Excerpt Chapter 6 - Family

 

     

 

Meet my loud, protective, passionate family with this chapter.  Where I proudly detail how values, morals, traditions, and heritage mold me and despite the outstanding upbringing, I still decided to not have children.  Acknowledging how lucky I am for my family, reminding others that family isn’t solely blood related, consistently advocating for authenticity and covering harsh comments from prominent leaders, I take us on an amazing yet bumpy journey down my own memory lane. Below is a small excerpt from Milk Drunk: What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting Chapter 6 Family.

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My upbringing makes it easy to answer those who question whether my childhood played a role in my decision to not have children.

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Absolutely not.

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My childhood was amazing. I was loved, taught values, held responsibilities, created awesome memories, and was surrounded by people I still speak with to this day. With morals instilled, I witnessed what family and determination delivers in life.

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My mom and dad, who are the epitome of love, met in high school and were together until my dad’s death fifty years later. They raised their children with family being the core value. I grew up in a typical half-German, half-Italian, household, which meant a very close family and never a dull moment—always loud, always eating, using any excuse to simply get together.

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I am the youngest of three daughters. Some might say I am the favorite. Others, to this day, call me “the baby.” I looked at it as keeping my parents young. Dorene and I are separated in age by ten years, while Dawn and I are fourteen years apart.

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Can someone say oopsie-baby?

 

My parents worked ridiculously hard to provide for their family, and it wasn’t about materialistic items. It was about my dad driving us to the public beach where he would sit all day in the hot sand that he hated, in his long Docker pants and shoes, just to see us smile. Or better yet, making it a point at 6 p.m. to provide a homecooked dinner around the table.

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I have been lucky to experience my family and childhood upbringing, although knowing that my decision to not have children prevents those traditions from being passed down creates sadness within. Of course, I want every child to encounter such amazingness that correlates to adulthood, but even that desire is faint compared to my version of a fulfilled life.

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Am I sad that the Tsao and, especially, Schwartz last names will not be carried on by Jim and me? Yes. However, that sense of sadness lessens knowing my sisters and family are raising their children with the same values and traditions I experienced.

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Making this complicated decision and knowing Jim and I will not experience significant moments is challenging. To help ease that difficulty, I triumph through acceptance, which empowers my growth. By truly accepting my authentic self, I actively identify ways to improve reality. The makeup of life is your experiences, setbacks, family, community, and abilities wherein specific circumstances, acceptance allows decisions. In my existence, I accept myself for everything I am and everything I am not, including being a mother.

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In early 2022, Pope Francis criticized couples who choose to have pets instead of children as selfish, arguing that their decision to forgo parenthood leads to a loss of humanity and is a detriment to civilization.

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OUCH.

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Not to mention this statement is coming from someone who most consider a progressive pontiff.

“Today we see a form of selfishness. We see that people do not want to have children, or just one and no more. And many, many, couples do not have children because they do not want to, or they have just one—but they have two dogs, two cats . . . Yes, dogs and cats take the place of children. . . . And this denial of fatherhood or motherhood diminishes us; it takes away our humanity. And in this way civilization becomes aged and without humanity, because it loses the richness of fatherhood and motherhood. And our homeland suffers, as it does not have children.”[1]

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How am I, or anyone else who lives a carefully determined child-free life, advocating for ourselves when prominent figures are loudly declaring antagonistic subjective viewpoints—beliefs that clearly have a lapse in understanding a person whose value, moral standing, and character is not defined by parenthood. It is a constant battle that requires childless people to have their defense argument ready at any given moment, patience when communicating and explaining their decision, and most importantly, the courage to demonstrate their authenticity and self-confidence.

 

 

 

 

[1] Joshua Berlinger, “Opting for pets over children is selfish and 'takes away our humanity,' says Pope Francis,” CNN, January 5, 2022, http://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/05/europe/pope-dogs-cats-kids-intl/index.html.