The next generation

Most people would not start a business without spending time learning the skills necessary to make it successful. It takes a lot of time, patience, studying and time. Did I say time enough? Something worth doing right requires a certain amount of time. Very few people would disagree with that.

Raising children is no different. It's going to take time, your time, to do it right. You might get away with hiring a full time trained nanny to do it, but then what is the point of having children? Are they just little place markers in the world created to make you look good, to play with like happy puppies when you feel the need, to point to with pride and say, "that's my boy, or girl?"

In reality they represent the person who raised them. The nanny. The sixteen year old babysitter. The woman with no education who babysits for the money. The daycare facility who hires people they pay minimum wages to. Their school. The neighborhood gang.

You dip the little sponge you created into various and sundry pots and they absorb whatever is there.

Unless you take it seriously and do more.

It's not about producing an art piece you can present to the world at some certain age and say, "This is my son, my daughter!"

It is about coaxing a human being with intricate and unique potential into full bloom.

If you want to bring a child into the world you should be prepared to spend time learning how to bring this particular child up and then doing it with great patience, understanding and love.

Of course children can raise themselves and get by. They can grow up strong and be successful like petunias in an onion patch, but they are more likely to find themselves in danger of being pulled up by the roots, tossed into a heap of crazy, scary feelings and left to fend for themselves wondering why there are other people who seem to have better skills in life.

The children we love deserve more and while we may not always succeed, it would be a better world if we at least gave it our best.

Having a child just because you can is very selfish. There is so much more to it than that. You are raising the next president of the country, the teacher who will influence hundred of other lives, the engineers and artists and scientists and  parents who will create the next generation of the world you will grow old in.