Gentle Suggestions

This is not an advice column

Hello! I want to start by acknowledging this might be a deranged thing to ask a stranger on the internet, however lovely that stranger is. But it is not an exaggeration to say I have been agonizing over this question for 3 years. Should I have a third child? I have two boys ages 5.5 and 4 years. They are sweet, demanding, and very high energy. I am finding motherhood EASIER year over year (fuck the haters who say, "It doesn't get easier") and excited about elementary school in the fall. Frankly, I want a third kid. My husband thinks I'm insane, and yet!, whenever I ask him to get a vasectomy, then HE waffles. The first time I mentioned this to my therapist she literally brought up Freud's concept of the Death Drive. (She apologized for this later.) I have anticipatory regret about my future with "only" two kids. I can financially afford a third child, so long as I do most of the childcare before age 3, as a SAHM, and I know how hard that is, having done it for my first 2. (Also: we moved to a small city with terrible restaurants where we can afford to live and own a house big enough for 3 kids.) I also have a life long dream to write a novel. I have a working manuscript which has been through revisions and I feel the closest I ever have to being published. (Though there's still a lot of work to be done and I do not yet have an agent.) So a part of me wonders if a third baby feels "easier" than the novel? Or, am I projecting unfulfilled hopes onto this child? Almost like the energy of a crush? The baby and toddler years were next to impossible for me with my first two (the 19 month age gap nearly killed me); do I view this hypothetical third as some type of revision? I don't know. Oh, and I am terrified of twins. I come from a family with four kids and feel four is too many, but do believe in abortion and live where it's legal. Any gentle suggestions greatly appreciated. I am clearly lost. Thank you.

Increasingly I feel that every couple of months, I read a big headline that says one of the keys to happiness lies in talking to strangers. I should probably read those articles but the problem is I am very confident that the key to my own happiness does NOT involve reading articles about happiness. Big Happiness is not for me.

But talking to strangers is a muscle I like to stretch almost everywhere except for in planes.

I remember my siblings being weirdly embarrassed to ask strangers for directions if we were lost. Some of the kids in my life have this sickness still. I don’t care. If I’m lost for even 30 seconds, I will ask a stranger to reorient me. I will ask the useless police officer in the subway to open the emergency door if I am on the wrong platform. I will ask the station agent to let me go through the turnstile for free because I already gave the MTA $2.90 and I’m not doing that again. And right before exiting the train, I will tell the intriguingly good look person standing across from me that they look great. Sometimes I’ll even wink at them. What can I say? I enjoy flustering people sometimes.

It’s because I am an absolute lunatic.

The problem with lunatics is that you really don’t know what you’re going to get with them. This is unfortunately the risk you agreed to when you engaged me in such a personal matter.

Funny enough, Gentle Suggestions has addressed whether someone should have a second child but you are asking about a THIRD child! That feels slightly different and you’re asking it in an interesting way so I will allow it.

Hello.

Your anxiety is very LOUD. It’s not a problem for me at all but I hope you know how LOUD it is.

And wow the way you phrased this conundrum. There is something kind of manic in how you presented the whole thing. This is not a bad thing, just an observation. Mania doesn’t scare me. Remember that I am a lunatic. Is it really a surprise that I find elevated and excitable moods stimulating? Exactly.

Let’s get into it.

I agree that you are lost. I read your note so many times that I got sidetracked too but let’s get back on track.

What is the problem?

You want a third baby.

Why is this or is this not a problem?

Many reasons according to you but let’s break them down in the order you are presenting them. This is absolutely not the order of operations I would have used and I find your process fascinating. Brains are so different and I really like that.

Here are your reasons:

• You have two cute toddlers whose age gap barely help you beat Irish Twin allegations. They are “sweet, demanding, very high energy” in your words and I love that description a lot because it’s a classic compliment sandwich. “Demanding” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

• You “are finding motherhood EASIER year over year.” I am happy for you.

  However I don’t know how to feel about the fuck you to the other parents. It leads me to believe there is some resentment there about…I’m not sure exactly.

  Crème de la Crème thinks parents are very hard on each other and should probably compare parenting notes and expectations less than they do. Kids like their parents come with all kinds of factors settings and what works in one family doesn’t necessarily work in another. But I’m not a parent so take all of that with a big grain of salt.

• You say that you are “excited” to send your kids to school but actually to me, you sound relieved. That feeling is relief. Let it course through your body. Enjoy it. Respect it. Relief is very good.

  You have been juggling a very high-wire act in a country that refuses to offer parents any respite from the realities of parenthood.

  Janet Yellen, the first and so far only woman Treasury Secretary once said that childcare in the United States is “a textbook example of a broken market. It does not work for the caregivers. It does not work for the parents. It does not work for the kids . . . [therefore] it does not work for the country.” The Treasury is the cabinet-level agency that manages the country’s money. All that boring stuff like collecting taxes, managing government debt, producing currency, and enforcing financial laws. I don’t know about you but I was happy to know that the people at the very top of the financial arm responsible for ensuring the economic stability of the United States know that the lack of childcare is a problem and they acknowledge that the country is failing families and therefore failing itself. I am not sure that American mothers know this. They should know and understand this instead of feeling like personal failures. The scam is structural.

• Your husband says it’s “insane” to have this baby. It pains me to consider a man’s opinion on anything at all but I do think that when you are married to one, their opinion counts sometimes. Probably mostly on matters like these. I am annoyed that your husband is waffling on the vasectomy— Ejaculators! If you don’t want more children GET THE DAMN VASECTOMY!— but I will not join you in agreeing that this is him wanting a third.

  Let’s park the husband for now. But please tell him I am very annoyed with him.

• You say you can afford this third kid. Well actually here is precisely how you phrased it “I can financially afford a third child”

  Your use of first person jumped out at me. Are you the only one paying for this? I know couples handle finances in all sorts of ways but I have so many questions about how your family is doing it. Then there is the big caveat that financially the baby actually only makes sense if you do all of the childcare for the next 3 years. Which begs the question, can you emotionally afford this? And now we have to talk again about your husband. I am really am so annoyed with that man but does he agree that your family can financially afford this addition? What other financial goals does your family have that might be affected by a third child? Does your husband agree that you as the caretaker can emotionally afford this? Also my kids math is rusty but let’s say you have a baby. That’s what? Almost a decade of dealing with very small children back to back? I have no judgements about this. Maybe you have the stamina for it. I am simply trying to sort through the information you are presenting me with.

• The aside that you live in a lower cost of living city with shitty restaurants did make me laugh. What are you telling me this? Your house is big …so you need to fill it? I am not sure this is pertinent.

Up until this point I was having a hard time following how your question was unfolding but then a very pertinent revelation emerged: you are an aspiring novelist! You should have said this much earlier because this is the kind of disclosure that flips the problem on its head.

Now we’re really cooking.