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Dad
I've been rethinking my stance on fatherhood.
For the last few weeks I've been sleeping like an infant... better than an infant; I'm not waking every four hours to throw up and scream for boob.
I've been sleeping well, for the first time in ten years I'm totally game to get back to doing standup (and really don't have the time), and I've been thinking about whether or not I want to become a dad.
My stance was always this: I can't afford a cat. To become a father to please myself, and bring a child into the world at a point when I can't make a serious attempt at both caring for it and making the most of the first seven formative years... it's just irresponsible and selfish. It's not right. Couple that with things like the world being overpopulated, the figures on the resources it takes for a person to live a normal life plus it costs more than a million dollars to raise a child to 18... it was never something I could seriously consider. And there's also the fear that my life as I know it would cease to be. ie. my career would wither and die. But I do think I'd make a good father if I was capable of being financially stable.
The thing is, so many kids are being born into loveless families just so Kevin Rudd will buy mum and dad a flatscreen, that there's a need for families that raise their kids with love and humour and understanding. In that sense it's ecologically and socially moral, I think. Kids raised to have faith and confidence in themselves are more likely to be good for this world than bad, even if only as role models or bringing something positive into the lives of others, who then go on to be less damaging... in whatever way you care to consider. So there's that.
The other thing is, I first came to Melbourne on the wave of something laughably bad that went down in Brisbane in 1996. I thought I'd dealt with it pretty well, but it's the nature of these things to not die so much as fade into the background, and then throw clogs in the works while you're out to lunch. I was pretty good at lying to myself about a whole range of things, basically. The biggest being about my ability to write my own life. If I want my career to work, it will. It's taken twelve years to find that particular lever. If I can make it work, I can have money. If I can have money, I can be a father. I know it doesn't take cash to be a good dad, the main requirement is being there and being more mature than the human being you just created.
The third criteria, which I haven't mentioned, is being in love with someone who could be a good mother and is a great friend. I have the advantage of time and being male, but if this is going to happen it'd be best if I didn't wait so long that when I attend this kid's graduation I'm more focused on the pudding.
So it's a thing. I don't know if it'll ever happen, but oddly it was like a weight lifting when I realised this was how I felt about it now, and that had changed because I've changed. It feels like that scene in the last episode of Due South where the ghost of the main character's dad is in his cabin, gets his hat, walks to the door, and all four walls fall away revealing a beautiful, frozen landscape and he just walks out into it. Possibilities, endings and beginnings. I dunno. Stuff. Feels important, I guess.
For the last few weeks I've been sleeping like an infant... better than an infant; I'm not waking every four hours to throw up and scream for boob.
I've been sleeping well, for the first time in ten years I'm totally game to get back to doing standup (and really don't have the time), and I've been thinking about whether or not I want to become a dad.
My stance was always this: I can't afford a cat. To become a father to please myself, and bring a child into the world at a point when I can't make a serious attempt at both caring for it and making the most of the first seven formative years... it's just irresponsible and selfish. It's not right. Couple that with things like the world being overpopulated, the figures on the resources it takes for a person to live a normal life plus it costs more than a million dollars to raise a child to 18... it was never something I could seriously consider. And there's also the fear that my life as I know it would cease to be. ie. my career would wither and die. But I do think I'd make a good father if I was capable of being financially stable.
The thing is, so many kids are being born into loveless families just so Kevin Rudd will buy mum and dad a flatscreen, that there's a need for families that raise their kids with love and humour and understanding. In that sense it's ecologically and socially moral, I think. Kids raised to have faith and confidence in themselves are more likely to be good for this world than bad, even if only as role models or bringing something positive into the lives of others, who then go on to be less damaging... in whatever way you care to consider. So there's that.
The other thing is, I first came to Melbourne on the wave of something laughably bad that went down in Brisbane in 1996. I thought I'd dealt with it pretty well, but it's the nature of these things to not die so much as fade into the background, and then throw clogs in the works while you're out to lunch. I was pretty good at lying to myself about a whole range of things, basically. The biggest being about my ability to write my own life. If I want my career to work, it will. It's taken twelve years to find that particular lever. If I can make it work, I can have money. If I can have money, I can be a father. I know it doesn't take cash to be a good dad, the main requirement is being there and being more mature than the human being you just created.
The third criteria, which I haven't mentioned, is being in love with someone who could be a good mother and is a great friend. I have the advantage of time and being male, but if this is going to happen it'd be best if I didn't wait so long that when I attend this kid's graduation I'm more focused on the pudding.
