As I ate my dinner with B, I listened to the sensationalist headlines blaring from Entertainment Tonight. Among tonight's headlines were new allegations involving the couple of TLC fame. I thought a little bit about both the husband and wife, and I could honestly see how both of them could lose it a little over time, having 8 kids. But then, I thought that they did it to themselves.
They already had two kids. They wanted a third and had trouble, so she took fertility drugs, and lo and behold, sextuplets! I suppose the old adage, "be careful what you wish for" is entirely appropriate here.
In many cases, couples use fertility treatments when they have tried for years and years to conceive, to no avail. I have a friend who was in that boat. She had a treatment done, and she had twins 10 months later. She is blissfully happy because she wanted them so badly and appreciates what she has now.
For Jon and Kate, however, I believe that had they fully appreciated what they had with their first two children, they wouldn't have been compelled to seek treatment to conceive a third. Sure, they wouldn't have become famous, but maybe they should have been better people who had actually done something good to truly deserve their fame.
No, in this case you have a couple that was lucky enough to have two healthy children, they had trouble with their third child, and rather than saying, "you know, we're lucky to have what we do, and we're okay to not have a third," they went and made things many times more difficult for everyone, especially the first two children. At some point those two children will question their parents' actions, as all people do.
As I continued to chew my salad and chicken, my thoughts wandered further to celebrities who continue to adopt children from "third world" countries. Thoughts of Madonna petitioning such countries to allow her to adopt, as well as photos of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt shielding their children from various paparazzi flashing their blinding bulbs, come to my mind. I wonder, why do they really do it?
Sure, it's easy enough to say that they want to help a child who will never have the same opportunities as a child from the United States (if it is in the right demographic and SES), but really, if they wanted to truly help, they would do more towards education, healthcare and sanitation (drinking water) in those countries. So if they aren't really doing it for the children's homeland, then why?
I believe it stems from many actors' underlying need for constant validation to fill their insecure minds. If you've ever known an actor, you have known a person who is at once, a lover of the spotlight, and at the same time, laden with their own insecurities, fueled by the skeletons in their closets. Obviously this isn't true of all actors, but in the case of the actors who are relatively sane, they are also not the ones hopping around the world to adopt every child they find, whom they also pity (and by "saving" them, they are pumping up their own egos to make them feel as if they are better human beings). Interviews may reveal a kinder, gentler celebrity who has been so good to do this for a child, but really, it isn't for the child. It's for the almighty ego.
Also, if it were simply to help, then why didn't Oprah just adopt all of the young girls she met in Africa? Certainly she could afford it, but the countries from which the children come still have a future lying ahead. An uneducated society is a doomed society, that much I am sure of (and I certainly wonder about out own country's future). I believe it is better to build a school for the future, rather than removing the people from their homes.
All of this leads me in the way of questioning why many people choose to become parents. As the child of someone who used motherhood as a way to fill a long ago created emotional void, I have felt the consequences of being the daughter of a highly insecure parent. As kids like us grow up, we realize why they had us, and it isn't always a great feeling to have.
As for me, I am going to be a parent because I want to be a mom. As a mom, I will have the amazing and frightening role of being the one to guide a child (hopefully) in the right direction, even though it's still all a crapshoot, when you get down to it.
I am going to be a parent because I want my family to have a future. I want my days to be filled with sights and sounds of kids, of extreme amazement and frustration and everything in between. I hope I am going to do it for the right reasons.
Maybe those aren't the right reasons. I'm not really sure what a good reason is, but I am pretty sure that doing it to fill a void is the exact wrong reason. And even though I had to go through hard times with my own mother, I am thankful to have been able to see the downside to doing things for certain reasons. The problem with trying to fill a vacuum is that it has no end. Nothing will ever fully fill it, and so everyone involved in the efforts suffers.
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