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From: sophie@mnetor.UUCP (Sophie Quigley)
Newsgroups: net.kids
Subject: Re: Re: My first baby
Message-ID: <1697@mnetor.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 2-Aug-85 12:14:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: mnetor.1697
Posted: Fri Aug  2 12:14:21 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Aug-85 13:27:49 EDT
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> Congratulations SAM-
> 
Indeed, congratulations!

> Two points:
> 
> First, there is no such thing as a lowly secretary.  Secretaries
> are the movers and shakers of the business world.  Without them,
> chaos would rein.  Think positive.
> 
Well said!

> Second, try thinking of the child as "our" child.  After all,
> unless it is born with a halo, there were two of you involved.
> Don't write the father off yet.  Impending parenthood can do
> wonders for relationships (in most cases).
> 
For a while....   that's the problem.  As a member of a family who is
either extremely fertile or does not believe in birth control, I have
had the opportunity to watch six "forced" marriages evolve through the
years.  Only two of them are still intact after 10 years, one of which
is pretty rocky, but the parents are staying together "for the
children's sake".  Once divorced, most of these people ended up being
in more trouble than if they hadn't got married in the first place.
Instead of being a single parent of one child, most of them ended up
being single parents of two or three children.

That was then.  All of these stories are more than 10 years old, and so are
most of the resulting children.  Some are seriously fucked up, some not,
some were but made it through, but most of them didn't have fun childhoods,
watching their parents fight, beat each other up at times, divorce, remarry.
I certainly think most of them would have been better off if their parents
hadn't married, but even 10 years ago, there was a big taboo against single
parents, so they might have been hurt by that anyway.  I don't think there 
is this taboo anymore really. 

These days my family is as fertile as ever, but none of the people who
have had "accidents" have opted for marriage.  It's a bit too early to tell
what will happen to the kids, but the adults seem much happier than the
ones who were forced to marry did then, and that must count for something.
I know that this is all anecdotal evidence, but I just wanted to point out
that it is not obvious that you'd be better off marrying someone you don't
like, especially if you will have other people helping you out.  If you
didn't really want to be together before, another third person will not
make you like each other more.  In the contrary, it (for lack of knowledge
of whether it is a she or a he) might be another source of discord.  It is
also not fair to expect a child to be responsible for the happiness of their 
parents.  Children don't need to start off their lives with such big
responsibilities which are really beyond their control anyway.

> Good luck
> T. C. Wheeler

Oh yes, good luck.  Please let us know how things turn out.
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Sophie Quigley
{allegra|decvax|ihnp4|linus|watmath}!utzoo!mnetor!sophie