License to conceive?

Its two am in the morning and she’s come to the hospital with abdominal pain- ‘I cann’y do nothing for this pain, doctor’. Okay, so what have you been doing- ‘I wuz at the pub with ma mates…I”d had a few shots of vodka when this pain started...I’m in agony doctor’. And then she very conveniently stretches out on the couch and the next thing I hear is the sound of her loud snoring. With a growing sense of dejection I open her case records and see a series of admissions, each time after either drug or alcohol overuse. This woman is six months pregnant…and every conceivable drug misuse has been documented in her clinical notes, throughout the pregnancy.
I come home in the morning and have a rant, before an increasingly perplexed looking Rohit. ‘Look at Soumya and Piyush….they cant have children, despite the fact they’d be the most loving and caring parents in the world....and here is this woman, who’s got a brood of, god knows, six or seven already, from some six or seven different partners, all in different care homes or foster homes now, and she continues to breed!’ I blurt out in a single breath.
The sense of ‘acute lopsidedness’ of this world stays with me throughout the day. Soumya n Piyush have been trying for a baby for years. They are now on the waiting list for adoption. But the very long red tape bound around these issues means that they may have to wait for years. There are a dozen different checks to be done. Checks?
Does anyone check to see whether the woman I attended to overnight is fit to be a parent??
This has become my pet hate of late. People who take no responsibility for their lives whatsoever and produce an army of traumatized, scarred little kids who are doomed to a bleak future. And this is the land of ‘equal opportunity’. What kind of opportunities is this child going to get?

Have we reached a point in our society where we should be proposing a ‘license to conceive?’ i.e. you can’t be a parent if you’re deemed unfit to be a parent.
You don’t get to be the third sales assistant at Primark without producing some form of evidence of competence. So why should you be a parent without one?
I’m probably too tired from the night….should get some more sleep and hate the world a little less....

P.S- afterthoughts on the kids situation.

Now I have this boss who is the epitome of being organised, planned and entirely predictable. Patricia has never veered from the straight and the narrow all her life. You can just see that in her every move. From the rolling of eyes with impatience when someone is being, in her opinion, daft, to the sneer of derision she reserves for the softies, the imperfect people of this world who let emotions rule their decisions.
She hardly ever wastes words. Just looks through you if she thinks your question doesn’t merit a response. And when she does speak its always measured, precise. When she does smile, its always within half an inch of the corners of her mouth. No one at the workplace has seen her laugh out loud. She must be, if I can hazard a guess, late thirties with a style of dressing that definitely belongs in the late sixties to seventies. Loose tops or shirts, severe, always below the knee skirts in shades of beige or gray – you get the picture. Now I had so far conveniently slotted Patricia in the ‘slightly elderly spinster’ category. When yesterday, the bombshell dropped and we found out she actually has two adorable sons. Just like Patricia, grunted one of the blokes, bloody perfect. So, she’s managed two pregnancies, without taking any leave beyond what’s absolutely essential.
I can see how she would have just carried on, ‘business as usual style’ during her pregnancy, have the most well coordinated and timely delivery and the most disciplined brood in town. Does this inspire me to achieve what she has, without compromising her career? God, no.
I would want my children to be full of mischief! I would want the whole plethora of emotions, uncertainties, unpredictabilities that come with raising kids. I can’t be mechanical. I cant be a robot and still pretend to be happy. So, sadly for Pratima, plans to have kids have been shelved once again.

The big dilemma

I’m still smarting under the effect of Pratima’s rather long spiel….on the topic of children, or actually the lack of them in my life. The thing about this particular discussion is, not only is it always forced- with me looking for that tiny chink in the door so I could just vaporize through it, it also almost always leaves me feeling selfish and self centered. As if I’m committing a grave injustice towards all my family, all my friends who have kids, and to myself too even if I don’t realize it.
So Pratima, who basically married at the age of 22 and had two kids before she turned 28, thinks I’m way too late to have a family. She also put her career on hold and postponed her postgraduation in fashion designing, so Amit (her husband) could pursue his high demand medical career. Rohit assures me there’s no similarity whatsoever in my personality and hers’. So I can't judge my life by her yardstick. Which is very sweet and ‘chivalrous husband’ like of him. Only, I still feel restless.

I have long been aware of the importance of being a ‘DINK’ couple - which is essentially short for Double Income No Kids. Now, whoever coined this term was I think, essentially thinking of the money side. It is expensive to bring up kids and with either of the couple having to work flexibly/ cut down etc, it’s a big financial responsibility. I do enjoy my current status as freshly (well, that’s about four years ago) married without kids, but for slightly different reasons. Like the other weekend we suddenly decided we needed a bit of a break, so we drove out to the coast for a couple of days. People with kids simply don’t have that kind of freedom. It’s my freedom and availability of choice that I feel I can’t let go. That’s not to say I would not want kids ever, but at the moment life is quite full, thank you.

In our society, as in any other, peer pressure to keep climbing the ladder of social responsibility or ‘appropriateness’ is quite high. Obviously there are set time limits for a girl to get married, for a married woman to have children and for someone with children to…ugh, I don’t know, move to a bigger house in the suburbs, give up on all sorts of fun things that you used to enjoy as a couple and get set in the routine of bringing up kids…for which there is a strict protocol by the way. That is not to say people who are bringing up kids are boring or have uninteresting lives. I just don’t fancy that at the current moment of time, that’s all. In fact I truly admire Pratima for what she has been for her kids – they are the sweetest, most well behaved and charming kids I’ve seen.

So, jury is still out on whether there’s a particular age cut off by which everybody should have kids and settle into domesticity. Or whether you should just follow your instincts, not worry about ticking biological clocks and take life as it comes….
Something to think about….