Kiwi Kids Books

Without doubt one of life’s biggest decisions is whether to have a third child. Currently that is something that my wife and I are thinking about. Having children is an exciting roller coaster ride. There are the highs of major personal milestones and enjoyable family times. There are also the lows that sometimes feel like the dripping water torture the Japanese used to use in the war. Without doubt parenting is a little more hard work than I thought it would be.

For me having children is like running a marathon. Like a marathon having children is just plan hard work. The daily, uninterrupted, constant grind of child rearing is similar to the non stop grind of running for an entire 42km. In both parenting and running there are times when you just want to stop and times when all you want to do is curl up and lie down. However, despite this when you finish a marathon there is immense satisfaction and joy. A real sense of accomplishment and pride in what you have achieved. The same is the case with having children.

Currently we have two great boys but as I have alluded there has been recent murmur in our family of increasing that number. For me, bringing it back to the marathon, it is like someone asking me to do another. Sure it would be good, but can I hack the training, the early mornings and the share hard work. Prior to any big decision you need to weigh up both sides of the ledger.

The first considering in our day and age must be financial and the cost of children is a biggie. A quick search on the net reveals some startling facts. The United States Government estimates that it now costs $291,570 to raise a child in America t the age of 18. This compares to only $25,000 in 1960 when the yearly figure started to be published. Convert that to New Zealand dollars and you are looking at over $500,000. Prior to having kids I would have thought that those numbers were often extremely high. Having two kids I now consider those statistics very conservative. Children are like weddings. A mere mention of the word doubles the price without question. I personally believe when you add together everything, including the loss of income, the cost of caring for a child to the age of 18 would probably cost around $700,000. The fact that now most people raise their children until they are 21, and university fees could be included, it probably puts it over $800,000.

The next problem for me is one of race. I am not racist but there are some vital statistics which must be examined prior to thinking about a third child. Apparently, in recent years China’s population has exploded like a giant teenage zit. This effectively means that now every third child born into the world is Chinese. Because our next child would be our third, this means there is a high probability our next child could be Chinese. I have nothing against the Chinese, they put on an excellent show at the Olympics, but I see two problems. Firstly, I don’t know how to speak Chinese as there are so many sub languages I could end up with a child that speaks some remote pigeon mandarin. This would cause problems with his/her schooling as very few schools cater for Chinese speaking children. Secondly, I haven’t found a Chinese first name that matches my last name.

Finally we have the problem of the babies’ gender. We currently have two boys, which means we are then only 50% away from having 3 boys. Now I came from a family of 3 boys and realise the blessing they are. Unfortunately, I don’t know if my wife is that enthused about the possibility of being the only woman in a 5 person family. The upside is that boys are much easier to raise and live with than girls and cause far fewer problems. But hey I already knew that.

So you can see there are some big decisions to be made in this household. None of them will be easy and all of them having rather impressive consequences. Really I see that it boils down to a couple of things. Do we stick with the status quo and leave it at two great boys? Or do we take a punt and effectively spend $800,000 on something that might turn out to be both Chinese and male? Guess we will have to just wait and see.