Surprise!

I’ve been to a few weddings this summer, and it’s interesting. It seems that most of my generation waited until our late twenties, even our thirties, to get married. Then we’re waiting another ten years to have kids—right when a woman is up against the wall, biologically speaking. Forty is when doctors really start to worry about pregnancy—and start requiring large needles and invasive tests. Maybe more important, insurance companies lose their cool at forty, and every procedure starts costing big bucks.

As a result, many of us have had about fifteen years of experience with birth control. Just the other day, my single friend Alan, who is thirty this year, was complaining that his new girlfriend wouldn’t go on the pill. A kind of funny anachronistic conversation followed regarding the relative merits of condoms, diaphragms, sponges (remember sponges?), and so on. My precious and I haven’t discussed birth control for years. She went off the pill ten years ago, and we’ve relied on good timing ever since. Apparently, Alan and his new girlfriend were enjoying so much loving that they weren’t capable of holding off for the seven days a month when she might get pregnant. After you’ve been married for five years, this is not a problem. We didn’t discuss abstinence. Does anyone over the age of eighteen or under the age of sixty discuss abstinence? Seriously, I mean?

Can you imagine waiting until age thirty to have sex? It may be the crowd I run with, but I doubt whether many of my marrying friends ever bought into “the new chastity” the way many twenty-somethings have supposedly done. But one thing married (or otherwise committed) couples forget is the unholy terror of an unplanned pregnancy. I think we should all be honest that fear of pregnancy is the only selling point to abstinence as birth control, and it’s a big one. The other reasons, also fear-based, are unconvincing. Avoiding disease is, to me, kind of a non-starter. If that were a compelling reason not to have sex at all, then we should also abstain from hand-shaking and using public restrooms. (I mean as an alternative to protected sex. Condoms can be nearly as effective in stopping the spread of disease—without the negative side-effect of never having sex.) Every religious reason I’ve ever heard is plainly insane; if God had intended sex only for procreation, He would have made it significantly less fun. Abstaining from what every fiber in your body wants to do is just plain masochistic.

When it comes to birth control, married couples who eventually want kids are a lot less neurotic than other couples. How do I know? Because we’re pregnant! My precious and I weren’t really planning it. In fact, now isn’t a great time, because we’ve both started new jobs. But the truth of the matter is that we’re both very happy, and if the insurance companies let this blessed event happen, the world will surely be a better place with another baby who is loved, wanted, supported, and raised with world-changing values.

I’ve heard from some of my friends with kids that my life is about to go completely upside down, and frankly, I’m ready for it. I think there is a point where you decide whether you’re going to go on with your life in a somewhat self-centered way, pretty much just looking out for number one, or whether you want a dramatic shift in your world, one that involves making sacrifices to a living legacy—your kids.

I have to say that my friend Steve is a really nice, interesting guy with tons of cool hobbies and the time and money to enjoy them. But there are few people I know who are as selfish. Steve and his wife Suzy are among those slightly annoying people who are always complaining that our society favors adults who choose to have children. Steve complains that his coworkers are constantly getting passes on personal days to attend to family business. He complains that he pays a higher premium on health insurance to subsidize coworkers with family coverage. Steve and Suzy are certainly free to not have children, and I say God bless them. But if everybody thought as selfishly as they do, the species wouldn’t get very far.

On the other hand, Pete believes that once you become a parent you join a worldwide club. One of the tenets of that club is that the world is full of bad people, because the world is filled with bad parents—people who resent their own kids, for a wide variety of reasons. I can’t think of anything sadder than that. If you don’t want kids, for God’s sake, don’t have them. If that means abstaining from sex until you’re thirty, so be it. Let your own masochism be the end of the cycle of pain and fear.