I don't know. Maybe.
I personally had great parents who loved and supported me, and never once said a negative word about their role as parents. Yet I never had any desire for the marriage and family...
Your parents clearly gave you the impression that parenting is drudgery. In reality, it is an incredibly joyful, meaningful, and rewarding experience.
This is not about pretending it is easy. Everything worthwhile requires hard work. Everything. That has always been true.
And it is not only about what parents say. In many ways, what they demonstrate matters more.
I demonstrate to my children every day how much I enjoy being a parent, how much I love them, how much they enrich my life, and how happy I am to be their father.
If your parents had demonstrated to you how good it is to be a parent, and how much of a privilege it is, you would already have your own list of reasons for wanting children. Those reasons might differ somewhat from the reasons our grandparents had, but many of the core reasons are still the same and still present.
That said, historically, not everyone had children. Roughly half of men never did, and about twenty percent of women did not either. So of course, not everyone is going to become a parent.
This is not about pretending it is easy. Everything worthwhile requires hard work. Everything. That has always been true.
And it is not only about what parents say. In many ways, what they demonstrate matters more.
I demonstrate to my children every day how much I enjoy being a parent, how much I love them, how much they enrich my life, and how happy I am to be their father.
If your parents had demonstrated to you how good it is to be a parent, and how much of a privilege it is, you would already have your own list of reasons for wanting children. Those reasons might differ somewhat from the reasons our grandparents had, but many of the core reasons are still the same and still present.
That said, historically, not everyone had children. Roughly half of men never did, and about twenty percent of women did not either. So of course, not everyone is going to become a parent.
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