacher. I was more relaxed with him and I enjoyed having all of the kids and friends in and out of the house over the years. Now he is a college junior and we are expecting our first grandson in 3 weeks. The cycle restarts.
<<<
have heard many mental illness or learning disability do not manifest itself until kids are older.
<<
True. A very good friend of mine had a seemingly healthy son, but started noticing some issues when he went thru puberty. By the time he graduated from high school (which he did fine), his bi-polar illness became more apparent and was Dx’d. The mom, a pediatrician, was completely caught off-guard.
Another mom that I distantly know, also a pediatrician, has a son who was Dx’d with schizophrenia while in high school. I knew the child when he was in middle school and seemed fine then. It seemed to be a surprise to his mom as well.
I think that healthcare providers aren’t even allowed to give certain mental health Dx’s to children until they’re 18.
Op here-- I have three children and sometimes wish I had a fourth… Of course that is completely hindsight and not at all what I wanted when my kids were young.
Although I love all of my children very much, things have not been, and are not, always easy. There is mental illness on H side and other issues on my side, such as alcoholism. My H told me when we were dating and getting serious that -you need to know this before we continue- his sister is schizophrenic and his grandmother was institutionalized when his father was fairly young and never released. I poo pooed it. I knew nothing about mental illness.
S has always been different. Very smart, good looking and talented. ( Judgement not by me but by many others including academic awards, accolades, test scores, casting in commercials, etc.) So you think things would be great. Not so. So sad. My responses on other threads explained, or lack thereof, his situation.
I think a big part of parenting, number of children you have, or decision not to, has a lot to do with ones personality. I think if you want a lot of children you need to be a very laid back person or couple or so regimented that it is run like a military school ( think Duggars). H and I are not laid back people and think we probably should not have had 3 kids. We were strict with them. They remind us of this often, in a totally kidding way, now that they are grown up and we are more relaxed. We laugh at their - remember when you did this? But I think it affected them in different ways. I think my S, first child, had the hardest time. Probably because he was different to begin with. We saw this but everyone told us “he will grow out of it.” They still do and he is 29.
There are some things I wish I had done differently.
@morrismm I think as all of us move through life, we make decisions based on the information we have at the time that the decision is made. It is really impossible to do it any other way. It ia also impossible to know what parenting is really like until you actually do it. I have worked with children my entire career, and very early on before graduate school my husband and I were therapeutic “parents” in a group home for severely emotionally handicapped boys. From that experience I thought I knew what being a parent was like, why wouldn’t I? We lived with these young boys 24/7, cooked, cleaned, played with them, took them to school, and did all the things that a family does. It wasan’t until I had my own child, many years later and many years of advising parents later, that I realized that there was a major difference. The group home was a job that I could quit. Parenting your own child is a job that you can never quit. Further, the emotional bond is something very different with your own child versus others who are in your care due to employment. Don’t get me wrong, I loved those boys with all my heart, and it pains me to know I can never know what happened to them after we quit the job and went to graduate school. This was part of the agreement when terminating in our contract. But that love does not compare to the emotional connection that I have with my own daughter.
That never ending aspect of parenting makes what those of you living with a severely mentally ill adult child so painful. Your heart grieves everyday for some semblance of normalcy for your child, and because they are adults there is less that you can do to make sure they get the help they need. And, without the help they need, those with the most severe mental illnesses get worse and worse over time. It is a horrible quality of life for that adult child and a horrible experience as a parent to watch. This is not a scenario that most young couples anticipate when wrapped all the hope that goes into a pregnancy and early childhood. And yes, the concept of early intervention makes so much sense, but very hard to accomplish when the mental illness doesn’t present itself in a clear way until it is already well underway. People often can look back and say that their child was a little strange when they were young before they got sick, and the actual progression of the sickness is very unclear, so that it does seem to suddently appear.
Hurting is one of the biggest risks of loving.
Loved every single second. Nothing even comes close.
I started talking about the dangers of mental illness in college-aged young adults in this thread, so I will add any informative facts if I find and learn them:
"A person’s genes influence the chance of them having bipolar disorder, but this is not the only factor that contributes to the illness. Identical twins share all their genes. For bipolar disorder to be 100% genetic, you would expect that if one twin had bipolar disorder, the other would have it too. However, although there is an increased risk of the twin developing the illness, this does not always occur. Bipolar disorder arises from the interaction of biological factors and certain personal and environmental stressors.
