Essay Sample on Convenience vs. Parenthood

In the United States, having children makes the parents' life utterly miserable and also sends their career into the abyss. Children totally change the life the parents were living before having them. And while this may not be necessarily a bad thing, the fact of the matter remains, that these children inconvenience the parents' life (Worm, 2010). That being said, the logical solution is that couples should consider having fewer children or none at all. This particular problem has gotten to the point where it is believed that children's morality is contributing to global warming.

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Having many children leads to an increase in carbon dioxide emissions which negatively affects our environment. And considering the current issue of climate change in the world, maybe there is some truth to this belief. Another reason why having children isn't the best thing in individual life is the nature of bias faced by the parents, especially the mothers, in their workplaces (Gus, 2014). In the United States, motherhood is perceived to make women less committed and less competent in their careers. This leads to them being held at lower standards thus being given fewer opportunities.

As the issue of commitment reigns supreme when hiring, many employers consider that mothers could be distracted, given that they have children back at home, and therefore not suitable candidates for any positions within their organizations. Another reason why I discourage having children is that mothers tend to receive lower salaries when compared to fathers (Engels, 2018). Fathers receive wage bonuses while mothers get wage penalties. This means that, as the pay gap between both genders has been decreasing, the parenthood pay gap has been increasing in recent years.

This has been largely attributed to the cultural bias against mothers in the United States. Another reason why couples should rethink when it comes to having children is that they tend to change friendships, between the parents and their friends. In recent research by Child magazine, out of 1000 parents, almost half of them had fewer friends after they had children (Gillett, 2017). Time could be attributed to these effects given the fact that couples without children spend a lot of time with their friends but start spending less time with the same friends after children come into the mix.

Children have also brought trouble into marriages. Marital satisfaction is negatively affected by parenthood since the conflicts arise from the parent's freedom restriction and also in organizing marriage roles (Melone, 2015). If there are many children in a marriage, marital satisfaction could be extremely low. When children are involved in a marriage, most wives, as they are the ones who spend the most time with the children, tend to ignore or even forget that their husbands exist, as they are too focused on their children, which in most cases ends up distancing the partners if the issues aren't addressed conclusively. Ultimately, these marriages ends up in divorce, since those partners ends up not being able to communicate to each other which strain their relationship..

This reason reiterates the impacts of bringing children into our lives, in fact, it discourages their presence. In the United States, children tend to bring laziness or even distraction to their parents to the extent where they start living an unhealthy lifestyle (Beech, 2015). Without children, couples always have time to exercise while parents are, in most cases, busy and don't find time to exercise or eat healthy foods. Also, when it comes to sleep, parents tend to sleep for less hours when compared to couples without children. This can be attributed to their daily routine of ensuring that the children are clean and well fed.

And as we know having enough sleep is advisable and very much healthy, the parents ends up having healthy problems as they are tired almost all the time. If the current and the future generations want to avoid all these challenges and inconveniences, then I would highly recommend not having children, or if one must have, to only go for one or two at the most. And as a child may bring happiness and a feeling of completeness into marriages, it is of my opinion that the problems they tend to bring are much more (Martin, 2018).

This is mainly because, once you have children, the stress and the responsibility regarding their well-being increases, inhibiting life's full happiness. Am aware that most couples think that children will bring lots of happiness and the feeling that their family is complete, however, in all honesty, what they don't realize, and comes to realize it much later, is that once they bring these children into their lives, everything in terms of their relationship changes for the better or for the worst, as it is in most cases. The parents, and especially the mothers, pays to much attention to the children to the point where they forget that they should be taking care of themselves as well.

Therefore, we need a healthy and happy society, a society without drama, one without inconveniences that are brought by children and also one where both the men and women are putting all their energy into their careers and life in general. In order to achieve all these, maybe it's about time couples considered all the 'problems' that children tend to bring along when they are born and then try to figure out if it's all worth it. One thing that is sure of is that if you are to consider the effects mentioned earlier, they will bring you to a realization that the perception that people have towards having children is not always correct (Slone, 2015). Most couples ends up finding out the untrue nature of this perception much later into their life after they start experiencing the challenges discussed above.

There are so many factors that come into play, and that there are many changes that occur. With this in mind, you will be able to make an informed decision on whether or not you should have children. If yes, then you should be ready to deal with the consequences. If we compare the benefits of living a children-free life versus a life with children, we find that life without children has a lot of freedom, control, and self-expansion. Also, these couples are able to focus more on their careers and hence you find that most of them are better placed, financially, than most parents. This may be due to lesser amount of bills that the child-free couples are supposed to pay and having more time to think of better investment opportunities to take advantage of.

On the other hand, a life with children is very chaotic, stressful and one doesn't have time to do fun activities or those that would help one's body such as exercising (Mitch, 2017). Your freedom is limited and one doesn't have total control of their lives when you have children. Living a children-free life may be boring in some sense, but if you look at the benefits of living this kind of life, how free one feels and how successful one can get as bills that are to be paid are always less, it is worth it to live without children.

Couples with children always find their life to be a little bit miserable compared to the ones without the children. Moreover, there are so many marriages that have been broken. Most of these break-ups are caused by the children, either directly or indirectly. Anyway, having said all these, the ultimate decision of whether to have children lies with the individuals themselves (Benson, 2016). But if your aim is to live a happy, stress-free and comfortable life, then you should consider living one without children, because with this kind of life, there won't be any distractions and you will be in control of life. This way, you will be able to live a stress-free, happy life.

References

Worm, W. (2010, November 06). 5 (Scientifically) Proven Reasons You Shouldn't Have Kids. Retrieved from http://www.weirdworm.com/5-scientifically-proven-reasons-you-shouldnt-have-kids/

Gus, A. (2014, March 26). 9 Reasons I'm Never Having Kids (And You Shouldn't Either). Retrieved from https://thoughtcatalog.com/anne-gus/2014/03/9-reasons-im-never-having-kids-and-you-shouldnt-either/

Melone, L. (2015, January 9). 10 Reasons You Should Never Have Kids. Retrieved from http://www.msn.com/en-us/health/wellness/10-reasons-you-should-never-have-kids/ss-AAdQu6l

Slone, J. (2015, June 01). 3 reasons why you shouldn't have kids young. Retrieved from https://prezi.com/xaob7ukj7ekz/3-reasons-why-you-shouldnt-have-kids-young/

Beech, I. (2015, June 24). Why You Shouldn't Have Kids. Retrieved from https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/dp5pb7/why-you-shouldnt-have-kids

Benson, D. (2016, May 17). Why You Shouldn't Have Kids | MrLegenDarius. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIxiFR1IG9k

Mitch, G. A. (2017, September 21). Why You Shouldn't Have Kids. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccLXx4DB8ZQ

Gillett, R. (2017, November 27). 7 reasons people shouldn't have children, according to science. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/why-people-should-not-have-children-2017-11

Engels, C. (2018, February 20). 5 reasons why you shouldn't have children, according to science. Retrieved from https://hackspirit.com/5-reasons-shouldnt-children-according-science/

Martin, L. (2018, December 17). The Most Brutally Honest Reasons You Should Never Have Kids. Retrieved from https://www.elitedaily.com/life/the-most-brutally-honest-reasons-you-should-never-have-kids