Galloping Cats

I don’t think that having a child is a rational decision. If you made a list of pros and cons, I’m pretty sure the cons would outnumber the pros. But the pros outweigh the cons. The strength of that desire to hold another warm, sweet-smelling baby in your arms can make all those cons seem really small. And I have a guess that at the end of this exercise, that’s where I’ll wind up.

Which is all the more reason to blog about this stuff instead of talking about it with A. I mean, we’ve talked about it a little over the past couple of days, but I could see my spending a month talking about all the reasons not to try for another child, only to decide I really do want one and find him with an opposite opinion!

So let’s talk about the finances. Obviously, money doesn’t buy happiness… but it sure does help!

We live in a part of the country where it’s very hard to feel like you have enough money. Then again, maybe no one ever feels like they have enough. But sometimes, when I give up my lottery fantasy, I fantasize instead about moving to one of those places where salaries are 90% but cost of living is 50% of the NY area. Places like Atlanta, Austin, and Dallas, where similar salaries would go a lot farther, and where I’d feel like I could breathe. Ultimately, I can’t ever imagine leaving my family in the Northeast. However, not having a second child would result in a similar windfall.

At the current rate of increase, a private college education will cost close to $400,000 in fifteen years. Holy crap. And don’t talk to me about financial aid, because middle class families earn way too much to qualify, especially when they’re middle class by the standards of the NY area. Sure, there are state schools and loans, but I want to be able to give my kids what my parents gave me: the chance to go to the school of my choice and to graduate debt-free.

At the moment, we’re not able to save much of anything for college, but three years from now, when Gatito is in kindergarten, if we don’t have another child, the expense of child care will drop by 2/3 or more, we’ll be able to channel that money right into his college fund. And not just college– piano lessons and tennis lessons and family vacations. You could call those nonessential luxuries, but I love that I learned to play instruments and how to ski and play tennis. I can imagine managing without taking trips, but I feel despair at the thought of not being able to afford music lessons for Gatito.

I actually cannot imagine how we could afford a second child. I’m sure we’d find a way, but it would be a lot less stressful to stick with just the one, you know?

(I totally didn’t even get the pun in the headline till after I wrote it! And now I’m pretty sure it’s not even original!)

For most of my life, I’ve thought I wanted to have two kids someday. At one point, before we started trying, I remember having this thought that I could have only one if I wanted. And a big weight lifted off my shoulders as I considered how much easier life would be, financially and logistically.

When we started having trouble with just the first one, and after finding the experience of pregnancy to be very stressful, I was sure I only wanted the one. Shortly after he was born, I even shipped off the fertility monitor and some books to family members who were going to start trying. (And now they’re in the middle of a divorce– thankfully they never did start trying– and I’ll never get them back. Damn!)

I think it was around the time that Gatito turned one that I started thinking I’d like to try for a second in 2008. It started off as an intellectual thing, but over the past six months, that desire has increased steadily until it became full-on baby lust.

But something happened yesterday. A simple thing, really. A and Gatito and I spent the day in Soho, walking around, shopping, having lunch. It was a lovely day, and as we packed Gatito into the car and headed home, I was struck by the thought that it’s not something we could do easily if we had two kids. And never mind a day in the city, we took an infant Gatito to Berlin last year and are taking him to Switzerland in a couple of months. Things that would be much much more difficult, both financially and logistically, with two kids.

And so for the past day, my mind has been a whir of thoughts and considerations, pros and cons. (All this complicated by the nagging thought that one never knows if one can have another child anyway and I’m probably jinxing myself.) My mom once told me that if I couldn’t make up my mind about something, I should flip a coin and see whether I was happy or disappointed with the results– then I’d know what I wanted to do.

I haven’t flipped a coin, but I’ve decided to take the next month and assume that I am not going to try to have a second child. I want to see how I feel– relieved, like I did when the idea first occurred to me a few years ago, or disappointed? Stay tuned… I have a feeling you will soon be seeing enough posts to warrant a new category.