您准备好要孩子了吗？

在史前时代，生儿育女是人类生存的基本条件。如今，人类（以及许多其他物种）的生存似乎取决于我们能否 保持我们的生物冲动. That includes urges for power, hoarding, social status, choosing aggressive leaders… and child bearing. Many of Earth’s resources are endangered, not just oil, and if we want to avoid not just economical crises, but future world wars, we need to make our societies sustainable.

Yet this is just the start of the story, the wider picture. On the individual level, there is so much to pay attention to when raising a child, so many little things that potential parents don’t know or think about. Being a parent is an incredible experience and can be immensely rewarding, yet the number of challenges and 缺乏知识和准备往往导致家庭混乱和不幸福.

If child raising was easy, not so many parents would be so tired and feel overloaded. Many parents can feel so resourceless at times, that, in spite of all the rational knowledge they might have, they find themselves resorting to threats, yelling, blaming, and all the short-term “solutions” they resented their own parents for. How many times did you hear (or say): “I really don’t know what to do with that child anymore!”? That reflects not just lack of communication skills, but also lack of preparedness.

我们生活的社会让为人父母比以往任何时候都更加困难. Isolated small families that deal with too many of their own issues to have time or motivation to help others, long working and commuting hours, selfish employers, limited finances, school system that brainwashes children instead of supporting their creativity and independence, mass media that promote toxic role-models and do everything they can to manipulate children into thoughtless consumerism… and these are only the external influences. I’m not saying that history was all roses and butterflies, but what modern society lacks is community awareness and support for working parents.

接下来你需要做好准备：

– the 孩子需要的时间和关注尤其是在头三年； 

– to 时刻关注孩子这样可以防止东西被打碎或孩子受伤；

– 儿童发展阶段和行为实验, which might not all be pleasant (self-centeredness, testing your boundaries, adolescence…).

So if you consider having children, think about all the possible challenges and how you might deal with them. Be honest to yourself – your and your child’s happiness is at stake. Be aware that (just like with choosing intimate partners) 生物冲动很容易被其他原因合理化和正当化例如 

您的动机

1) Do you think that “it’s about time”, “everybody has kids” or “别人怎么说 if I’m childless?” Do you feel embarrased when meeting your parents or your friends who have children? Are you afraid that you would be judged as selfish and irresponsible? Biological and societal conditioning might motivate quite a few people to put pressure on themselves, but also on others around them, to have children.

这可能会因为各种恐惧和嫉妒而加剧： 求异恐惧人们害怕认识到自己的错误，这可能会促使他们为自己的错误辩解、 艳羡 that parents might feel at the freedom they gave up, or envy that the childless people might feel at others’ parental fulfillment… There are many “justifications” of thoughtless criticism of people who don’t have children at an “appropriate” age.

您是否觉得 避免批评 might be one of the important reasons to have children? It means it’s high time to work with your own self-criticism. You might be generally easy to manipulate into doing things against your own judgment, too.


2) Do you feel that “soon it might be too late”, that is, you feel your “生物钟” ticking? Perhaps you feel an urge to have a child which is difficult to describe and explain verbally? This might likely be an experience of 生物调理.如果没有足够的其他健康理由要孩子，请在决定之前仔细考虑一下。


3) Do you worry about “who will take care of me when I’m old?”, or are you 怕寂寞 in older age? If that’s your primary motivation for being a parent, you might well end up as a lonely old person anyway. If you lack maturity and skills to be a good parent, your children might not be motivated to stay in touch.


4) Do you want to “mold” your child into a specific type of person?也许是为了与你相似，为了实现你一直以来的梦想，或者仅仅是为了满足你的认可标准？这可能是对你自己生活中缺乏的东西的一种补偿，可能会让你 给孩子太大压力这很可能为未来的冲突埋下了种子。

People are different, even if members of the same family. We all have different genetic make-up, different temperament, needs, experiences, sense of direction… Consider if you are willing to love your children even if they are different than what you would like? If she disagrees with your values and beliefs, if he chooses a career that you find not good enough, if they are not the “right” sex, or are homosexual, or are 不漂亮 that you hoped for, if they make “wrong” decisions… That is all quite possible.


