Monday, October 25, 2010

On children and insanity...

Have you ever had one of those moments where it's really driven home that you are so very alien and foreign that you don't know just what the hell you're doing or why you are where you are? I had one of those the other night at work when my boss decided to bring up the subject of Xen and I having more kids. She asked if I wanted to have another one, and I, like the idiot I am, answered truthfully that we want four more.

She completely lost her shit.

"Oh my god, you're insane. No way. No way. You are really, truely insane now. You're so abnormal! You're nuts! In this day and age, having that many kids is insane and irresponsible! Don't you know, kids need things! Sure, Bree is young now, and you don't understand, but when she gets older and goes to school, she's going to go over her friend's house and see something that she likes and come home and say "MAMA, Ik wil dat!" (For you English speakers: Mommy, I want that!) She continued: "Kids today are different, and the world is different, and kids today NEED things. It's too expensive! You're nuts if you want that many kids! And you have a young family! What is going to happen?"

Now, not that I'm particularly surprised by her reaction, especially hearing an eerily similar conversation that my husband had with his co-workers about how many kids we want. His co-workers even went so far as to tell him that he should just have one more, a boy, and stop. He said that he responsed that "Biology doesn't work like that. Should we then just keep having useless, apparently socially valueless girls until we produce that magical male heir?"

The reason these people are so adamant and freaked out: Cost. Oh dear lord, everything here comes down to money. Now I know that having kids you can't afford is irresponsible, but that's not what we're talking about. We can afford kids NOW. So we want to finish having our kids NOW. I do not want to be like your average Dutch woman and start having kids after age 35. And honestly, I don't mind one bit if we are slightly less well off because we have more kids. Kids to me aren't about the cost, because honestly, if they were, we'd never have had any and we never would have rescued or fostered the dogs that we have. Having that family, and my kids having those kinds of relationships with their siblings, is worth more than all of the wealth in the world.

My family LOVES kids. The more the merrier! We're loud and there's a zillion of us, but we take care of each other. I'm close with my family, even my extended family, out to like 3rd or 4th cousins and Great Aunts and Uncles. When I still lived in the states, I saw my family every single day. We all live within a few towns of each other there, we're constantly doing things and hanging out with each other because we enjoy doing so. My grandparents are the most wonderful people, and they love and adore their grandchildren and now great grandchildren. Even my great grandmother lives close by, and sees her family every day, which at 92 is awesome. A lot of families seem to just drop the elderly into a home and forget about them.

I can assure you that if we were all thinking about the cost of family we wouldn't have had one. Somethings are worth much more than money. And it seems very apparent that Dutch people would rather have more useless crap that they don't need than close familial ties. Hell... Most Dutch families don't even seem like they particularly like each other very much. They're very cold most of the time. The affection that my family (well at least most of my family) brims with, is almost entirely lacking here. It is very depressing at times, and Xen thinks that it was a major contributor to him being a sociopath. (Don't worry, he's getting better, and he's not crazy. He's smart enough to have realized that being a sociopath probably isn't a good thing and taken steps to get beyond it.)

Like most things here, it's just... different. And in this case, I don't think it's a difference that I particularly like.