Book Review: Why Have Kids? by Jessica Valenti

I just finished reading the book “Why Have Kids” by Jessica Valenti, which had a huge impact on me and my thinking as a parent.  And that’s exactly what Ms. Valenti wants — for us to THINK about what it is we want and expect from the decision to have children.

Too often we young mothers (which I once was!) go into the experience of motherhood with a lot of high expectations of how it will go.  I can tell you right off the bat that I thought I would fall madly in love with my baby the second he or she was born, that I would be an amazing breastfeeder with an abundant supply of milk, and that I would ultimately be happy as a mom.  I certainly didn’t think I knew everything, but in my quest for knowledge I did discover there were a LOT of opinions out there about everything from birth plans to circumcision to discipline to potty training.  “Why Have Kids?” is a book that could have saved me a lot of grief long before I ever became a mother and discovered that things weren’t going to go the way I had “planned.”  And more importantly, that that’s OKAY!

Ms. Valenti puts it best in her own words.“This is a book about how the American ideal of parenting doesn’t match the reality of our lives, and how that incompatibility is hurting parents and children,” says Valenti. “The truth about parenting is that the reality of our lives needs to be enough. Seeking out an ideal that most of us can never reach is making us, and our kids, miserable.”

When I took my son to his first pediatrician appointment at 3 weeks old, it never occurred to me that I would leave the appointment in tears after finding out that my newborn was UNDER his birth weight.  As it turns out, I didn’t have an abundant supply of breast milk, and I wasn’t doing such a great job of nursing him.  I spent the next several weeks doing everything and taking everything that the lactation consultant told me to do and take, because I was now on a mission to have that perfect experience of being the sole source of nutrition for my child.  Never ONCE did she think to say to me, “It’s okay to supplement with formula as needed.  You’re not a failure as a mother if you do both.”  Instead, I felt like a total failure as I starved my child, until one day we finally gave him a bottle of formula, which he sucked furiously down as fast as he could.  Why had I waited??  Oh, that’s right — because all the books told me how to nurse and why I should nurse and glorified me for nursing, but none of them prepared me for what to do if it didn’t go well.  Surely if it didn’t go well, I was just doing it “wrong.”

I share this story because it’s a perfect example of what us mothers tend to do to ourselves in pursuit of the perfect motherhood experience.  A standard has been put into place that we’re supposed to meet, and if we’re not at our happiest when we’re covered in spit up and exhausted from lack of sleep, we must be doing something “wrong.”  What we should be doing is going into every experience with some knowledge and some acceptance that our take on each moment is going to be our own, and that’s exactly what it should be.  Not right, not wrong, but OURS.  And instead of tearing each other down in the interest of winning some non-existent “mother of the year” award, we should be supporting one another in our efforts to do what makes each of us the best that we individually can be.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who has children or who is contemplating motherhood.  If it helps a few moms out there go into this experience while accepting the fact that not every moment will be perfect, and more than that, that it’s okay to pursue happiness for you, too, we’d have (in my opinion) many more well rounded families in this country altogether.  As the saying goes — “If Mommy ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”

Merrie is writer for the Jen is on a Journey and you can also find her at her blog, Sleepless Mornings: “I’m the mother of two beautiful children, an Executive Assistant, a scrapbooker, a baker, and sometimes I’m even fun to be around!”
Product was sent for honest review, all opinions my own.