Parenthood Are You Ready To Take Responsibility?

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Prabhav Adhikari

Professor Schleunes

English 414-06

April 20th, 2011

Parenthood – Are You Ready To Take Responsibility?

For centuries, parenthood has been looked upon as an experience that is to be prized. Young women looked forward to growing up, marrying, and bearing children. In many cultures it is the woman’s sole purpose in life, only second to pleasing her husband. At one time there was no greater accomplishment in the life of a young woman than to give her husband a boy who would one day carry on the family’s name. From the time of early childhood, female children were trained and groomed to become homemakers. Today, a number of women are not as eager to share their lives with a child. With the era of equal rights, Americans have taken a new view on the female’s role in the household. This in turn has changed many female’s opinion on parenting. Where parenting was once looked upon with much anticipation and often celebrated, now it is sometimes seen as a burden to the independent women. The many sacrifices that come with parenthood may be too much for some women to concede. The thought of sacrificing the youthfulness of one’s body may also be unbearable. One might consider the sacrifices and the rewards, and find that the sacrifices far outweigh the return. With these new feelings of reluctances amongst our society, the decision to have a child, and become a parent, should be thought out thoroughly, considering all the consequences. The decision to become a parent should only come once the parents to be are positively sure that they are willing to take hold of everything that comes along with rearing a child.

        Many of those who decide to have children decide to have them for the wrong reasons. Often young women make the mistake of having children in the hopes of achieving commitment from the child’s father, or maybe they are suffering because of a bad home life. Young women may become pregnant in order to have a way out of their parent’s home. By having children, the young woman believes she will then be seen as an adult by her family and friends, and as a result, will be given the freedoms of an adult. This is a tragic mistake because once she is burdened with the responsibility of a child, she will then begin to realize that the freedom she had so desperately hoped to achieve is farther than it was beforehand. Instead of freedom, sadly, she is only faced with added obligations that she never had imagined would come along with having a baby.

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        In this day and time, with relationships not lasting longer than an average of three years, having a child seems to have no effect on whether or not the father will still be around to help raise him or her. In the event that the father does participate in raising the child, the bulk of the responsibility of caring for the child is usually left to the mother. This added responsibility may conflict with dreams and plans that the mother may have had for her. In the event that the mother has a career, juggling her job, her homemaking responsibility, ...

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