Our friend says he had to teach himself to fall in love with his new wife after she became the mom version of herself. Then I started to think about how a child is like a boarder you've agreed to take into your home without meeting him and whom you've committed to house for 20 years no matter how he acts. I don't believe that parents have that much to do with how their kids turn out, so it doesn't seem that different from making a commitment to an utter stranger. That's a lot of stressful changes to choose to undergo all at once.
Then I started think about how we believe marriage is only worthwhile if it makes your life better. If the marriage is meant to bank two people's efforts so that each can withdraw energy when he or she needs it, then children have to disrupt the whole purpose of the marriage. My husband says that children may negate the purpose of the marriage but that we both already know how to put off short term happiness for long term gain, so he sees it as just a longer-term version of that short-term deferral. I'm not sure what other stressful life-change I would choose to undertake at the same time that I've deliberately undermined my marriage, but having a child seems to require that kind of decision.
I don't know.
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