Responsibility of being a parent

‘Let’s have a baby’, is one statement that changes lives forever. It is one of those huge decisions that changes everything we have hitherto known.

Most people get married whether by choice or by parental decree and get officially ready to start a family by producing children. But more often than not, the most ignored factor remains the psychological readiness of the couple. In fact, it is the most important factor in determining one’s readiness to take on the major responsibility of parenting a child.

Parenting involves the future of our future generations. That is why having children is not just a hobby and should not remain a mere accident. Becoming parents involves a major change in lifestyle and we must be absolutely ready for it.

Our society romanticizes the images of parenthood so much that we set very high expectations from it. It is true that parenting is a lot of fun but it is also a lot of hard work; more work than we can imagine until we become parents ourselves.

Parenting is a lifelong project and if we are not truly prepared for it, it can give us more headaches than joy. Besides the demand on our time, energy, emotions and resources, parenting brings up our own emotional issues squarely in our face, as children end up pushing all our emotional buttons. The mistakes we make as parents affect the ones we love the most; our children.

Most of us have been brought up to expect that one day we will become parents but no one has ever told us how important it is to heal ourselves before bringing in a new life. Unless we heal our own inner wounds, we are not ready to bring forward any children. Before we parent new children, we must parent the child within; because unless we do that, we’ll end up passing on our own insecurities, fears and complexities to our children.

Since parenting is a joint venture, both the partners must be in complete agreement to shoulder this onerous responsibility with joy and honor.