“You’d be a great Dad.” People say it to scare me or bully me or stop one of my rants.
“You’d be a great Dad. You’re such a good teacher. Kids love you.” No they don’t. Teenagers tolerate me. They like to argue with me. I teach Biology and Psychology, what you are and why you want to kill/snog your parents. Why you’re fat and why that makes you feel bad. Why wouldn’t they like that?
But kids mean babies. Those squalling, shitting, utterly selfish objects with signs of life but none of the advantages. It’s years before you can brainwash them enough to come up with a reasoned critique of the Oedipus Complex or use selfish gene theory to explain why they’re so genetically similar to bananas. By that time, they’re coming home and saying things like, “Sorry about the car,” or “Hey Dad, guess who’s pregnant?” If I got an ASBO, I’d just laugh it off, push dead rats through some letterboxes and move to Leeds amongst other people like me. If my child gets an ASBO, I’ll have to do something about it.
ASBO prevention is expensive. At least one parent at home during the critical period so they form secure attachments. House with the right postcode so OfSTED doesn’t confirm your bad parenting with a Special Measures tag. £8000 a term because you still can’t believe that a place with the word ‘comprehensive’ in the title can churn out anything but fodder for the courts and hospitals, which my taxes pay for. You can’t win with kids. If they succeed, they’re a success. If they don’t, I’m a failure.
Something happens to women at different stages of a relationship. Whenever it has looked like getting serious, I have always had that earnest, eye-contact moment where I tell them how important they are to me but how having children would be a violation of my personal principles.
“Yes,” they say, invariably. “It’s you who’s important to me. Not some kid who doesn’t even exist.” After a few years, their hormones forget their old loyalties and band together in support of their selfish genes.
“You know how we agreed that I would get a vasectomy? I’ve made an appointment for next… What’s the matter?” After the tears, tantrums and emotional blancemange, I make a phone call to cancel the snip. The baby is ahead on away goals and he’s not even a twinkle.
My wife was fifteen years younger than me when we got together. She gave me the respect due my advanced age and wisdom. “Of course I understand. If you haven’t had children for this long, there’s nothing I can do to change your mind. I’ll just have to accept it.”
Obviously, that was when neither of us thought we would last for more than a month. Eight years later, we looked at each other. We had moved countries, lived together for years and had conjured compatibility from somewhere. “Er, yes,” I said. “I suppose it would be reasonable to think of getting married.” She launched herself at me with a gratifying display of goal-orientation and we were married within a few months.
A barely decent interval later, she was in tears.
“What’s the matter?” I said with generic male insensitivity.
“You don’t want children.”
The first shot had been fired.
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