So it's a thing. I don't know if it'll ever happen, but oddly it was like a weight lifting when I realised this was how I felt about it now, and that had changed because I've changed. It feels like that scene in the last episode of Due South where the ghost of the main character's dad is in his cabin, gets his hat, walks to the door, and all four walls fall away revealing a beautiful, frozen landscape and he just walks out into it. Possibilities, endings and beginnings. I dunno. Stuff. Feels important, I guess.
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Depends how far the sea level rises, I suppose.
I suppose the imminent threat of environmental catastrophe is no different to the cold war, or the rise of nazis , or the Spanish Flu, or WW1, or a comet falling into the world, or 2012. Whatever.
Aside from the whole not wanting to have kids thing, that to me is a big stumbling block. I'm not even sure I want to live in the future, much less offspring.
(Thankfully, there are enough kids around me that I'm not getting the near-40s cluckiness).
That said, we do need smart people to breed. All the stupid people are breeding.
Children are hope
You just have to get creative about it and as a writer I'm sure you'll take to it easily. Take some pointers from movies from Kick Ass:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid429035470?bctid=57103818001
btw, don't go to Finland. I'll miss you.
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You've probably spent an hour with me over the last six years. :P Being in Finland is probably gonna be the same as me being in Brunswick.
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Get him!
Actually neither of us really pushed for it.
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It's more to do with lack of opportunity, perspective, respect for various things that I consider critical, challenges, equality, things like that.
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You’ve just been speaking about how modernity makes your Finland conversations a cinch. The world is not that fucked. People can, if the right choices are made, make this planet a decent place to inhabit for everyone. I reckon a parent’s job is to equip a kid to adapt to the world, not have the world perfect for them. You can insert similarities to the argument for the Australian net filter here – you don’t stifle to protect something.
I love living in the future. It’s a dangerous and complicated place, but I have more free time and information than ANY generation that came before me. My main regret is that I was born, I reckon, 40 years too early to be part of the generation who will travel sub orbitally and into space.
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I also think you have to be optimistic by nature to have children. You have to believe that the problems we face in teh world today are *not* insurmountable and that both you and your children will play an active part in making the world better.
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Like most things it comes down to how you play the hand you're dealt. I could have handled that episode a lot more competently, but at least I handled it in some fashion, and I learned a lot. Which sounds a lot like water-headed optimism, but it is actually true.
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I think our little Gen-X pocket of Australia has had some unrealistic ideas about how resilient we could expect ourselves to be in the face of emotional terrorism and with so much of the economic odds stacked against us, esp after growing up with expectations of the opposite.
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I'm glad things are working out for you.
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Luckily my mother is now, finally retiring after working 6 days a week for most of her life, and is wildly enthusiastic about being a baby sitter so I can get back to work quicker
That said, Australia is not the place I would choose for raising a child for so many reasons. I could maybe get my Polish passport and gain access to EU countries (Ireland's artists and writers don't pay tax, and it's the ancestral home for me) but there is no guarantee that I could get my passport. Not speaking Polish is really against me.
Mike and I have really started to protest as much as we can against all the shitty things that the government is doing, because we would like to have a child, and because after all those years of Howard, having a government come in and think that we were broken by Howard, so therefore they can do whatever the fuck they like is galling to say the least. We're both fucking furious and making waves whenever we're able.
Dunno what will be the outcome - I'm ready to have a child, and feel quite excited about the possibility, but....... Australia....
It's really not for everyone though, and there should be no pressure on anyone to pop one out.
I'm looking forward to hearing about your Finland adventures :-)
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I'll be meeting my local member, if they can ever decide who that is and when they're in.
RE Finland - fingers crossed. We're doing everything right, but I'll count my chickens once I'm booked and sorted. It'll work out.
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But here's my take of a couple of parenting things that really get my goat:
I've met far, FAR too many parents who didn't want to be. If you want to have a kid and plan for it - that's off to a much better start than most.
I'm old fashioned enough to think >1 role models are important. They don't have to be married but they have to be committed to the long haul. None of this token "this is Mary she's your female role model for this month" stuff. Otherwise the kid(s) are working off a single long-term sample of humanity and seriously gimped in their experience of just how varied people can be in more than just superficial interactions.
Lastly, it's not a temporary job. It ends when you or the kid kark it (hopefully, you first). The attitude of "raise 'em until 16 then you get your life back" is misguided.
Yeah, I really could go on. But won't. Probably shouldn't have said what I have ;)
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I know you explained your perspective from some badass shit that went down... but yeah. You really never know.