On Marriage and Parenting

The nuggets were looking at our wedding pictures in our album. We very rarely ever get that out and they were interested. I told them that Mommy and Daddy had this special day together to promise to love each other forever and so that we could have babies.

Yes, I said that. I know it's old school, but that is why we got married. We wanted to have babies together and after a series of discussion and decision making processes we agreed that it was our personal belief that we should legally and spiritually be married before we had kids.

There was a time when I thought it didn't matter if we were married or not, it was just a piece of paper and lots of other people had kids and it turned out fine and I kid you not, since I was of the wee age of 5 years old, I began counting down the days until I could be a mommy someday. I looked at my baby dolls before bed and wished they would come alive, just for the night, so I could be their real mommy. I thought my newborn brother belonged to me. Literally. A little creepy, but I truly believed he was mine and the coolest thing ever. I got the itch during college and we discussed it together and with family and decided it was not the right thing to do.

Marriage has always been very important to Hubby. Although not a religious man, he is very traditional in a lot of ways. I also have an issue with researching things. I like to make decisions both based on how I feel about something and about facts. Statistically, if you go into a long term relationship and decide to never get married you are more likely not to have a successful long term relationship. Statistically, if you have a baby before you are married you are more likely to get divorced at some point. The older you are when you get married, the higher the likelihood you will stay married. I know these are statistics and other people are successful with different things, but this was a starting point for me. After 25 is best and 27 is average for a female, so my screw up happened there because I was 23. So I didn't do everything statistically correct. Another aspect we considered is what would our future kids think? This made me feel that it was really important for me to finish my college education before I had kids, because that is an expectation that I will have of them. Hubby is in school now and it's so hard, I just want better for my kiddos. This is also kind of a silly emotional thing, but I really wanted us to all have the same last name when our first monkey arrived. Divorce is a real thing and it happens a lot. In the event of a divorce, that would mean time away from any potential children and I did want to think about that and do my best. I know anything could happen at anytime, but it's important to me even if I fail to do the best I can from the start.

People think this is cold and odd. I don't. I like to make informed decisions based on facts and likelihood for successful outcomes, not based on feelings. I don't trust feelings. I feel them, but I don't always trust them. If I did everything that my gut felt like doing, I would be in big trouble right now.

We are teaching our children that we believe in the importance of being married. We believe it is best to have a long term relationship before marriage and we believe that babies come after marriage. Being gay or straight makes no difference to us at the end of the day, by the way, and hopefully if any of our children turn out to be gay they are afforded the same opportunity we had to be married if they want to
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I find that people become defensive about this or get offended if they have chosen differently than we have. That is probably because I have many, many friends and family members who don't do any of the things we do so they see it more directly. At the end of the day, I don't lose any sleep about what other people are doing. You can have babies before marriage, you can never get married, you can have 4 kids with all different dad's or mom's, you can get married 7 times, I don't really care. I don't only have friends that are the same as me, that would be impossible and boring. Me choosing to teach my kids this does not mean that I hate people who do differently. The bottom line is this: I don't care if anyone finds it offensive. My job as a mother is to teach my children my personal beliefs about life, right and wrong, and give them some standards to live by. It's completely okay with me if people choose differently. I only want what is best for my monkey's, they mean everything to me, and trying not to offend other's to make them feel better is no comparison to teaching my kids and helping them grow.

I am also fully aware that they may choose differently and they may not listen. We will deal with that when we get there, but that doesn't mean I'm going to pass on nothing to them just because they might want something different. Life happens,the unexpected occurs, and plans change, I get it. If they can handle it and they are doing well and they choose a different path, I'll be fine. Hubby and I really want to make sure we are creating a strong foundation for them, no matter which direction they head out into. We feel good about that, even if it's not PC.