You are a child until you have a child

You are a child until you have a child.

Right up until the moment you hold that baby in your arms, you are a child yourself. You see the world from that perspective. You are on that side of things, and it colors everything you feel.

My dad always used to joke about how he would never go see us in our room when we were sleeping because we always looked too sweet. That’s parental humor. The good stuff.

You might be an old child, one who graduated college a decade ago, but you are still a child.

And then it all changes. Or at least the seeds of the change are planted, and you are thrown onto the other side, forever.

The great divide

The world is divided between those with children and those without. It’s parents vs. the childless in our society, and the battle is just getting started. It will only intensify as we move into the future, and greater numbers of childless people grow older without becoming parents.

But I’m not here to stoke this conflict. I’m not here to attack those who, for whatever reason, don’t have kids. I merely want to state a fact of life. We are not the same.

It’s hard to nail down what it is that really separates the children from those with children….