5) 您是否想要孩子，以便能够 分享您的知识和灵感 和他们在一起？动机是好的，但本身不足以成为好父母。考虑以下可能性 不感兴趣 你的职业或生活方式。如果您缺乏养育子女的其他动力，请考虑如何才能 以其他方式分享您的知识他们可能更愿意倾听。


6) Do you hope to “fix” your parents’ mistakes 通过抚养孩子，给他们你从未拥有过的东西？  对父母的未决情绪 当孩子不成熟、要求过高时，你可能会做出不恰当的反应。试着先治愈自己，然后再要孩子。与那些希望通过孩子来治愈自己的父母相比，幸福美满的父母能为孩子付出更多。


7)您想要孩子是因为 你希望他们以你希望被爱的方式来爱你? Or give you something similar – respect, compassion, understanding? A child’s love is needy and dependent, not supportive. Even when children are older, it’s likely that 他们会专注于自己的生活，并认为你是理所当然的. That’s normal – parents should be responsible to fulfill their own needs, rather than expecting the child to provide what they lack.

如果你希望孩子能满足你的情感需求，这意味着 你会像 你 在情感上是一个孩子而你的孩子是父母（或伴侣）。这会给孩子带来非常有害的后果，比如，他们会感到不安全、没有人支持、焦虑不安、责任感过强，无法形成独立的身份和界限感。

健康的动力 可以描述为：乐于为孩子无偿付出，乐于看着他们成长为独一无二的人，而不期望自己从中获益。然而，即使您确信自己的动机是健康的（至少大部分是健康的），也要考虑一下自己是否做好了迎接以下挑战的准备：

挑战

1) 你是那种喜欢孩子的人吗? Can you find pleasure in coming down to a child’s level, in seemingly endless 重复简单的任务和简单的游戏, in activities that have long ago faded from your focus? Can you actively join children in their imagination, find creative and playful ways to motivate them for daily activities that need to be done? If not, that’s not something you should criticise yourself for – humanity would never survive if we all had the same type of personality and interests, and a human society needs people who contribute in different ways. But if you decide to have children, keep in mind not to blame them if you wouldn’t enjoy parenting.


2) Are you ready to give up a big part of your personal time and freedom? In the first few years of a child’s life, a young mother can be grateful even for a chance to get 10 minutes of carefree shower. Perhaps your baby will cry as soon as you are out of sight, or even if away from your body? While babies are under 12 months of age, it’s too early to teach them independence and that “not everything can be the way they want”. This is the stage of transition from the womb into the outer world, and it takes a while. You need to provide enough safety so the child can naturally grow into the next stage – independent exploration. Consider investing into a baby carrier, so that the child feels the comfort of being next to your body, while your hands are free.


3) How will you deal with the child’s demands?  Children are usually quite demanding – emotionally, financially, regarding time, attention, through endless questions and challenging behavior. Later, you might need to help them with studying (or, better, use the time to motivate them to do it themselves). Can you stay calm and reasonably happy in such moments? Do you know 如何设定界限, to reject innapropriate and repeated demands without blame and criticism? How to deal with a child’s tantrums?


4) 您是否有足够的外部支持？ It’s much more natural that a child is raised by a community, not just two or even one person. If you try to raise a child alone, you might “burn out”. The best way for parents to find a balance between their own and the child’s needs is with the help of others. If grandparents or institutions are not available to help, consider if you know other families with small children, so that perhaps you can arrange shared child care. You need to be certain, in that case, that those are emotionally healthy people with good parenting skills, so not to damage the children.


5) 您的合作伙伴关系是否稳定和健康, built on good foundations? Do you trust your partner to be mature and responsible? Does your partner also want children, and for healthy reasons too? The arrival of a child is likely to bring out and encourage the good and the healthy, but also the bad and the ugly in the relationship between parents. Many couples start to accumulate resentment, complaints and conflicts after a child is born; mothers are likely to feel tired, frustrated and irritable, while fathers might feel rejected, ignored or criticised. Sometimes mothers are so frustrated by exhaustion, they might not easily understand that the father might not have a clear idea what her “Help me!” request actually means. If your communications skills are not good, or if you are not willing to take responsibility for how you feel, 你们的合作关系很容易陷入危机，甚至分崩离析.

Some people say that it’s a myth and an illusion to think that parents have to be limited by the birth of a child. Yet, 许多家长表示，挑战和限制比他们预期的要大得多.如果您想体验为人父母的经历，我希望这篇文章能帮助您做出深思熟虑的决定，并为接下来的挑战做好准备。

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