We May Consider Parenthood

And we’ll babysit your infant for free for one afternoon to see what it’s like to be around a baby.  I have references if you need them. Children? Love me. Hell, I took care of my little brother half the time: I bathed the kid, fed him, changed his diapers, played endlessly with him and was basically a second mother to him. There’s a reason why he trusts me so much these days and seeks me out for advice (and spending money): I was a good caretaker. Not a great sister at times (he could irritate the shit out of me when I wasn’t feeling maternal at the age of 16), but talk about my instincts kicking into gear: threaten him and you’re on my shitlist for life.

Anyway, IP and I are looking to babysit a baby for one afternoon. And many apologies to the parents of toddlers, preschoolers, school-age kids, and tweens, but we’re not really looking to deal with those age levels at the moment. (We figure we’ll deal with them if we get to those stages with our own kids.) We’re currently finding ourselves obsessed with babies: their cute poofed-out cheeks, their big eyes, their little chins, their button noses. The giggles, the diaper changes, the chewing-on-their-feet, the feeding, the hair-pulling, the earring-snatching, the curiosity, the multiple dress changes, the rashes, the throw-ups, the crying, the sleeping—we’re wondering whether if we have what it takes to be parents and would like to babysit your baby, free of charge, for an afternoon (or evening if you and your significant other want to go on a date). See, we’re getting married in, oh, about six months and we’re both extremely wishy-washy on whether or not we’re going to procreate. We find ourselves vacillating wildly between wanting them and wanting to stay as far away from them as possible.

However, we both instantly melt when we see a baby on the Metro, in the grocery store, or taking a stroll with their parents. Granted, an afternoon or evening with your kid won’t give us any good indication at all if we’re ready to take the plunge after we say our vows, but we’ll at least get to see a baby in action, in all its baby glory—the good and the bad. See what it’s like to be around them, perhaps even knock down our idealistic expectations a peg or two. Make us see that instead of getting cute little images of ourselves, we’d end up with a human being that can be very demanding and fussy and a significant-others’-time-suck. We know that kids do not cement a marriage, nor do they make you a happier person—research says that having kids makes you less happy. However, if you plan it out and you both want them? You’re prone to being less less happy, but that doesn’t mean you stop paying attention to the marriage. That’s a very dumbed-down summation of the situation, but there you have it: babies are charmers and we find ourselves enamored of them. However, the prospect of raising a human being in this messed up world makes us hesitate. No matter how good of parents we want to be, a number of things could muck it up: we’re trying too hard, not hard enough, society’s really pushing against us and our kids side with society, we’re replicating patterns from our parents that we did not want to sneak into our own parenting, we’re neglecting each other in favor of the kid, etc.

(All of this is assuming we can even have kids, so yes, we may be ahead of ourselves, but I figured I’d add in this note to remind myself that conceiving a baby is not always an easy thing to do.)

So yes, we will babysit your baby gratis for one afternoon or evening. But given the above articles I’ve linked to, the fears I’ve expressed, and the thrill of being away from your kid, you damn well better pick him/her up by the end of the evening.