Bipolar symptoms can be sparked off by environmental and personal factors called ‘triggers’ (e.g. stressful events or
disruption to sleep patterns). However, episodes do sometimes occur without a trigger. "
For college or college-bound kids, it seems especially relevant to emphasize the importance of non-biological factors, that is, the personal and environmental factors especially if there is reason to concern from any known biological pre-disposition such as a prior occurrence in their extended family. For instance (see notes),
==> “Bipolar disorder arises from the interaction of biological factors (note: genes) and certain personal (note: drugs, alcohol, …) and environmental (note: fit and social atmosphere and cultures of the college, academic rigor and academic demand/stress) stressors”. My child attended a mono-culture small college where kids either fit in the mono culture nicely or if not, then are practically ‘ostracised’, voluntarily or not, until they leave/graduate; the academic demand was excessively and constantly high, which is probably at or near the top of any school in the country (once a graduate applicant who visited there for interview said … ‘the kids never sleep here’, this applicant was a Princeton graduate); before the very first episode occurred, I learned that this child did drugs with a bunch of students regularly; the ‘fit’ factor in college selection seems to be much much more important that I thought.
==> This school was probably not a good fit at all (we didn’t know back then), and there was another reason why this school was chosen.
This is something I have thought about. We have two and in many ways, I wish we’d had a third, but i could not have done that at the time when it should have happened.
Parenting has made all the highs higher and the lows lower. My S has had some challenges but all what I would consider typical. When people told me it was hard to raise kids, of course I thought they meant, the sleepless nights, the worrying about whether they will make good friends, study hard, stay away from drugs, make good choices etc. I worried how it would be when they didn’t get invited to prom or had their heart broken etc.
Those are all tough and of course hard to navigate. But they are also pretty typical. My D struggles with several mental issues and some physical ones and nothing prepared me for this. While I love her and she is just as much a joy to me as her brother, there is nothing worse than seeing your child suffer emotionally. In some ways I think having a “physical” illness would be easier, because there might be some things to do to relieve her temporarily, or people would be more understanding. No one brings you casseroles when your daughter is depressed, for example.
When she is in emotional pain, it causes me so much anguish that it almost feels like physical pain to me. And taking an advil doesn’t help, sadly.
I can’t say I would choose to not have kids, but I will say that I never, ever anticipated this life and the heavy blanket of knowledge that my D will probably not live a typical independent life. It is overwhelming at times.
This is why it it is so hard to look at thing retrospectively and try to answer the question, “would you do it again?” Once you have that person in your life, it is hard to imagine life without them, no matter what the outcomes. But, when things go awry and are going to be that way pretty much chronically, you live in grief for what what you know your child has lost, the chance for normalcy. However, even being “normal” does not guarantee happiness, and there are people struggling with a myriad of possible long term adversities, who claim they are happy and more alive despite their challenges–so who knows. I do know I would not wish treatment resistant bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder, recurrent depression, OCD, etc. on anyone. When effective treatments are elusive, these individuals do have horrible time living independent lives and can get into all sorts of messes.
To the extreme of making a decision not to have children, I have a friend who had both parents die when she was in her late teens of forms of cancer that have a strong known genetic component, and her mother was also schizophrenic. She had a double mastectomy and her tubes tied in her early 20s. She wanted to try to prevent her risk of breast cancer and to never have a child who might also be schizophrenic. She does have two siblings and none of them have mental illness, but her siblings have kids with mental health issues. Not sure about cancer.
@NorthernMom61, I agree about not wishing those disorders on anyone. My husband has treatment-resistant depression; I have depression and anxiety; my daughters periodically experience serious anxiety; MIL has Alzheimer’s disease; FIL is undiagnosed but probably has had anxiety and depression his entire long life; my mother has struggled with depression since at least before I was born (I was the baby whose birth brought on the serious postpartum depression). We have had great material and intellectual rewards but oh, I feel so bad for bequeathing this mental health history to my daughters.
We have three. I always wanted 4 but my husband does not have enough patience for kids. He was great with them when they were very little but as the oldest got to school age he starting showing his lack of patience. I still to this day have to tell him to chill so I never had kid number 4.
We have three and I almost wished at one point that we have evened things up, but I got over that! It would have been a major disruption, especially considering we didn’t even plan for number three!
Would not have minded three. First one was thanks to fertility drugs, #2 was conceived while nursing (the only time my hormones were ever in synch), and I never got pregnant again.
There are significant MH issues of DH’s side of the family and on my side, there was a grandparent and sib who were alcoholics. I watch and observe carefully. We’ve talked about the family inheritance with both our kids, so they are aware and both have also been in counseling, so they know that is a good strategy. DH and I never factored in these things when deciding to have kids, though.
My niece who’s getting married this summer has announced she and her fiance want five kids. Eyeballs were popping out of heads all around. OTOH, she’ll be great at it. She’s also been in the Army Reserves the past six years and is about to graduate with her Music Ed degree (she wants to teach middle school band). She knows how to lead a team! 
Parenthood has changed me in so many good ways. I can’t imagine life without my daughter.
I know a lot of young couples who thought they wanted a lot of kids, then backed that number down once they had 1 or 2.
^ me too, intparent. OTOH, I know young people who thought they didn’t want any and changed their minds!