I never liked babies or kids before I became a mother. But once I became a mother, something in me softened. I adore my own kids, and am easily charmed by other people’s children now. 

Children don’t subtract from the sum of life’s happiness, they multiply and magnify happiness. 

I don’t scorn or pity women who want to be childless, but I worry about women being seduced by the messages of freedom and independence of childlessness, only to perhaps later realize that motherhood is not the end of a rich and fulfilling life, and for some of us, it is the beginning. 

Childless advocates seem to think parenthood is an unending journey of pregnancy nausea, childbirth pain, midnight feedings, dirty diapers, and temper tantrums...all going on simultaneously for 12 years, until the children become surly, parent-hating teenagers, and moves out around age 20 demanding money and a car. It’s an amusing image having no basis in reality. 

It’s been my experience and observation that one gets out of parenthood what one puts in. If you resent your kids, if you try to use them as a vanity project, if you push them to the corners of your life, you reap resentful children. If you integrate your children into your life, if you genuinely like your kids, if you put family first, you raise children who are secure and content, and you create a joyful family. It’s not complicated. We destroy what we take for granted, we build greatness with what we cherish.