When you’re married, it seems like everyone in the world wants you to have exactly two kids: one boy, one girl. No more, no less. You announce your first, and everyone is thrilled! “Oh goody! Oh hurray! You’re going to be parents! Babies are so wonderful!” Then: “When is the next one coming? I hope it’s a [whichever gender you didn’t have the first time] this time!” (And if it’s the same: “oof, I’m so sorry, what a bummer!”) Then, you announce a third, and people start to give you funny looks, raised eyebrows. Like: “on purpose?” “but why though?” God forbid you have a fourth or more. People, even strangers, seem to take that really personally.

My husband and I, we have four kids, the oldest being six, the youngest being almost a year old. And people around us are always telling us how much they love our kids. “They’re so wonderful! They’re the best kids!” (Which they are.) “You’re such good parents! You’re doing so great!” (Which I hope we are.) But then, practically in the same breath, with feverish urgency: “you’re done, right? You’re not having anymore? You’re getting a vasectomy, right?”

Good grief. Get your story straight, people.

For one, stop asking about the state of my husband’s/my reproductive organs and whether we plan to mutilate them. That’s no one’s business but ours, and why are you so obsessed about them anyway — gross. And for two: does you like our family or does you don’t? ‘Cause you’re sending pretty mixed signals.

(This hypocrisy annoys me almost as much as people who offer condolences & sympathy when you have a miscarriage, but then in the same breath are pro-choice. Did a human being die, or did one not? Did that baby’s life matter, or did it not? SMFH. Get your story straight.)

“But Mith,” you might argue, “of course we like your kids and your family. That’s precisely why we don’t want you to have anymore kids. Because the ones you have are so great that they deserve your full attention and all the nicest things you can afford for them. We don’t want them to have to sacrifice. And plus, having that many kids would be too hard, you’d be unhappy, and we want you to be happy.”

I’ll cut the snark now. This is valid. Let’s not be radical. You may not agree, but I actually think I’m pretty moderate on this whole issue. If you have a legitimate reason to believe that having additional kids would put a family in a bad state — like, maybe the family is homeless or on the literal verge of homelessness, or maybe one of the parents is struggling with active addiction, or maybe there’s a debilitating genetic condition that they’re likely to pass on, or maybe the mom suffers from serious postpartum depression — those are valid reasons for the parents to avoid future pregnancies. (Still not valid reasons for you to ask them about their private parts though — come on now.)

But. If it’s just that you see the way they’re living and you personally wouldn’t want to live like that: stop projecting. Besides. You just said a minute ago that our kids seem so happy and well-adjusted, now you’re saying they’re disadvantaged and doomed to a life of abject misery? Which one is it?

Yes, there are valid reasons for a couple to avoid having kids. You not agreeing with their lifestyle choices is not one of them.

“We love you and want you to be happy, that’s why we want you to stop.” With this argument, you’re projecting your personal idea of “happiness” onto someone else’s situation. Just because you wouldn’t want to live like them doesn’t mean they’re doing something wrong.

“But it is wrong for them to put their existing kids in a situation where –“

Where what? Where they have to make some sacrifices? Where they don’t get to have every single material item they’ll ever desire? Oh, the horror! I also don’t get to buy every little thing that I want — may as well go kill myself immediately, because this is no life worth living!

Ahem. I said I’d cut the snark.

“But we love you and we don’t want to see you struggle.” Thanks, but isn’t struggling to some extent a part of the human condition? It just doesn’t seem to me like avoiding financial/material discomfort is a compelling enough reason to avoid what is basically the greatest thing a human can do: co-create a new human life. Because human life is a really good and cool thing. Even when it involves some discomfort.

I get that the people who make the “we don’t want to see you struggle” arguments are coming from a place of love.

But it’s also a place of fear, isn’t it? And I get that too. The two unfortunately tend to come hand-in-hand. I love my kids so much that I’m plagued by constant fear that something bad will happen to them. The fear is intense.

But you can’t let it rule you. You can’t let fear govern your every decision. If your objective is always “avoid discomfort and stay safe at all costs” — you’re going to have a bad time and an empty life.

Like, I have driving anxiety, and am constantly petrified of car accidents, especially when my kids are in the car — I never for a moment am able to forget how their risk of death or catastrophic injury skyrockets every time I put them in the car, and how I have zero control over other drivers. But if I let this fear govern me, if I opted for “safety at all costs,” I’d never take them anywhere — to friends, to lessons, to church — we’d just sit at home. And what kind of a life would that be?

You can’t just make major decisions out of a desire to avoid all discomfort. Being a parent at all means inviting a certain amount of sorrow, pain, struggle, and sacrifice, and accepting that those are part of life now.

“We just want you to be happy.” — Again, thanks, but for some of us, the “happiness” that we’re striving for isn’t about peace in this world. Not that I’m like super holy or anything. That’s not what I’m trying to say. It’s just for me personally, the good of a human life outweighs a bit of material discomfort.

“Easy for you to say now while your kids are little. Wait until they’re older and your house is crowded and they all want the bathroom at the same time and they resent you.” You know what: valid. I do worry about this. I do worry that my kids will resent me, for this or any other reason. I worry all the time about their mental health as adults, and do all I can to try to protect them and fortify them.

But, I also try not to make important decisions based off of fear of other people’s opinions — even people who are very important to me. I would like for my kids to like me, and I hope they do — but that is, to some degree, outside of my control. All I can do is my best. Life decisions need to be informed by my conscience and what I believe God’s will to be.

And I need to try to raise my kids to not care so much about this world, to not be so hung up on their physical circumstances in this life. Because this is not all there is. I need to keep in mind that I’m raising souls for eternity.

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This whole idea of controlling how many kids we have, as if kids are not unequivocally a good thing to have, is, if I’m not mistaken, a pretty modern innovation. Even a great many couples who for religious reasons don’t use birth control are infected by it — this idea of “should we be open to life or should we not?” I think a more appropriate, sane, and healthy approach to the whole question is a respect and awe for the mystery of life, and gratitude for it.

So I guess if you believe that this life is all there is, then sure, I can understand your concern. But that POV just frustrates me so much — again, the hypocrisy. People rarely seem to think it through. People rarely seem to take it to its logical conclusion. If you really believe this life is all there is, then sure, why have kids — why do anything at all! Philosophically, I have more respect for those nihilists who say extreme stuff like “humans are actually morally obligated to commit suicide” than for people who just float through life trying to enjoy it as much as they can until they die.

But that’s just me. To each their own, right? Isn’t that the creed that y’all secularists claim to live by? I apparently can’t cut the snark, sorry. Unless you’re my husband, my parish priest, or my medical doctor, please leave me alone about how many kids I have. That is all.